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Ill. deputy accused zapping 3 kids with stun gun
By JIM SUHR (AP) – 16 hours ago
EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — A sheriff's deputy zapped three children with a stun gun at an Illinois emergency youth shelter, threatening to sodomize one of them before choking a fourth child and throwing her in a closet, according to a federal civil-rights lawsuit.
The suit against Jefferson County sheriff's deputy David Bowers and another deputy claims they were unprovoked in the incident at the adolescent center in southern Illinois that houses youths ages 11 to 18, often with behavioral issues.
No charges have been filed in the case. Sheriff Roger Mulch, who also is named in the lawsuit, said Monday the deputies followed protocol and did "nothing out of the ordinary."
The suit, filed July 1, called the deputies' actions "extreme, outrageous and unjustified," and it does not release the names or ages of the three boys shot with the stun gun. The fourth kid was a foster child who did not live at the center, according to the lawsuit.
The suit claims that Bowers and sheriff's deputy Lonnie Lawler went to the center near Marion on July 4, 2008 in response to a report that three teenagers were acting unruly. But the young people suing the deputies were not those disruptive children, the lawsuit said.
Bowers allegedly pushed one boy toward his bed, and repeatedly shocked him with a stun gun. Bowers then held down a second boy, stunned him several times and threatened to sodomize him, ultimately causing the child to soil himself, the lawsuit claimed.
A third child complied with the deputies' demands that he sit on a couch, but Lawler handcuffed him before Bowers zapped him repeatedly, the lawsuit said.
The fourth child, a girl, pleaded with the deputies to stop but Lawler handcuffed her. Bowers lifted her off the ground, pressed her against a wall and choked her, the lawsuit alleges.
"Do you want to live or die (expletive)?" the lawsuit, filed July 1, claims Bowers asked the girl before she was thrown into a closet, vomiting.
Bowers did not immediately return messages left at his home, and Lawler does not have a listed home telephone number. It was not known whether either had an attorney.
Gene Svebakken, president and chief executive of Lutheran Child and Family Services of Illinois, which runs the center, said Monday after reviewing the lawsuit that he was "really alarmed and distressed by the allegations."
"These are young people often traumatized in their circumstances, and that they, like all children, needed to be treated with dignity and respect," he said, noting that the shelter serves a myriad of children, ranging from runaways from placement elsewhere to youths between foster homes.
Mulch portrayed the center as a chronic hassle, this year accounting for more than 100 requests for his department's help.
He defended his deputies, saying separate investigations by his department and Illinois State Police determined Bowers and Lawler did nothing wrong.

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http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/20...lice-Brutality



Tasers, Steroids and Police Brutality

by Steven D

Share this on Twitter - Tasers, Steroids and Police Brutality
Mon Jul 20, 2009 at 03:26:26 PM PDT


There are some really sadistic creeps employed by our law enforcement agencies in this country. I give you fair warning: what you are about to read is likely to turn your stomach:

• Steven D's diary :: ::

The Southern Thirty Adolescent Center near Mount Vernon, IL, filed the lawsuit on behalf of three children in its custody, who the lawsuit says were tasered by Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies who had been called to help subdue two misbehaving children, aged 11 and 12. Neither of those children were among those who were tasered during what one news service described as a police "rampage."

So what exactly did these two deputy sheriffs do? Here's how the complaint filed in federal court by the The Illinois Office of State Guardian describes their actions:

"Without any physical provocation and/or physical gestures from R.E., Deputy David Bowers physically pushed R.E. towards his bunk and shocked him repeatedly with a taser," the lawsuit alleges. "R.E. was tased multiple times to multiple locations on his person, including, but not limited to, his neck. Deputy Bowers shouted to B.B. to lie down in his bunk and physically forced him to lie down. Without physical provocation and/or physical gestures from B.B., Deputy Bowers held B.B. down on his bed and shocked him repeatedly with a taser. While he was tasing B.B., Deputy David Bowers threatened to sodomize B.B. As a result of this repeated and excessive tasing, B.B. urinated and defecated himself. Deputy David Bowers was aware that B.B. urinated himself after the tasing.

"Shortly thereafter, Deputy David Bowers and Deputy Lonnie Lawler shouted at Z.P. to sit on the couches in the common room. Z.P. sat on the couches. Without any physical provocation and/or threatening physical gestures from Z.P., Deputy David Bowers ordered Deputy Lonnie Lawler to handcuff Z.P. While Deputy Lonnie Lawler was placing the handcuffs on Z.P., Deputy David Bowers began to shock him repeatedly with the taser. Z.P.was tased multiple times to multiple locations on his person.

