I have three items today which seems to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as "unceasing," "grudging," and "vengeful destruction."
We start in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where Alton Sterling was shot and killed by police on July 5. "Wait a minute, Erynator," I can hear you thinking, "this is old news." Well, yes, it is, but there keep being new twists to it. There was the killing itself. There was the unconscionable way police dealt with peaceful protestors, which I wrote about last week – forcing them off of private property where they were invited guests, in order to arrest them for being in the streets. And now, there is the story of two men, one who made a video of the killing, and a second who saw a different video of the same killing, and publicized it.
The store in front of which Alton Sterling was shot and killed (for selling CD's?), the Triple S Food Mart, is owned by Ahmed Muflahi. Born in Yemen, he is now a resident of Baton Rouge. He knew Alton Sterling when he was alive, and considered him a good friend. So, for him, this story began when he had to watch his friend die. But that was just the beginning.
Naturally the Triple S had surveillance cameras with video, but in addition to that, Muflahi filmed the killing on his cell phone, creating a video which clearly shows that the officers involved in the incident were not truthy.
Muflahi has now filed a lawsuit, which may end up providing some compensation for him, but, even were such compensation to be adequate, will not, experience suggests, do anything to improve the behavior of police. According to the lawsuit:
Immediately after the killing of Mr. Sterling officers came inside Triple S Food Mart and without a warrant confiscated the entire store security system and took Plaintiff Muflahi into custody…. [police] then illegally placed Mr. Muflahi into custody, confiscated his cell phone and illegally locked him in the back of a police vehicle and detained him there for approximately four hours…. [After a warrant was finally issued, it] only authorized a search of the video surveillance at the scene for evidence and did not authorize a search of the building or the physical removal of the equipment both of which had already transpired when the warrant was issued.” (emphasis mine)
But this apparently was not sufficient. Instead, they apparently felt it necessary to reach out all the way to Georgia, where Chris LeDay, originally from Baton Rouge but now an aerospace ground technician at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, GA. That's his day job. He is also a music producer, a fact which has led to his having a lot of followers – thousands, in fact – on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. When he received the first video to be released, from contacts in his old home town, he saw an opportunity to get some justice for the sterling family, and he published the video on all three forums.
Twenty-four hour later, he was arrested as he arrived at his day job. He was just able to post on Facebook, “I just made it to my job on base and I'm being detained. They said I fit the description of someone and won't tell me anything else. If anything happens I did not resist! Please be aware!” Arrested by MPs, he was handcuffed, shackled, and jailed – he was originally told on assault charges, but later advised it was for unpaid parking tickets. Before being released the next day, he had to pay $1,231. As of July 15, he was still not allowed back on base, so he was (and may still be) losing wages.
The extended story from this killing seems like it will never end. Alecto – please go after the guilty, and then put on your Eumenides hat to justify the innocent heroes.
Now on to Oklahoma City, where a young man got to celebrate his fifth birthday by watching police kill his dog.
Even a local Fox TV channel could not stomach this.
The officer who shot the dog [whom the Wynnewood Police Department will not identify] had come to the Malone home to serve a warrant to a person who lived there 10 years ago. The warrant, he said, gave him the right to enter private property and take whatever action he deemed appropriate under the circumstances. The Malone family says they never saw any warrant.
Chief Moore said that the police department was aware that the Malone family had been in the house for a year and that the officer had been advised that the address was a rental property through which people had “moved in and out” over the years.
“I respect what the police do, but this was senseless, but he didn’t show any remorse and didn’t even act like he was sorry or anything,” Vickie Malone said to Fox 25.
Eli Malone told reporters that he misses his dog. The 5-year-old said that he wishes someone from the Wynnewood Police would at least apologize for killing his friend.
The family have marked Opie’s grave with a small wooden cross
Eli understands that Opie is gone forever. But Megaera – perhaps you could get them to stop being so grudging as to deny even an apology.
Finally, we come to Houston, TX, where the story is so horrendous I don't know how to speak about it, so I will simply quote Leslie Salzillo's (from the Daily Kos) first paragraph, and recommend you click through for more details and for analysis, both that provided by Leslie and that in the comments:
A Houston woman in her 20’s who is called “Jenny” was raped and choked by a convicted serial rapist Keith Hendricks. While testifying against him in court, she had a breakdown, became incoherent, and ran out of the courtroom saying she’d never return. The prosecutor in the case had her arrested and put in jail for threatening not to show up to testify. Her mother and her attorney thought “Jenny,” who suffers from bipolar disorder, was put into a psychiatric hospital, when if fact, she was only hospitalized for a few days then then transferred to the Harris County Jail and put into the general population. The jail staff received erroneous reports that said Jenny was the sexual abuser rather than the abused victim. While incarcerated she was beaten.
Tisiphone – there just was no need for this – it was pure vengeful destruction. Please school the DA. (If you feel that waiting until November would help her opponent win the election, please feel free to wait.)
The Furies and I will be back.
Cross-posted to Care2 at http://www.care2.com/news/member/101612212/4000478
11 Responses to “Everyday Erinyes”
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LA, GA, OK, TX: Profoundly sad for people who come into contact, or have an incident involving the police. Seems like it's getting to be an everyday occurrence now, with death(s), illegal searches, unauthorized confiscations/removal, and false arrests. AND…sickening for what happened to Jenny with her experiences o.m.g.!!!
