Via Radley Balko, a brave Miami police officer, whose name isn’t revealed by NBC Miami, took down 22-year-old Gilberto Powell. According to the official police report:
And Powell has Down Syndrome.The report said officers spotted a bulge in Powell’s waist band and when they tried to pat him down, he tried to flee. Police say Powell broke free as officers tried to place him in handcuffs, hitting his forehead on the ground.
Powell hit one of the officers in the chest and continued to struggle until one of the officers “struck [Powell] in the left side of his face with an open hand in an attempt to subdue him,” the report said.
After Powell was finally handcuffed and questioned, the officers realized he was “mentally challenged, was not capable of understanding our commands, and that the bulge in his waistband was a colostomy bag,” the report said.
Shockingly, the story from Powell and eyewitnesses differs from the official account.
[Powell’s family attorney, Phillip] Gold said Powell and other witnesses claim police body slammed him to the ground, bloodying his face and eye and causing contusions to his head. The injury to his eye may still require surgery, Gold said.
Even worse, Gold claims Powell’s colostomy bag was “ripped right off his body.”
For anyone with even a slight familiarity with Down Syndrome, the absurdity of the police conduct, and report prepared to justify it, is about as patent as can be.
It would be no stretch for one of the brotherhood to be muttering, “hey, even some kid with Down Syndrome can have a gun in his pants and blow away a cop.” After all, the first rule of policing not only demands that cops place their safety above a good beating of a kid with Down Syndrome, but always provides a handy excuse for any violence needed to make certain that a stop initiated by police over the dreaded colostomy bag/pistol (it could happen).
One of the most brutal problems facing people with physical or intellectual disabilities is that they don’t necessarily have the capacity to satisfy the commands of every cop on the street. Deaf people can’t hear, no matter how loudly they are ordered by a cop to do so. Blind people can’t see. Same thing.
And that’s not a reason to beat them, shoot them or harm them. This conflict between the police need for control and the fact that not everyone on the street is a perp, is physically or mentally capable of being a supplicant and not every bulge is a Magnum .45 cannot continue to result in harm to those most vulnerable. This cannot be tolerated.
And why isn’t the cop who did this to Gilberto Powell named?
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This is so sad and disgusting. Having a 20 year old special needs son I have a tendency to “overprotect” him, but is really OVERprotection? I just cringe at these stories wonder how these officers could be trained to know the difference.
Anyone with special needs is at a tremendous risk with police. There have been initiatives for training cops to recognize and deal with special needs, and yet we keep getting stories like this.
Oh my goodness, I wish I could say this is shocking, but after I saw video of cops tackling an ELDERLY DISABLED man OUT of his wheelchair and pounding him on the pavement, I am not too surprised. It seems that the problem with SOME officers is that they don’t even see people as people anymore.
They ought to go through some intense psychological testing about 6 months to test their rage factor. And then provided with therapy or let go if needed. We need these people thinking clearly and rational.
I couldn’t comment unti now because I was so upset by this.
But Scott, please don’t fall for the “more training” crap. That is always their excuse for their behavior and to get more money. People like the (for now anonymous) cop, are simply bad people. They are evil. You don’t need training to be compassionate to a fellow human being. I was in tears reading this yesterday and I am now.
Evil? Full of resentment and rage? No tolerance for special needs? Adding to the chaos? These officers still have a thread of humanity as long as they are breathing. How does any city PD know where to draw the line? What somebody will do in a snap? Thay have to have the best training and they have to be monitored. I think what they experience makes them hardened over the years, but not all of them lose it. So, how does a police force monitor emotional and mental health of the officers and help them when they need it? I am not for a police-state but I sure know we count on these officers to help us in many situations.
Sir, thanks for picking this up. As you’ve stated numerous times regarding brutality & bullies in uniform, “this cannot be tolerated”.
As some misguided folks vacation on the streets in protest of greed in politics, I’d like to initiate a nationwide ‘FedUp With It’ protest. Yes, the anti-greed crowd are invited and encouraged to utilize both sides of posters and banners. Finally – a protest with nothing to do with race, creed or color.
Who knows, I could end up protesting alone. One things for certain, I’m pissed off and definitely fed up. Looking into permits today. Thanks.
*What do we the people want? Full & equal accountability for all public servants, including mandatory FBI & DOJ investigations with side-by-side published results regarding any and all incidents of use of force on citizens and/or their pets. The immunity loopholes have to go along with in house investigations. Of course those that proudly wear the public servant uniforms and have clean hands are invited to stand with us and publicly denounce the bad apples. A portion of Police Union / Association dues going to a fund covering short & long term medical cost of their state’s victims so it’s no longer the taxpayers tab. Mandatory termination for all found to have agreed to alter or lie in a Police Report. Mandatory bi-annual physical & mental evaluations via the FBI. *Feel free to tweak it.
People get the government they deserve. If you protest alone, then it just hasn’t touched their lives yet. Eventually, it will.
This is true, yet to focus the attention on training for contact with handicapped people misses the point. Rather, questioning the heavy-handed tactics and presumption of violence and criminality by every Tom Dick and Harry on the street is the real problem.
If we harken back to a simpler time (though I am unsure if such a time really existed or not) when police officers were “peace” officers rather than armed enforcers of citizen behavior, we’d say that this wouldn’t have happened at all, regardless of the mental ability of the citizen.
Decency, morality, restraint— these are qualities that police departments should never have to “train” their employees.
Unfortunately, the current style of policing and training, coupled with the great amount of powers granted and reduced liability that police officers enjoy today, both attracts sociopathic personalities to the profession as well as nurture their dysfunction when on the job.
Only by reducing police power and greatly increasing their legal liability, and empowering citizens to force police to face real, possibly even personal safety risk for misbehavior, will things change.
The training of the departments is also limited in that often the Department may only have a designated team – often called a Crisis Intervention Team – to deal with mental health issues. That team then must be called in by other officers who are not specially trained. Or the team mainly serves mental health warrants despite the fact that most of the TDO problems tend to arrive precisely because they are sending in a bunch of armed and uniformed individuals to take someone who might be paranoid or delusional into custody.
But be careful in the mental health/developmental disability world when discussing the past. In that “simpler” time, people like Mr. Powell were institutionalized and were often subject to similar abuse without any oversight and without anyone ever knowing. There is a really good website out of Minnesota which discusses the history of care for persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
I am all for doing away with immunity. There should be transparency, accountability and consequences. Absolutely. My suggestion was in hopes that they could more closely monitor those that have become hardened and as a preventative measure give them the help they need BEFORE the incidents, as above, happen. If they are wholely without virtue, what are they doing on the side of “justice”? Who is screening these people? I think the public should have ZERO tolerance for corruption or brutality.
Like ExPat ExLawyer said….it took me a while to get here and voice my outrage. Truly that us an understatement. I am joining Mr. ExPat ExLawyer and moving out of here. How are there so few news articles on this????? Why is there not more outrage over the brutality this poor innocent soul suffered???? Both the officer and his female partner (who is equally guilty for standing by and watching and doing nothing) should be fired. No pension. No questions. Just get the flock out.
I hope that poor man can recover and move on from this.