Video has surfaced of a barefoot woman wandering on the eastbound Interstate 10 west of downtown Los Angeles in broad daylight. A California Highway Patrol Trooper approached her, pinned her to the ground, and while straddling her, proceeded to punch her in the head upwards of eleven times. The woman was not armed. At a point in the video the woman put her hands up to try and protect her face. She is a black, 51-year-old great grandmother. He is a white cop who said that he was protecting her from walking into oncoming traffic who is now on paid administrative leave.
But nothing can justify the savage beating this woman took. David Diaz, the motorist who caught the incident on video explained:
‘The most animalistic, most brutal way to subdue someone is to pound someone’s head into the concrete with really big blows to the head,’ Diaz told ABC7. “‘There was no weapons – it’s obviously excess force,’ he continued. ‘He starts really letting loose… He starts pounding down on her face really hard. He doesn’t try to grab her hands first.’
Team Blackness also discussed more ridiculous excuses made by Opie and Anthony’s Anthony Cumia on his racism, how Prince Fielder’s ESPN cover has brought out the Twitter husky lovers, and Jezebel’s controversial choice of a new editor.
Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe On Stitcher | Direct Download | RSS
Howard Beale IV
Seems to me the citizens of Russia are way ahead of us ‘murricans, with their dashcam fetishes.
As far as O & A go, many longtime listeners suspect that this is a work.
Mike in NC
The cop will be lionized on FOX News. Bank on it.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
The CHP usually takes police brutality incidents a lot more seriously than the other police agencies do, so the guy could get in some trouble. If it was LAPD, she’d be SOL except maybe for a cash settlement 5 or 6 years down the line.
CHP is (partially) charged with assisting stranded motorists and investigating car accidents, so they worry a lot more about their public image than the other agencies do.
The Dangerman
@efgoldman:
Without video, perhaps; with video, he gets the Stacy Koon Shuffle.
He’s toast.
Cassidy
Maybe he’ll retire and become an FBI agent.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@efgoldman:
I have no brief against the cops even though I was beaten by them more than once back in the Sixties. It appears to me that, for many reasons, there are way too many out -of-control cops and even entire police departments these days. No, I don’t have an answer. I can tell you that I knew a small town Chief of Police a few years ago and in the course of a conversation he told me that communities get the kind of policing that the majority wants.
karen
Rodney King 2014.
ulee
Cops in this country are out of control. It seems that the only thing to protect the people are cameras. If this hadn’t been recorded this rage cop would have smirked it off. As Al Pacino’s character in GlenGarry said, “What you’re hired for is to help us, not to fuck us up.”
RaflW
Good thing this happened in a place where the motorist making the video isn’t suddenly also seen as a criminal.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@RaflW:
Guessing that he’s under strict surveillance for Threatening to Upset An Apple Cart.
PurpleGirl
I think it’s part and parcel of the militarization of police departments. Besides getting all those good bits of hardware, it seems the police are hiring more former service members (not that that’s bad in and of itself) without the pyschological background checks they should. There are anger issues here and that man probably shouldn’t have been hired.
ETA: I know no mention was made of the cop’s background but I’m extrapolating from other incidents.
Flukebucket
I predict three weeks paid vacation for the offending officer.
Mandalay
This reckless boast from the CHP (in the OP’s link) will surely come back to haunt them in a lawsuit:
David Koch
if doesn’t involve telephone metadata does it matter?
BruceFromOhio
“…Opie and Anthony…”
Gaia save us all, these two fucksticks were raw, gaping sphincters in the way back when. They had a mercifully short-lived stint on local radio as some sort of anti-Stern gesture, prior to Howard’s departure for orbit. If only O and A would find outer space in rapid fashion, sans satellite.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I did not realize the pig in question was CHP. That changes things for the better. He may well get in some trouble over this. I assumed he was LA County and that absolutely nothing would happen.
I drive once a week by a bridge that has some sad history. It’s simply labeled the “Cara Knott” bridge. I bet not one in a hundred that drives by and sees the sign know what it’s for.
