The image, in its own odd way, evokes a sense of Santa gone terribly wrong.

That’s not a beard, but a spit mask, blocking the mouth of Nick Christie, as he was photographed naked, in restraints, and covered in the pepper spray that finally killed him at the Lee County, Florida, Jail.  Via the Tampa Bay flavor of Fox :

The District 21 Medical Examiner ruled his death was a homicide because he had been restrained and sprayed with pepper sprayed by law enforcement officers. But to this day, nobody has ever been charged with a crime, and the Lee County State Attorney cleared the sheriff’s office of any wrong doing. 

This happened back in March, 2009, after the 62 year old Christie went to Florida to get away.  According to his wife, there was something wrong and he needed help.

She said her husband was depressed and was showing signs of erratic behavior a few days before leaving for Florida.

She called authorities and pleaded with them to take her husband to a hospital and be given his medications. Instead, he was taken to jail for disorderly intoxication.

That the cops took him to jail rather than the hospital isn’t particularly surprising.  It’s what cops do when they don’t care enough to think hard.  But how it ended up with Christie dead has never been explained.  The coroner’s homicide is the state’s attorney’s unfortunate accident.

It’s probably hard for the state’s attorney to figure out who did what and why.  As good as police may be at explaining why others are terrible criminals who deserve to be put away for life, they grow forgetful when it comes to themselves.  Even the best of cops tends not be forthright when it involves one of their own, both for his own sake as well as the empathy he has for the very difficult job his blue brothers do.  The job of killing Nick Christie wasn’t likely very difficult, but still.

The officers who killed this man probably didn’t think it would end this way.  They may not have realized what would result from spraying him ten times with OC, oleo-resin capsicum.  Note that I use the plural, as this is never the work of a single officer, even if others merely stand there and watch.  Sometimes they laugh at how they’ve humiliated a person.  What they rarely do is grab the arm of a fellow officer and tell him to stop.  What they never do is take a brother down to prevent a human life from expiring.

There will be a few officers who lost sleep over this, the image of Nick Christie replacing visions of sugarplums.  It’s been years since they watched it happen, though, and the cops who killed him, who did nothing to save him, will probably sleep fine on Christmas Eve.

These officers will wake up on Christmas morning and feel the joy of their children opening the wonderful presents Santa left for them under the tree.  Their Santa will be jolly, rather than the image of a man, strapped like an animal with a spit mask covering his mouth, dripping with pepper spray, because he needed another human being to help him,  

Since March, 2009, no cop has come forward to tell of what happened to Nick Christie on the night they made him look a bit like Santa Claus, then killed him.  Merry Christmas, officers.