Tag Archives: police officers

| Washington man beaten to death by police as he cried for help in front of witnesses!

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Washington man beaten to death by police as he cried for help in front of witnesses ~ Police State USA.

“I knew last night they were gonna kill that man,” said one eyewitness.

The apartment parking lot where police confronted Ron Hillstrom. (Source: KOMO)

UNIVERSITY PLACE, WA — A man having a mental episode was brutally beaten to death with flashlights, batons, and tasers as horrified onlookers watched.  Witnesses and video confirm the man was crying out for help as repeated blows from police officers fell upon him in a darkened parking lot.

Ron Hillstrom (Source: KOMO)

Police were called to the parking lot of an apartment complex on Sunday, May 11th, to talk to a man who appeared to be having a delusional episode.   That man was 44-year-old Ron Hillstrom.

A neighbor, Ashley Patterson, told KOMO Newsthat she saw the whole thing.  “He was kinda running around like this,” Patterson demonstrated, by running around in a circle.  “He was like, ‘Help me, help me! Call the police! Call the police!’”

“They’re out to get me! They’re trying to set me up!” a second eyewitness told KOMO that she heard Hillstrom plea.

Around 9:45 p.m., Pierce County Sheriff’s deputies approached Mr. Hillstrom.

“I see four officers walking up on him and they’re like, ‘It’s the police,’ and he’s like ‘You’re not the police’, and he goes to run in the circle and as soon as he comes back the police used four tasers at one time,” Patterson recalled.

“And then they started beating him. And they just weren’t done until he was dead. Bam, bam, bam. It was horrible. It was absolutely horrific.”

The commotion brought out dozens of witnesses from their apartments, who saw the encounter and shared similar accounts.  Cell phones began recording videos of the encounter.

Deputies could be seen on top of Mr. Hillstrom, striking him and tasing him as he struggled.  “Help! Help me,” he cried.

“One cop had his knee right on his neck, holding him down,” a third witness told KOMO.  “The other one was down by his feet and two were on each side of him.”

“And then they started beating him. And they just weren’t done until he was dead,” a forth witness said.  “Bam, bam, bam,” she demonstrated.  “It was horrible.  It was absolutely horrific.”

Hillstrom was taken into custody and died one hour and fifteen minutes later.

“I knew last night they were gonna kill that man,” Patterson said, visibly shaken by the incident.  “You beat this man to death last night for no reason and we caught you. Period.”

A darkened image of a baton strike from the cell phone video of Ron Hillstrom's final hour alive. (Source: KOMO)

Unsurprisingly, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office defended the use of force, claiming that Mr. Hillstrom “charged” at deputies.  They claim that he “resisted” while on the ground and that force was warranted.  Police justified the multiple taser shocks and the blows against the man as a means to force him to drop a screwdriver he had been holding, although they did not claim that he tried to use it as a weapon.

Witnesses reject that Mr. Hillstrom was ever a threat.

“No, he did not charge the police, he was just doing what he was doing before the police came,” said the second eyewitness.

“It appears that this is a guy who was reaching out for help, literally requesting help and instead of getting help was given a death sentence,” said family attorney Nathan Roberts.

The official autopsy report has not been completed.  The officers involved are on paid administrative leave.

Watch the coverage from KOMO News:

 

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| Police Beat + Tasered Deaf Man Trying To Use Sign Language, Lawsuit Says!

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Police Beat, Tasered Deaf Man Trying To Use Sign Language, Lawsuit Says ~ Jean Trinn, LAIST.

stun-gun.jpg
A deaf man filed a lawsuit saying Hawthorne police officers beat him when he was trying to use sign language to communicate with them (Photo by ChameleonsEye via Shutterstock)

 

A deaf man filed a lawsuit after he was allegedly beaten and Tasered by four Hawthorne police officers who didn’t get that he was trying to use sign language to communicate with them.

Jonathan Meister, along with the Disability Rights Legal Center, filed the complaint (which can be read in its entirety here) on Feb. 12 against the City of Hawthorne and Hawthorne Police Department. The beating occurred nearly a year ago on the evening of Feb. 13, 2013 when Meister (who is described as “profoundly deaf” in the lawsuit) was moving some of his snowboarding gear from the backyard of his old roommates’ home—something he and his roommates had agreed upon earlier.

