Freddie Gray dies a week after being injured during arrest

[Axulus]

If a suspect is taken into custody by law enforcement, a duty to protect -be it at the scene, during transport, or at the jail-exists.

http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/...on=display_arch&article_id=341&issue_id=72004

 

[arkirk]

If a suspect is taken into custody by law enforcement, a duty to protect -be it at the scene, during transport, or at the jail-exists.

http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/...on=display_arch&article_id=341&issue_id=72004

Then why the hell have cops at all? The sign on the side of LAPD police cars says "To Protect and Serve." Looks like just another lie to me. "No duty to protect"...my ass! The sign on the side of the cop car, according this chief of police should read..."To punish those that deserve." and there of course is a long list of those who deserve...like folks selling single cigarettes on the street and people with temerity to look cops in the eye.

 

[ksen]

If a suspect is taken into custody by law enforcement, a duty to protect -be it at the scene, during transport, or at the jail-exists.

http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/...on=display_arch&article_id=341&issue_id=72004

And we can't even get the State to make sure it isn't serving prisoners rat poison.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

But what if they caused the fatal injury?

 

[Axulus]

http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/...on=display_arch&article_id=341&issue_id=72004

Then why the hell have cops at all? The sign on the side of LAPD police cars says "To Protect and Serve." Looks like just another lie to me. "No duty to protect"...my ass! The sign on the side of the cop car, according this chief of police should read..."To punish those that deserve." and there of course is a long list of those who deserve...like folks selling single cigarettes on the street and people with temerity to look cops in the eye.

I think you are confusing "duty to protect" as a job responsibility vs. what they can be held civilly and criminally liable for.

A failure to protect any particular individual does not mean that the cops can be sued or that any particular cop can be held criminally liable (it may mean they aren't very good at being a cop, or that the public wouldn't be better served by having that cop replaced). Only in specific circumstances can they be held civilly or criminally liable.

 

[Axulus]

But what if they caused the fatal injury?

That increases the severity of the charge, for sure, and the "duty to protect" . There are various kinds of manslaughter charges once can face. Additionally, I would think that one automatically has a duty to seek medical attention for an injury they are responsible for. Walking by someone bleeding to death and taking no action to help them is very different than causing their injury (even if unintentionally, such as hitting them with a vehicle purely on accident) and letting them bleed to death without calling for medical help.

 

[Rhea]

And if you are aware of case were involuntary manslaughter charges held for failure to render aid, please advise. [...] Being a cop does not create a special relationship with an arrestee. The cop would be held to the same standard, i.e., no special duty, as any member of the public.

Remember the lady who hit the homeless guy with her car and he was stuck through the windshield, injured? And she drove home and parked in the garage while he bled out over the next 2 days and died in her windshield? She failed to render aid after injuring him. Murder. She did not kill him with her car. But she failed to render aid and he died.

Doing time for murder now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chante_Jawan_Mallard

During the trial, Tarrant County medical examiner Nizam Peerwani testified that, had Mallard taken Biggs to a hospital, he would have recovered from his injuries. Other experts testified that they agreed that Biggs would have survived. "There's not a member of the Fort Worth Fire Department that could not have saved Mr. Biggs' life," testified Capt. Jim Sowder

 

[Rhea]

And if the response to this is 'ZMFOG he had a fractured spine of course they were negligent" the prosecution's own theory seems to be he did not have a fractured spine when at least some of these officers dealt with him and when he was asking for medical attention.

Reading the timeline, I thought it was presented that yes, ALL of the cops saw him at Stop #4. They were back in the neighborhood of the bike cops and adding an additional prisoner. It mentions all six of them being resent at stop #4 when he was unresponsive (Officer white spoke to the back of his head).

 

[Arctish]

nm

 

[dismal]

Which complaints were the ones that were made after the life ending injuries existed?

Perhaps the actions that the officers deemed as Freddie being "uncooperative" were actually attempts to obtain medical aid.