In 1986, Cara was a young lady pulled over by a pervert cop who used to pull over single young women, threaten to take them to jail, and then make them have sex with him to “get out of trouble”. Cara, for whatever reason, didn’t play along. Her body was found a couple of days later at the bottom of the bridge. She had been strangled with a piece of rope.
Unfortunately for the cop, he had called in the stop. There was a record.
The CHP tried the usual pig tactics of stonewalling and delaying, but Cara was young, white, and blonde, and the CHP couldn’t stay on top of the story and it wasn’t going away. They reluctantly turned over one of their own, murdering pig Craig Peyer, for trial. He is, thankfully, still in prison, although eligible for parole. Let’s hope he doesn’t get it.
Let’s hope this sick animal who tried to beat an old lady’s brains out gets some justice. I am not hopeful.
kc
“Paid administrative leave?”. MOTHERFUCKER. He should be in JAIL.
stonedstats
@CONGRATULATIONS! What Peyer did and whatever this cop allegedly did is unforgivable, but they are humans who make mistakes and are capable of change. Vast vast majorities of people who commit acts of violence change and are remorseful later in life. Keeping them in prison may serve your personal sense of justice, but you may well be depriving the convicted an opportunity for an equally laudable goal: redemption.
Mandalay
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Interesting story, and Wikipedia has an interesting aside about DNA testing for the case, even though DNA testing wasn’t available at the time of Peyer’s trial:
Protesting your innocence while refusing to provide a DNA sample is not persuasive.
According to Wikipedia he won’t be eligible again until 2027. I suspect refusing to provide a DNA sample has a lot to do with that.
Mandalay
@stonedstats:
Sure, but based on the details given in the Wikipedia link Peyer was not remorseful.
Of course it’s inherently impossible to be remorseful and also protest your innocence, but Peyer’s guilt seems way beyond reasonable doubt.
Mnemosyne
@stonedstats:
Statistically, rapists (which is what Peyer is) are very, very unlikely to change, and they are especially unlikely if they murdered their victim or victims.
I’m all for remorse and forgiveness, but unfortunately “forgiveness” of sex criminals often ends up with stories like this one because, hey, everybody has a past.
Citizen_X
Because nothing says “protecting” like pounding the shit out of somebody.
I recommend the video, but only for those with strong stomachs. It is ugly.
ETA: “Recommend,” not for jollies or anything, but for the purpose of understanding
Arclite
Obviously she was breaking the law: Walking While Black.
@Citizen X: Of course he was protecting from getting hit by a car her by pounding her into the pavement: THIS. IS. WHAT. IT. FEELS. LIKE. TO. BE. HIT. BY. A. CAR. UNDER. STAND?
wmd
I emailed Joseph McNamara today asking him to get back to work on police matters. he fixed the San Jose police department, has been an outspoken critic of the war on drugs. he’s got impeccable police credentials…
I told him the ACLU was taking on police misconduct after the flash bang grenade used in a warrant service in Atlanta put a 2 year old in a coma.
http://www.josephdmcnamaracopnoir.com/contact.html
https://www.aclu.org/secure/limit-abusive-use-swat
respectful letters may get one of our allies back in the saddle again. McNamara famously called for Daryl Gates to resign after the Rodney King video.
gwangung
@stonedstats:
Murder is not a…mistake.. Nor is abuse of authority.
I think I’m ok with where Peyer is.
Quaker in a Basement
She’s a great-grandmother and she’s younger than me? Aw, heck! If you need me I’ll be in the La-Z-Boy gumming my tapioca.
Mnemosyne
@Arclite:
Not to mention, given her age, race, and what she was doing, the odds are probably pretty high that she was in a state of diabetic hypoglycemia, which would pretty much preclude her from being able to act rationally. Unfortunately, it’s pretty common for people having medical emergencies to end up being beaten or attacked by cops who are expecting them to comply like a mentally stable person would.