Such tragedies! When will this insanity stop???
*Here in Austin, though this happened in 2015, this is the first I've heard of it."Violent arrest of teacher caught on video; APD officers face investigation" Why did it take the PD so long, to get this out to the public??
http://austin.blog.statesman.com/2016/07/22/dashcam-video-of-breaion-kings-arrest-what-people-are-saying/
Unleash the Furies!!
Thank you, Joanne for your post.
Pat, thanks for your comment and your link. I see they alluded to Charles Kinsey, whom I didn't use because so many others did, including Dandelion, who also has a petition. Why did it take so long? Ummm – coverup? And some of the comments – barf bag alert. At least the Union came out against the cops – that's noteworthy. To think Austin is the same place where Classical Guitar Alive's Community Outreach program presents classical music performances at no cost to audiences in hospitals, hospices, shelters, and more. You are not the only Texan who has chosen good over evil, though sometimes it must seem so.
Thanks for the link, Pat. The comment by the cop behind the steering wheel that in 99% of that cases (yes, that is the figure he quoted) black people have violent tendencies, gives quite a horrifying insight in how the police is drilled to think and act. Of course the terrified petite teacher struggling against a cop twice her size throwing her around is now also filed away as one of those 99% cases.
These incidents individually are so depressing. But in the aggregate they are absolutely terrifying!
We all know that the police have a very tough job to do, for which we are usually very grateful. But there are, if not “bad cops” at least “bad incidents by good cops” for which they should be held accountable.
Who is going to watch the watchmen?
A very old question – which has never bee satisfactorily answered, has it? Putting civilians over the military in out Constitution is certainly an attempt. Establishing citizen oversight of police appears to me to follow naturally – I say "citizen" not "civilian" because it's already too easy to think of the police as a military organization, and I think that's part of the problem. If the police are not military, but exist to protect and serve citizens (which is in fact being openly called into quesion now), then citizens should have input on goals, and also on methods.
AMEN!
And Drumpf thinks there needs to be a "tough on crime" programme? How about tough on police crime! Yes it is at times a tough job, but constables apply to be officers, no one forces them. They must be held accountable at all times.
A river of tears to wash away the pain and hope the furies bring these victims the justice they deserve. Thanks Joanne.
Alecto: Baton Rouge and Mariette, GA: Raiding Ahmed Muflahi's store and taking his surveillance equipment without a warrant, and on top of that arresting and detaining him in the back of a police vehicle for no apparent reason but to terrorize him and keep him from going public with what he saw, really make the Baton Rouge police look very guilty, the good with the bad, and also very stupid and inept in covering up something even they thought was foul play (murdering Alton Sterling). The arrest of Chris LeDay on trumped up charges which kept changing nothing to assault to the unpaid parking tickets they finally dug up, is almost certainly connected to it; it's just too much of a coincidence. But that will be the story by the police and neither will be taken into account during the "investigation". So Alecto has her work cut out for her to make sure justice is served for Sterling, and for Muflahi and LeDay.
Megaera: Oklahoma City. The police department that other people had been living at the address the warrant was made out for and the unnamed officer was advised that the person he was to arrest might not live there any more, yet he fired a high-powered rifle through the fence at the address and killed the dog. And then lied through his teeth that the dog had charged him outside the fence, had no remorse whatsoever and even had Police Chief Ken Moore standing behind his actions,. What is wrong with you cops, defending officers unsuited for the job and badly trained at all costs. Megaera shouldn't go after an apology, but make sure that fearful cop is fired or behind a desk, because the next time it'll be a human body they'll have to bury when he's scared out of his mind again.
Tisiphone: Houston. Jenny's case is wrong on so many levels that I don't know where to start. A traumatized rape victim with bipolar disorder breaking down when questioned in court, was the first mistake. But the prosecutor having his own witness arrested for threatening not to return when she fled the court under duress is unconscionable. Having her arrested and not put in a safe place but in with the general population is unthinkable, having her booked as a sexual abuser instead of a rape victim is unbelievable. Having an innocent, abused and severely traumatized woman go to jail with a clean record and have her get out after a month (when the charges were dropped by the prosecutor) with assault charges and beaten, is unforgivable. And all for what? For a prosecutor who doesn't give a damn and only wants to win his case? If she's ever made to testify in court again against her rapist, she'll be treated as a hostile or at the very least an unreliable witness, but at the same time aggravating her PTSD even further. Tisiphone has a very difficult job. Even if the prosecutor, and the jail guard who hit her, are sued for every cent they own, Jenny may never fully recover mentally from her ordeal.
Thank you for knitting these three Fury-worthy incidents into another excellent article, Joanne. Another must-read, no matter how difficult that read is because of the shocking and scary facts.
It sounds live these police think they ARE the law.
Mark the dogs grave with the name and b adge number of the cop.
Shde shoulkd never have been jailed, when someone is in custody, staff should protect them, not set them up to be beaten.
Update 7/26 – Care2's Daily Action is a petition to fire the officer who shot the dog. Anyone can sign.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/373/234/604/fire-the-cop-who-shot-opie-the-dog-at-his-5-year-old-his-brothers-birthday-party/?z00m=28145560