I'm struggling with the argument that he was asking for medical aid at the time he was arrested for a broken neck that occurred later in the van.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Perhaps the actions that the officers deemed as Freddie being "uncooperative" were actually attempts to obtain medical aid.

I'm struggling with the argument that he was asking for medical aid at the time he was arrested for a broken neck that occurred later in the van.

You mean the inhaler?

8:40 a.m.
Inhaler RequestedMs. Mosby said the officers handcuffed Mr. Gray and placed him face down. Mr. Gray said he could not breathe and requested an inhaler, but does not receive one, Ms. Mosby said.

 

[coloradoatheist]

I'm struggling with the argument that he was asking for medical aid at the time he was arrested for a broken neck that occurred later in the van.

You mean the inhaler?

8:40 a.m.
Inhaler RequestedMs. Mosby said the officers handcuffed Mr. Gray and placed him face down. Mr. Gray said he could not breathe and requested an inhaler, but does not receive one, Ms. Mosby said.

Except if what killed him was the bolt to the neck, then the inhaler wasn't a part of the problem. But the cops will have to explain if they saw him unconscious in the back and did nothing.

 

[Toni]

You mean the inhaler?

8:40 a.m.
Inhaler RequestedMs. Mosby said the officers handcuffed Mr. Gray and placed him face down. Mr. Gray said he could not breathe and requested an inhaler, but does not receive one, Ms. Mosby said.

Except if what killed him was the bolt to the neck, then the inhaler wasn't a part of the problem. But the cops will have to explain if they saw him unconscious in the back and did nothing.

So, one is allowed only a single medical issue and cannot consequently suffer a fatal injury? Do tell.

Asthma attacks can be fatal if not treated. That's why there are inhalers and why asthma sufferers and their loved ones---and people who have even a tiny responsibility for providing first aide know how necessary an inhaler is and that it might not be enough and more medical attention may be quickly needed.

Maybe that was it: they killed Gray by accelerating to get him to the ER, inadvertently throwing him against the door with force sufficient to cause a severe spinal injury.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Braking has no way to throw you against the back of the vehicle.

1. Ricochet
2. Being forcefully thrown.
3. Acceleration. Why stop suddenly if you don't intend to accelerate very rapidly?

Take your pick. I'm being generous here. But yes, I have fallen forcefully backwards in a vehicle but was able to brace myself. I wasn't handcuffed or in any kind of restraints.

Why is the use of seatbelts mandated?

Ricochet into the back of the vehicle? <ROTFL>

Being forcefully thrown? I assume you mean by the cops--it would be pretty hard for them to throw him against the back of the vehicle.

Acceleration? Large vehicles usually have pretty poor acceleration.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Braking has no way to throw you against the back of the vehicle.

It does if you are weighted down, you'll pivot forward, then back... you know, like when stopping quickly in a car with your seatbelts on. You'll shift forward, but then back.

Please turn in your engineering license.


The shift back when stopping quickly is due to your own muscles counteracting the shift forward, the car itself doesn't throw you backwards at all. Consider what happens to loose things in that sudden stop--they slide forward, period. This is not followed by sliding back.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What? What exactly is it that you think these nickel rides are? Are you seriously ignoring the entire concept simply to focus on someone's usage of the word "breaking"? I get that you want to obfuscate the matter by moving the focus of the discussion to trivial irrelevancies, but don't you think that you're overdoing it a little bit in this case?

Just because cops sometimes give prisoners a rough ride doesn't mean that this injury must be due to a rough ride. The key factor here is the location of the bolt--not in a location that could reasonably inflict serious injury due to a rough ride.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Except if what killed him was the bolt to the neck, then the inhaler wasn't a part of the problem. But the cops will have to explain if they saw him unconscious in the back and did nothing.

So, one is allowed only a single medical issue and cannot consequently suffer a fatal injury? Do tell.

