Hammond Police Break Through Car Window and Taze Passenger with Kids in Back Seat

originally posted by: butcherguy
a reply to: AnteBellum
That was really cool for those kids to see.
What kind of impression do the cops think they are making on the next generation?

Im glad they are so completely asinine to the next generation, maybe finally a generation will wake up and say, no sorry, we don't want thugs running around treating us like dirt found on the bottom of their shoe.

No matter what happened before this I don't see the urgency, or why in the hell they needed to act like they did. Seriously. What the %#%#?

a reply to: roadgravel

I'm surprised it took so long for someone to remember that there are two sides to every story.

So, where do you fault the response? What factual errors does it make? If it's true, does that change your opinion? Is the truth important in this case?

a reply to: charles1952

Of course it is his fault, he didn't listen to what they said so it is his fault. He didn't comply and he got some incentive to then comply, aka the tazer.
All in all tho seems like there was no weapon so all their fear was misplaced.
If they want to do all this on the name of thinking there is a weapon, then they need to be right and when they are wrong, they need to pay for that.
Also Charles were you able to find the police video by chance?
Oh and police reports are not facts, they are just the police side of the event and are often embellished

a reply to: charles1952

If you don't think those police actions were out of hand then you are part of the problem.

a reply to: kosmicjack

She was driving, he was tazered. The driver was let go, the passenger was arrested. Driving while Black? That makes no sense, they didn't go after the driver. Or is every stop of a Black driver for seatbelts, burned out bulb, expired license plate, obstructed window, a "pretense stop." I know you don't believe that, but that's the impression you've (perhaps unintentionally) created.

a reply to: roadgravel

If you say that everyone who disagrees with you is part of the problem, you'll have a hard time talking to anybody about this issue. You'll only talk to clones of yourself.

Please, answer my questions about the police report. They knew they were going to be sued and their statements would be used at trial. They have an extensive video record to compare the statement to, what is wrong with the statement?

And what do you mean "out of hand?" Is it vicious violence on peaceful, law abiding, compliant citizens? Of course it isn't. But rather than get sidetracked by that. Please read the police response. Is there any factual reason to reject it? Does it show the situation in a different light from the family video?

a reply to: Sremmos80
But on the heels of the SC man getting shot in a similar situation - I can see why he was reluctant to get out of the car. The SC man *was* complying 100% and he got shot anyways...he was black.

This guy outside of Chicago didn't have the satisfactory ID for the LEO and he was feeling targeted, especially since it shouldn't have been such an ordeal for a simple seatbelt violation....he's also black.

Whereas, highlighted on several news channels this morning, a cop in Michigan stops a Mom for seatbelt violations and takes her to Walmart to buy a carseat....she's white.

a reply to: charles1952
LoL - If she was driving, why does he need to show ID? But he tried anyways, though not sufficient for the LEO.

The charge was failing to "aid an officer"....sounds like BS.

a reply to: charles1952

No way, the police report makes them out to do nothing wrong!!
The report from them is nothing but their side and some cya.
It can not be taken as 100% fact of what happened ad it is just a recollection of the event that can be twisted at will of the report writer.

a reply to: charles1952

The police have no worries, they can basically get away with anything. We have seen that over and over for decades. Some day the average citizen will come to realize they may be the next victim and things might change.

originally posted by: charles1952
I know this is a hated idea, but there is another interpretation to what we saw. OK, I'll wait. Ready?

There are at least two gaps between the police deciding to make the stop and the events shown in the video. First, we don't know whether she complied readily. Second there was a large gap after the stop and before the filming started. There is nothing in the filming that contradicts the police statement.

You didn't read the police statement? Why not? It's linked to in the source article.

www.chicagotribune.com...

I don't see how any one can read the response and see this as a policeman gone amok. The police have their own film containing more of the incident than the one from the family. Sometimes the police do go bad. Sometimes events are edited to make it look as though the police went bad. This case? Looks, at first glance to be the passenger's fault.

Oh, and "completely compliant?" Not a chance in the world that he was. Unless the word "compliant" has taken on a new and opposite meaning.

You're disillusioned man.