Neighbors who were concerned that Meister was stealing called out to him, but he didn’t hear them because of his disability, so they called the police. When Hawthorne Police Officers Jeffrey Salmon and Jeffrey Tysl arrived at the scene, Meister walked over to them and tried to talk to them with hand gestures, the lawsuit says. However, the officers grabbed his wrists and he jumped back to try to explain with his hands that he needed his cell phone to type and communicate with them.

Things escalated from that point. The lawsuit says:

According to the officers’ reports, Officer Salmon tried to put a potentially lethal carotid choke hold around Mr. Meister’s neck, and after being unable to do so, kneed him twice in the abdomen.

Then things got worse:

At some point, HPD officers Erica Bristow and Mark Hultgren joined the beating of Mr. Meister. After being unable to pull Mr. Meister to the ground (Mr. Meister played club rugby at Ohio State and instinctively tries to stay on his feet when being tackled), Office Tysl punched him in the face repeatedly while Officer Salmon shot darts from a TASER Model X26 electrical control device into Mr. Meister’s left side, causing five seconds of rapidly pulsing electrical shocks. Officer Salmon reported that the X26 current had the desired result and Mr. Meister fell face down.

The officers allegedly kicked, elbowed and Tasered Meister multiple times before he was taken to the hospital to be treated for his injuries. According to the Daily Breeze, officers said Meister became “increasingly more aggressive and violent” and arrested him, but the charges were later dropped.

Meister argues that he was discriminated against because the Hawthorne Police Department doesn’t have any proper training or supervision for officers on how to properly communicate with people who are deaf or hard of hearing in the field. The Hawthrone Police Department told the Daily Breeze they do not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit says Meister has a master’s degree in architecture from Ohio State University and doesn’t have a history of previous arrests.

| Butt-Stupid: Hospital bills man for rectal search he was forced to undergo by police!

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Hospital bills man for rectal search he was forced to undergo by police ~ RT.

A minor traffic stop went nightmarishly wrong for a New Mexico man who was detained by police and forced to undergo a series of anal probes and other medical examinations against his will.

David Eckert had just finished shopping at Walmart in Deming, New Mexico when an officer pulled him over for failing to make a complete stop at a stop sign. According to the local KOB TV station, federal documents claim that police noticed Eckert clenching his buttocks when they asked him to step outside of the car, indicating that he may have been carrying drugs in his anal cavity.

After detaining Eckert and requesting a search warrant from a judge, police took him to a local hospital for doctors to perform a search. The doctor refused, saying the search was unethical. Police then took Eckert to the Gila Regional Medical Center, where doctors agreed to cooperate.

The doctors then performed a wide array of procedures, all without the consent of Eckert, who protested each one. First, doctors took an X-Ray of his abdomen, which revealed no narcotics hidden inside the body. Then, doctors performed two anal exams with their fingers, both of which failed to uncover any drugs.

After the failure of these searches, Eckert underwent three different enemas and was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. He watched as each stool search failed to uncover any narcotics.

Another X-Ray was taken, and, finally, doctors sedated Eckert and performed a colonoscopy. Again, no drugs were found.

“The thought that they could do this to a man in our country is terrifying,” Shannon Kennedy, Eckert’s attorney, said to KOB. “Our community should be outraged … This is like something out of a science fiction film, anal probing by government officials and public employees.”

According to Kennedy, not only was the issued search warrant overly broad and lacking in probable cause, but it was also only valid in Luna County, where Deming is located and Eckert was arrested. After the first hospital refused to perform the anal search, police took Eckert to Gila, which is located in a separate county altogether. If that is the case, then doctors performed all eight of the previously mentioned procedures illegally and without the consent of the patient.

To make matters worse, the search warrant expired at 10 p.m. while doctors didn’t even begin prepping Eckert for the colonoscopy until 1 a.m. the next morning, when the warrant had been expired for hours.

The hospital even billed Eckert for the procedures and is threatening to take him to collections if he doesn’t pay.

Deming Police Chief Brandon Gigante refused to comment on the incident due to a pending lawsuit, but said, “We follow the law in every aspect and we follow policies and protocols that we have in place.”

Eckert is suing the city of Deming, Hidalgo County, the police officers behind the incident, the deputy district attorney, and the Gila Regional Medical Center, including Robert Wilcox, M.D and Okay Odocha, M.D.

“If the officers in Hidalgo County and the City of Deming are seeking warrants for anal cavity searches based on how they’re standing and the warrant allows doctors at the Gila Hospital of Horrors to go in and do enemas and colonoscopies without consent, then anyone can be seized and that’s why the public needs to know about this,” Kennedy said.

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