Asthma attacks can be fatal if not treated. That's why there are inhalers and why asthma sufferers and their loved ones---and people who have even a tiny responsibility for providing first aide know how necessary an inhaler is and that it might not be enough and more medical attention may be quickly needed.

Maybe that was it: they killed Gray by accelerating to get him to the ER, inadvertently throwing him against the door with force sufficient to cause a severe spinal injury.

If the guy runs away from the cops and when they catch up to him and he says he needs his inhaler but after a few minutes his breathing has returned to normal then they could wait until the police station. As dismal said they don't have to obey every request that a person in custody makes. The unconscious in the back on the van is is a bigger issue they need to worry about.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Seriously? You're an engineer and you're going to argue braking can throw someone against the back of a vehicle?

Back when I went to school they still taught "a body in motion tends to stay in motion". If Freddie is inside frictionless van and Freddie and van are both traveling forward at 30 mph when van brakes Freddie will still tend to be moving forward until acted on by front wall of van.

If someone is facing the rear of the van, then a forward moving van that stops will thrown that person's back towards the front. Another term for that is "backwards". Not that any of this makes a difference to the actual issues at hand. Mr. Gray suffered his injury in a police custody while he was not properly secured in the van.

How about paying a little respect to the facts of the case rather than spinning doubletalk that has no bearing on the situation?

If he's facing backwards that has absolutely no effect on whether he can be thrown into the bolt on the back of the van. All it would do is change the location of the injury.

 

[arkirk]

Then why the hell have cops at all? The sign on the side of LAPD police cars says "To Protect and Serve." Looks like just another lie to me. "No duty to protect"...my ass! The sign on the side of the cop car, according this chief of police should read..."To punish those that deserve." and there of course is a long list of those who deserve...like folks selling single cigarettes on the street and people with temerity to look cops in the eye.

I think you are confusing "duty to protect" as a job responsibility vs. what they can be held civilly and criminally liable for.

A failure to protect any particular individual does not mean that the cops can be sued or that any particular cop can be held criminally liable (it may mean they aren't very good at being a cop, or that the public wouldn't be better served by having that cop replaced). Only in specific circumstances can they be held civilly or criminally liable.

So in essence, they are a special class of people who are not responsible for what they do. Somewhere I remember in a lawbook you are committing a civil rights violation in a criminal sense under "color of law," if you do what those cops did to Grey. You are telling me they are a special class of people who cannot be held criminally or civilly liable. While this may be defacto true, that does not answer the underlying issue whether or not these cops murdered somebody. They did. And scrape and scrabble as they will, they cannot come up for any LEGAL AUTHORITY FOR WHAT THEY DID "under color of being a lawman." Their defense is bullshit. They were merely publicly financed thugs and even there, they were irresponsible to the thug in chief, committing violence that served nobody's interest.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If you are bracing yourself against a deceleration you may sway back a little when the deceleration stops. I would be surprising if you braced yourself with sufficient force to throw yourself backward in the opposite direction with enough energy to fracture bones.

1. If you have a car that is breaking rapidly, there will come a point at which the tires grip completely, but the suspension continues to travel, loading up the springs as the weight lurches forward. The suspension then releases that energy, throwing the occupants backwards. Try it. Try slamming on your brakes hard and coming to a full stop suddenly. If your car does NOT rock backwards with a fair amount of speed, then you need to change your springs.

Rock backwards????

When the springs give up their stored energy the front of the car goes up. While that will cause a slight backwards motion as the car rotates on an axis through the rear wheels the amount is very small. The radius of the rotation is the distance between the front and rear wheels. Since I don't know what they were in I'll use my car for the math--this distance is 110 inches. I have not looked at the mounting mechanism but I do not believe it could have more than about 6 inches of downward motion without causing ground strikes (and likely has less.) This give an angle of 3.1 degrees, the backwards travel is 110 * (1 - cos(3.1)) = .16 inches. The height above the axle actually has a bigger effect but the small angle means this effect is still pretty small. Lacking any reasonable figures for this I'm not even going to try the math.