Here’s a recent case from Texas — cops say they beat the guy because he didn’t obey their orders to get out of the car, but he was physically unable to comply. Didn’t matter.
Ruckus
@karen:
On the Rodney King deal.
If you saw the entire video there were two men in the car and the passenger was not beaten. The CHP who stopped him did not take part in the beating, that was LAPD. The same one’s who patrolled my neighborhood as I lived about 4 miles from the location when it happened and passed it twice every day. Now here of course is the kicker, they moved the trial to Simi Valley, home to ronnie’s presidential library. I believed then and still do that there was the same chance that the officers would be convicted as you being able to smell a mouse fart in a hurricane when they moved there.
There was video, and the LAPD testified that the officers went too far. That still wasn’t enough.
This isn’t Rodney, 2014. Not that I think the CHP will pay the price I think he should, nor will anyone else. But @Mnemosyne: was right the CHP does take this type of officer behavior more seriously than many departments. More being a relative word of course.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
Yeah, it’s definitely not that the CHP will do a full and fair investigation that leads to the officer being fired and his pension taken away. But he probably will be penalized in some way — maybe even “resign” — which is more than you’d get if this had been LAPD or the LA County Sheriff.
J R in WV
I had a Grandma. I spent weekends wth her, Now, I’m aware that this enabled my parents to have an adult life while haveing two young boys to raise. Then it was so I could be in the country with my Grandma, I could walk in her woods, Be in the apple orchard, Pick grapes from the grape arbour. Help her pick up sticks from under the big trees that fell when there was a thunderstorm. Prune the apple trees.
I would have totally protected my Grandma by beating the crap out of her??! NOT!
Seriously, how could this monster even utter those words with a straight face?
How could his supervisor hear those words, watch that video, and not put this guy in jail immediately?
debbie
Actually, I heard he’s not on leave. He’s working, just not out in the streets.
rikyrah
the video was brutal. that ‘cop’ is an animal.
Tone In DC
This just keeps happening. I am so tired of this shit.
Walking while black has morphed into not just a felony, but sometimes a capital offense. In Florida, California and so many other places.
There can be militarized police forces without having military vets in them. There are plenty of Bundy and Zimmerman wannabes out here.
Paul in KY
@stonedstats: Peyer should have been executed.
Paul in KY
@Mandalay: He probably has some more unsolved murders that he did. That’s my take on that.
Another Holocene Human
Wait wait wait, they put a 25 yo web2.0 whiz kid in charge of Jezebel in favor of Dodai Stewart? Sounds like the way women in business were treated in the 1960s.
wtf
sounds like the shit that goes on at my workplace and my workplace is verrrrry disfunctional
also, something similar happened to me, pretty sure it was gender discrimination but also we had some social climber phb installed in a dept who was totally unqualified, his underlings ran the dept while he changed shit at will and made everyone miserable and fomented chaos. Morale went to the toilet and then got totally flushed. Now mgmt has convinced themselves that a transient workforce is preferable.
Not good news for Jezebel.
Another Holocene Human
ABL, everything you’ve said is so, so spot on.
Another Holocene Human
@stonedstats: Don’t be an idiot. Getting imprisoned is the #1 reducer of recidivism, and frankly someone as depraved as that needs to stay inside until they’re too old and feeble to reoffend. And frankly there are geriatric old fucks who have attempted or committed murder, but he needs to be on big time probation where he’s afraid to look over his shoulder. There are child rapists who were lurking around school zones in their dotage, fantasizing about the crimes they were now too chicken to carry out because they knew they were being watched.
Furthermore, to do all that under color of law, justice demands an enhanced penalty.
I’m a big believer in 30 yrs w/ time off for good behavior for murder 1, less for murder 2, etc. But in these “aggravated” crimes, there’s often something psychologically wrong with the person where it will take a long damn time–or perhaps never–to break the reward circuit that is causing this person to torture other human beings repeatedly. It takes fear of punishment. Calculating that they are going to get caught–AGAIN. And definitely go to prison.
