A man filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging he was paralyzed and needed his legs amputated after police officers in St. Petersburg, Florida, put him in restraints, placed him in the back of a police van without a seatbelt and then drove in a reckless manner.
Cuffed in the back of a van with no seatbelts. You can get a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt in your car.
From watching the video, it’s honestly hard to say whether this is extrajudicial punishment or just gross incompetence and negligence.
The first thing that’s immediately clear is that departmental negligence is involved at minimum. It really seems like police vehicles should have the ability to have seatbelts in them, and if there’s reasons they can’t (say anti-suicide or something), then they should not be allowed to drive more than like 20mph with someone in them unrestrained without a medical emergency.
But whether it’s intentional assault or not is not clear to me. It absolutely could be an intentional rough ride, they didn’t turn the camera on for the majority of the ride, but that does beg the question of why they would turn the camera on when they heard a loud crash in the back and incriminate themselves rather than just leave it off. Even the victim’s lawsuit doesn’t quite allege that they were intentionally driving to hurt, so much that they were incredibly negligent:
Thacker drove “in a reckless manner and at an unsafe rate of speed,” before he suddenly came to a hard stop at an alleged red light, the suit states
It honestly seems like this could be a case of criminal negligence on the cops for driving too fast and then having to stop quickly as often happens when you’re driving too fast (as opposed to attempted murder / assault).
And then given that cops presumably have first responder training, it also seems like criminal negligence the way the cop handled the guy who clearly had a likely spinal injury.
I doubt anywhere close to appropriate charges or accountability will come from this since they’re cops, but at first blush this doesn’t seem like an intentional rough ride to me the way that Freddie Gray was.
From watching the video, it’s honestly hard to say whether this is extrajudicial punishment or just gross incompetence and negligence.
The first thing that’s immediately clear is that departmental negligence is involved at minimum. It really seems like police vehicles should have the ability to have seatbelts in them, and if there’s reasons they can’t (say anti-suicide or something), then they should not be allowed to drive more than like 20mph with someone in them unrestrained without a medical emergency.
But whether it’s intentional assault or not is not clear to me. It absolutely could be an intentional rough ride, they didn’t turn the camera on for the majority of the ride, but that does beg the question of why they would turn the camera on when they heard a loud crash in the back and incriminate themselves rather than just leave it off. Even the victim’s lawsuit doesn’t quite allege that they were intentionally driving to hurt, so much that they were incredibly negligent:
It honestly seems like this could be a case of criminal negligence on the cops for driving too fast and then having to stop quickly as often happens when you’re driving too fast (as opposed to attempted murder / assault).
And then given that cops presumably have first responder training, it also seems like criminal negligence the way the cop handled the guy who clearly had a likely spinal injury.
I doubt anywhere close to appropriate charges or accountability will come from this since they’re cops, but at first blush this doesn’t seem like an intentional rough ride to me the way that Freddie Gray was.
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