The vehicle complied with the traffic stop. The occupants were complying with the requests they were mandated to comply with, and in the length of the video in question I never once saw the passenger reach for anything 'behind the center' console. I never even saw him Look in the back seat.

I also note that he handed a piece of paper out the window that may have even been his composition of his identification.

In what )@($*ing universe, is it 'ok' for a cop to shatter a window and taze someone with no evidence of a violent crime, or even potential for violence? WORST case scenario, they could have shattered the window and pulled him out - I saw him tense up Once in an 'aggressive' manner, but only after they had tazed him, grounded him, and cuffed him - but I never even heard them ask him to step out of the vehicle. If - as according to the police report - they did ask him to step out of the vehicle repeatedly; what grounds was that request on? Without reasonable suspicion, there is no reason why anyone has to comply with that request. It also seems to me that their 'fear of a weapon' got fabricated as soon as backup showed up.

Children in the car, hesitant compliance ( who can blame them ), and zero physical resistance. Why taze him? Why arrest him even?

"Failure to aid an officer" - does this mean that if a cop yells 'Hey come help me hold this guy down' and I don't, I'm getting locked up? Because that's how it reads.

"Resisting Law Enforcement" - when? When he didn't get out of the car because he hadn't done anything to warrant that necessity? It is a judicial paradox that anyone can be accused of 'resisting arrest' when the arrest is not warranted.

I'm fuming.

"Oh good; you gave us a piece of paper with your name on it - now ... *smash* STOP RESISTING!"

Good thing that all of these claims can be backed up by the upstanding, law abiding police officers that made the arrest!!! [Sarcasm]



One for the homie.

a reply to: kosmicjack

HOw do you even ge pulled over for a seatlbelt violation?
I thought there had to be another reason....a bad light, speeding, etc. for them to nail you for the seatbelt violation.

But whatever.....why the need or the justification for asking the passenger to show his papers?
Why was he doing that was illegal?
Just like this guy who was a passenger
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Cops run amok.

a reply to: kosmicjack

Dear kosmicjack,

How can we find a level to communicate from? We have the three minute video from the family, we both agree with it's accuracy. We also have the police statement on the event. The statement is not the word or memory of one person, this is the police departments position after looking at it themselves and pulling the pieces together.

The police make many claims which can be checked against the police videos, dispatcher calls, and the statement of the multiple officers at the scene.

Please read the report. As it says, the passenger was also charged with a seat belt violation and resisting law enforcement. You really should have included those. Failing to aid an officer was not "the" charge, it was one of several charges.

The police statement says that passengers in stopped vehicles may also be asked for identification, and if the officer fears for his safety they may be asked to step out of the car. Apparently the officers made both requests on film, and the passenger defied them. You may applaud that defiance, but it is illegal according to the statement.

Sremmos80 Police don't confuse a report written by an officer back at the station with a statement issued by the police department. This statement is more than one person's recollection, and the department knows they will be sued and had better not say anything they can't prove.

a reply to: DigitalJedi805

Please, read the last several posts and read the police department statement. I'm not saying that you have to accept everything in it 100%, but at least read it. It does answer several of your questions, and provides an alternative explanation which covers all the facts we have.

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Does my reply, immediately following yours answer your question? It should.

a reply to: charles1952

Sremmos80 Police don't confuse a report written by an officer back at the station with a statement issued by the police department. This statement is more than one person's recollection, and the department knows they will be sued and had better not say anything they can't prove.

There are cops in my family and was kept out of trouble more than a few times because of it but that is beside the point.

As far as there being several statements from officers at the station that doesn't mean squat when you think about it but it does sound good. Think about police procedure when there is an incident and they are taking statements the first thing they do is split everyone up so they cant coordinate their stories. No one is splitting the cops up to get separate statements they get to have their powwows first so everything lines up. They are experts at doing it. No one polices the police and it is really needed. They don't want cameras in the field they didn't even want the ones on their vehicles but they learned how to disable them. Every once n a while they screw up and still get recorded when they don't want it to happen.


Anyway if the entire thing was over seatbelts why not give the tickets and move on? Oh he may have a weapon well that is even more reason to move on. BTW in the video didn't he say he gave the guy his information?

a reply to: Grimpachi

Anyway if the entire thing was over seatbelts why not give the tickets and move on?