Look into the history of some of California’s most depraved serial killers. This one guy raped and attempted murder and got off. Well, the next person he murdered he made sure they died. Lots of serial rapist/killers got short terms for rape or child rape and then started killing their victims. Some of them killed over and over. Look at the guys who were released and went back to killing, like Huckabee’s “trustie”.
Although, to be fair, one of the worst crimes for recidivism is burglary, lol. Not rape. Rape happens over and over because the rapists never get prosecuted in the first place.
Oh, and prison isn’t just about punishment, it’s also about protecting the public. That’s why it’s so ridiculous that these folks who were imprisoned for robbery or whatever as youths and released and who never reoffended are getting sent to prison–for what? They are not a danger to the community!
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne: In Springfield, Massachusetts a decade ago some white cops broke into a black guy’s car and pulled him out and beat him bloody. Turned out he had passed out due to diabetes and he was the Springfield Superintendent of Schools.
In a real turnabout, the chief of police resigned a couple of days later.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne: I have my own issues with Catholicism, but one thing it has over Evangelicals is that Catholics do NOT believe that baptism changes your human urges and actions and the Catholic Act of Contrition states “I will avoid THE OCCASION OF SIN” which means avoiding the situations and circumstances that caused you to sin in the first place, kind of how a recovering alcoholic tries to make new friends and engage in new activities to avoid slipping back into drinking.
Going into a position of authority–unquestioned authority–with free, unsupervised access to minors is NOT avoiding the occasion of sin.
Btw, the church totally knew that sending parish priests who’d molested children back to parishes was wrong (there may have been a decade or two where some bishops genuinely trusted the psychiatric professionals they’d hired, the whole society had this trust in the magic of talk therapy and that included the criminal justice apparatus, but they would have been disabused of this notion after a time when it. didn’t. work.). They chose an evil path to protect (temporarily) the reputation of the Church in the eyes of the “sheep”.
Another Holocene Human
@Tone In DC: I guess the real difference between totalitarian and authoritarian states is that in the authoritarian state it’s totalitarianism for thee (ethnic/racial/religious/political minorities or otherwise disadvantaged groups) but not for me (social and political elites and global business elites/tourists).
Tone In DC
@Another Holocene Human:
The authoritarian streak in the US is getting worse by the minute. Law enforcement is just one aspect of it (why, yes, I AM Captain Obvious. Why do you ask?).
All these oh-so-politically-opressed wingers out here, consternated beyond any semblance of reason at the presence of the Kenyan Usurper in the White House (and, after all this time, none of these winger idjits can actually answer the simple question “How is/was Stanley Anne Dunham of Kansas, mother of Barack Obama, NOT a US citizen?”), and taking the rest of the country down to the insane asylum with them.
I hear ya.
Having said that, the same way that the cop who assaulted Cecily McMillan can get off scot free, while she goes to jail for reflexively defending herself against said assault.
Starting to think these police commissioners believe “Judge Dredd” is a documentary.
Glocksman
In my limited interactions with both the Evansville Police Department and the Indiana State Police, the State cops acted professionaly every time, while the City cops’ reactions varied from professional to laid back, to the very edge of beating my ass into the ground*.
IMHO, despite ISP troopers making less than a lot of city cops do, the State Police have an esprit de corps that encourages professional behavior as compared to a lot of smaller departments where ‘who you know’ counts for more than ‘what you know’.
*I have no doubt that the city cop would have beaten my ass into the ground if I hadn’t luckily pulled over into a hospital parking lot during shift change and there were literally a hundred people watching the entire thing.
The really depressing thing is that the same cop was later appointed police chief because of political connections.
Glocksman
@Tone In DC:
A procedural guide, not a documentary.
Glocksman
I don’t know if I would have for certain, but I like to think I’d have protected my Grandma by shooting that cop in the head with my legally carried Centennial.
After all, employing lethal force against someone who is employing lethal force against an innocent person is technically legal.
Though I wouldn’t have liked my chances at trial once it was moved to a small county upon motion of the prosecutor.