Oh sure, Chad Chadwick now gets an outpouring of support, but what about then? What about the efforts of the brave SWAT team? This was how it was reported in 2011:
Officers were called to the Century Apartments in Sienna Plantation on Sienna Springs Boulevard around 9 p.m. Tuesday after a man called 911 to say his friend was thinking about doing something violent.
Missouri City police said the friend, Chad Chadwick, refused to come out of his third-floor apartment after a fight with his wife.
Violence? Wife? This was serious. Dangerous. This calls for the heavy armor.
After several hours of failed negotiations, SWAT officers barged in and used a Taser gun to get Chadwick under control and handcuffed him at 1 a.m. Wednesday, officials said.
Before he was handcuffed, police said Chadwick punched two officers in the face.
This vicious, violent guy punched two officers? That’s awful. I sure hope they weren’t badly hurt.
They will be OK.
Whew. But the 2014 story turned out to be a bit different.
It started when a friend concerned for Chadwick’s emotional well-being called Missouri City police to Chad’s Sienna apartment where he’d been distraught, drinking and unknown to anyone, had gone to sleep in the bathtub.
A SWAT team was summoned.
“They told a judge I had hostages. They lied to a judge and told him I had hostages in my apartment and they needed to enter,” said Chadwick.
Well, they had to, Chad. If they didn’t, how would they have gotten a warrant?
Chadwick did own a single shotgun, but had threatened no one, not even himself. Chadwick’s firearm possession apparently prompted SWAT to kick in his door, launch a stun grenade into the bathroom and storm in, according to Chadwick, without announcing their identity.
Negotiating means different things to different people. And when someone is under stress, like police in full body armor, seconds can seem like hours. It could happen.
“While I had my hands up naked in the shower they shot me with a 40 millimeter non-lethal round,” said Chadwick.
A second stun grenade soon followed.
“I turned away, the explosion went off, I opened my eyes the lights are out and here comes a shield with four or five guys behind it. They pinned me against the wall and proceeded to beat the crap out of me,” said Chadwick.
That’s when officers shot the unarmed Chadwick in the back of the head with a Taser at point blank range.
“They claimed I drew down with a shampoo bottle and a body wash bottle,” said Chadwick.
If only they made shampoo bottles with orange tips. You can’t blame the cops for that, you know. And everybody knows that shampoo in the eyes can burn really, really badly.
And it wasn’t over.
“They grabbed me by my the one hand that was out of the shower and grabbed me by my testicles slammed me on my face on the floor and proceeded to beat me more,” said Chadwick.
Chadwick, who hadn’t broken a single law when SWAT burst through his door, was taken to the Ft. Bend County Jail with a fractured nose, bruised ribs and what’s proven to be permanent hearing loss.
It’s up to the court, the judge, to determine whether a law was broken, and certainly the police can’t be held to a level of perfection in the execution of their dangerous duties. The best we can expect is for the cops to be “reasonable,” and isn’t it reasonable to grab a guy’s groin since it’s just hanging there?
He was held in an isolation cell for two full days.
Where were they supposed to put Chad during the 48 hour cooling off period during which the police are entitled to craft a story to explain and justify their actions? If Chad was in general population, he might tell people what happened in advance of the police press conference designed to announce how the use of force once again protected society from the dangerous naked guy in the bathtub.
And what’s the point of a really good story if not followed up by a prosecution?
Ft. Bend County District Attorney John Healy sought to indict Chadwick on two felony counts of assaulting a police officer, but a Grand Jury said no law was broken.
It could have stopped there, but Healy’s prosecutors tried misdemeanor charges of resisting arrest, calling more than a dozen officers to testify. Those charges were dropped as well.
A month ago, three years after the SWAT raid, a jury found Chad Chadwick not guilty of interfering with police. With tears in their eyes members of the jury offered the exonerated defendant comforting hugs.
There really wasn’t much choice but to force a prosecution, even after the grand jury refused to indict (see, it does happen on the rarest of occasions to non-cops), as Chadwick was the most nefarious of criminals: the type with no rap sheet. Oh, he was one tricky guy, beating the system on all sides.
But the important thing to remember, despite the three years that elapsed since the original news broke and the subsequent release of information that it was all, start to finish, top to bottom, a total crock of shit:
They will be OK.
And really, isn’t that the most important thing at the end of the day?
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The sadly familiar dichotomy between the original spin and the factual events notwithstanding, there are several unusual things about this case when delving into the linked stories. Two stand out to me:
Chadwick didn’t lose his job. The employer was lauded and singled out as a key factor in the ability to mount and sustain a defense.
An unmissable level of disgust (directed at the prosecutor!) in the commentary and body language of the local TV news anchor.
i know you won’t post this. Since no matter what you say. You are a suckup to the government and it’s law enforcement storm troopers.
Sorry but all this article and the others in the current news just means it’s long long past time we started [Ed. Note: Balance deleted for proposing deadly violence.]
You’re half right.
Missouri City isn’t exactly known for having good police.
[ Or apparently known for police possessing a shred of ordinary human decency.
This galloping atrocity is far beyond the nastiest limerick.
But Fort Bend County sure loves them some John Healy. They just re-elected him DA by 58 percent.
The memorandum opinion and order granting summary judgment to defendant in U.S. Southern District of Texas civil action H-13-2151, Chad Chadwick v. City of Missouri City, et. al. could make one very uneasy about taking a shower in Texas.
Without seeing the depositions or other evidence that led to it, the opinion on its face almost appears as if the standard “in the best light for the non-moving party” got turned upside down. There’s even some apparent perjury, not quite material to the complaint, but certainly enough to cast serious doubt on the credibility of one policeman involved.
But it also raises questions about the lawyering by plaintiff’s counsel. They missed a statute of limitations for filing against the police involved.
]
Please, stop calling it “non-lethal.” It’s ‘less lethal’ (like dogs, Tasers, or a baseball for that matter) and should be treated as such. (I yell this at no one in particular).
On a hunch I looked for the often-sung refrain, and there it was: “[Officer so-and-so] heard the shot [from the 40 mm] but did not see where it came from,
and one of the officers said, ‘He just shot at us.'”
If I’m ever accosted by LEOs while I’m in the shower because they thought I had a big, scary weapon in my hand, I’m totally gonna make a dick reference in the pleadings.
Obviously, but we don’t get to change quotes to say what we would prefer them to say.
Even now, the outpouring of support is far from universal. His 1983 suit got tossed by the district judge at the summary judgment stage quoting the fifth circuit gem “There is no freestanding constitutional right to be free from malicious prosecution.”