Tends to make one think it wasn't just about a seat belt. It's moving past just ticket revenue.

a reply to: Grimpachi

Dear Grimpachi,

Hello and welcome. I'm going to count on you to keep me sane here. I appreciate disagreement, which is just one reason I appreciate you, but not just any kind of "Nyahh - nyahh, you're wrong-ong" disagreement.

Fine, I absolutely agree that, especially in complicated or emotional situations, the responding officers will go over their stories. But I was never a party to one in which a lie was being created. It was always a session like "No, you didn't leave your headlights on all the way up the driveway. Remember you told Bill you wished it wasn't so dark? Oh, yeah, I remember now."

You mention that they don't want cameras in the field, but in this case they called for one so they could record it, too. The police wanted people to see what happened.

Again, it's important to remember that the police knew they were going to be sued. If they have a half-way competent City attorney, or whoever prosecutes cases in Hammond, they would never release a statement with facts they hadn't checked ahead of time unless they wanted to lose. It will go to trial, the family and their lawyer are hoping for money from a settlement, if nothing else. The police gain nothing by lying in their statement, they only lose. And if their statement is absolutely true, they don't lose anything, but they don't gain anything either.

The entire thing started as a seat belt stop, but went south from there, apparently when the passenger decided to ignore police requests. From the police statement, and the impression I got from the video, the passenger told them who he was, but wouldn't write that information down, or hand over an ID card. Why he wouldn't is beyond me.

The police said that they couldn't see his hands and he wouldn't cooperate with their other requests, so they asked him to step out of the car which, apparently, they are allowed to ask in Illinois. He wouldn't do that either.

He acted as though he was hiding something, whether it was his identity, a gun, or something else. That's a very uncomfortable position for a police officer to be in, and really should be resolved one way or the other.

It didn't help that the driver just wouldn't shut up. All of her talk about "It's not safe to get out of the car," "They're going to shoot us, they've got guns," and "This is crazy" over and over, made everything more difficult. There were four family members, three cops, and a camera car recording in the middle of the day. They'd been sitting there for at least a quarter of an hour and traffic was passing. That's not the place for her to be worried about getting killed.

Yea. We are allowed to have weapons right?

I understand that if they feel threatened, they can ask you out of the vehicle. So.....
What specifically made these police fear for their lives so much that they needed to ask him out of the vehicle? The fact that he didn't show them his ID? Is that enough to scare the police into pulling their guns on him?

Gotta see the rest of the vid. Or the police video.

These cops look scared. But why? What did he do that they saw as threatening? Why do all of these videos we talk about start as seatbelt pull overs that turn into glass shattering, tasing, and then released?

I don't get pulled over often, and i always comply but only because i am very aware that he could "feel threatened" at any time. Most of the times i have been pulled over, i am let go with no citation. As a matter of fact, i haven't had a ticket in over 16 yrs but i get pulled over and thoroughly searched about 2 or 3 times a year. Never for speeding. Always for something like swerving, or crossing over the line while turning, suspicious behaviour. Most of the times i get searched, they ask very cleverly worded phrases like "is there any reason i would smell "certain drugs" ? Which have never been in my vehicle.

The idea of the police using lies to justify searching my vehicle, makes me want to vomit anger onto them. I cannot tell the difference between the good cops and the bad cops. The only way to judge that is by the way they conduct themselves when i'm dealing with them. When i catch them lieing, or being overly aggressive, or down right physically abusive when i am complying with them, or the idea of them just pulling me over for arbitrary reasons and insisting on tearing my vehicle apart and then leaving me to sort out the broken mess they have left outside on the road.

I know of no better way to judge someone's character than by observing how they conduct themselves.



a reply to: Grimpachi

a reply to: kosmicjack

Thank you Kosmicjack, in my rush I left out the most important part.
They were pulled over because of a seatbelt violation, not even a moving violation!

I can hear on CNN from the reporters, the battle cries are getting louder and the sides becoming more clearly drawn. If this insanity does not end soon there will be more problems even worse then this due to complete lack of faith in a system filled with bullies and robots.