"As Z.P. was being repeatedly tased, Megan Geisler pleaded with Deputy David Bowers and Deputy Lonnie Lawler to stop. Deputy David Bowers ordered Deputy Lonnie Lawler to handcuff Megan Geisler. Once in handcuffs, Deputy David Bowers approached Megan Geisler with his taser withdrawn as if to use it on her. Deputy David Bowers grabbed Megan Geisler by her arms, lifted her off her feet, and carried her through the male dormitory to a nearby closet. On the way to the closet, Deputy David Bowers lifted Megan Geisler off the ground, pressed her against a wall and choked her. While choking her, Deputy David Bowers said, ‘do you want to live or die bitch’ to Megan Geisler. Megan Geisler was then thrown into a closet. At this time she began vomiting and heaving."
The lawsuit also contends that Jefferson County, the Sheriff’s Office and Mulch "caused deputies to believe that the excessive and unreasonable use of force would not be aggressively, honestly and properly investigated, with the forseeable result that deputies are more likely to use excessive force against plaintiffs and others in the future."

Eleven and 12 year old children! One tased so many times he urinated and defecated himself! And these weren't even the kids for which the shelter had called the sheriffs in the first place. So, what was the response of the Jefferson County Sheriff's department to this federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the Illinois state agency responsible for enforcing the rights of these children? Take a wild guess:

No criminal charges have been filed. And [Sheriff Roger] Mulch says investigations, including one by Illinois State Police, found that the deputies acted appropriately.

You think cops are ever going to investigate their own and find they acted inappropriately? Absent video evidence that forces the local District Attorney to act, that is? Yeah, me too. Folks, we have been sold a bill of rotting goods. Weapons (for that is what they are) that have been touted as non-lethal are being employed across this country by rogue law enforcement officers as torture devices for no other reason in many cases than their own amusement. How many of these cops are on anabolic steroids which make them prone to violent rages and psychotic episodes?

In precinct houses and sheriff's departments nationwide, officers are being investigated, disciplined, discharged or arrested for possessing or using steroids:

Michael Tweedy, a former police officer in Petersburg, Va., was sentenced in April for repeatedly stomping a man in the head while he lay on the ground choking on his own blood. In court testimony, steroid use was cited as a contributing factor to his violent behavior. [...]

There is a scientific explanation for the violent behavior exhibited by steroid abusers, says Linn Goldberg, a professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University and an expert on steroid abuse.

"Your dopamine receptors are changed," he said, referring to the chemical in the brain that transmits nerve signals. "They help guard against a lack of impulse control."

Steroid abusers lack the same level of control that non-users have. "They have uncontrolled aggressive feelings. Their judgment is impaired," Goldberg said. [...]

Gene Sanders, a police psychologist in Spokane, Wash., has worked extensively with police officers who are steroid abusers.
"If I were going to be conservative, I'd say that probably five percent of everyone who walks in my door either is using or has used steroids. This is getting to be a major problem," Sanders said.

Sounds a lot like the behavior described in the complaint filed against Deputies Bowers and Lawler, doesn't it? Lack of impulse control. Uncontrolled aggression when the circumstance do not require excessive force be used. And how many other cops cover up for their brutal roid raging colleagues? One study has shown that most of the police brutality in Chicago was caused by only 5% of the police officers (maybe the same 5% abusing steroids, perhaps?). Yet almost all of these reported incidents of abuse went unpunished.

More than 10,000 complaints of police abuse were filed with Chicago police between 2002 and 2004, but only 19 resulted in meaningful disciplinary action, a new study asserts.

The study argues the Chicago Police Department should not be allowed to police itself. Instead, an independent civilian oversight board should monitor and investigate police abuse reports to ensure accountability for every officer’s conduct. The study was conducted by University of Chicago law professor Craig B. Futterman and the Invisible Institute, a Chicago-based company that works on social justice projects.

"The way in which CPD investigates police abuse is a joke," Futterman said Wednesday. "If the CPD investigated civilian crime in the same way it investigates police abuse, they’d never solve a case." [...]
Futterman said 85 percent of officers accused of police abuse are not interviewed in person about the incident and are allowed time to corroborate their story with involved parties. He charged the department withholds information from the public.

I'm not claiming every police department in the country is as bad as Chicago, but I bet many of them have comparable statistics when it comes to complaints of police brutality and the extent to which repeat offenders on the police force are allowed to avoid punishment for often unwarranted and brutal assaults. Tasers just give those cops who are already inclined to physically abuse citizens a license to torture people. The lawsuit filed against the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department for the actions of its taser happy deputies is just a drop in a very large ocean. With the number of cops on steroids, and the inability of police forces and local prosecutors to investigate complaints of police brutality and excessive force do we, as a society really want to continue supplying law enforcement officers with these weapons without a drug testing regime and psychological testing in place to weed out those on steroids or otherwise prone to take out their aggressive impulses on the citizens they are supposed to be protecting?

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