Where have we seen the prejudice of police officers, loaded for bear, go awry before and then cover their own actions by attacking the victim? This story of a wrongful arrest has not been picked up by the mainstream media but should be.

A girl’s family has filed a lawsuit against Galveston police for their assault on their 12-year-old daughter after mistaking her for a prostitute.

As the girl, Dymond Milburn, walked in her front yard, three men jumped out of a van and beat her about the face and throat, one of them telling her, “You’re a prostitute. You’re coming with me.”

Police attacked Milburn despite the fact that she didn’t fit the racial description of their suspects: three white prostitutes and a black drug dealer.

Three weeks after Milburn was hospitalized for her injuries, police went to her school and arrested her for assaulting an officer during the incident.

More details are at Rawstory but it is interesting to note that the child’s attempt to defend herself are labeled as ‘resisting arrest’.

“I think we’ll be okay,” said Anthony Griffin, Milburn’s attorney. “I don’t think a jury will find a 12-year-old girl guilty who’s just sitting outside her house. Any 12-year-old attacked by three men and told that she’s a prostitute is going to scream and yell for Daddy and hit back and do whatever she can. She’s scared to death.”

It is really hard to see police conduct as honorable when they stoop to such lows to cover their own asses. Naturally, I can’t help but think about Carl Foster and how he has been labeled guilty without any opportunity to defend himself.

This is the direction the Carl Foster case is headed and there are some striking similarities between these two cases. Just like Foster’s case, an internal investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the officer despite serious injuries to the citizen.

Despite the nature of Marquez’s injuries, which included a broken jaw and bruises over her entire face, law enforcement authorities initially sided with the officer.

Marquez was arrested and charged with obstruction of governmental administration, and an internal inquiry cleared Simoes of any wrongdoing. After the Justice Department informed the city that it was investigating, Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone held a news conference to praise the department, saying its officers “do their jobs the right way in full accordance with the law.”

The victim filed an $11M dollar civil suit which helped bring to light the seriousness of the officers actions. A civil suit is expected to be filed on behalf of Carl Foster, now a quadriplegic after an encounter with Coquille PD. An internal investigation also found no evidence of wrongdoing by the officers involved.

Federal prosecutors said Yonkers officer Wayne Simoes used excessive force when he grabbed the woman by the waist, hoisted her in the air and slammed her, face first, into a tile floor.

The takedown, recorded March 3, 2007, by security cameras, knocked Irma Marquez unconscious and put her in the hospital for four days.

From Rawstory here is video relating to another egregious case of police excess. Once again the heavily armed, armored and unapologetic civil servants get away with taking the life of a member of the public.

As I have said before regarding the Carl Foster case, a scared cop is a dangerous cop. Racial and class profiling by police costs lives. Police need to be held to the same level of accountability as law abiding citizens who forget to fasten a seat belt.

Carl Foster has stabilized enough now to move to a rehabilitation facility in Portland. Kaycee Faught, his daughter, is living nearby.

Nancy Keller, has decided to help raise awareness of Foster and his family. Personally, I found her flippant, dismissive and prejudicial commentary in her letter to the editor regarding Foster to be thoughtless and in poor taste so I am relieved to see her comments.

Thank you, Nancy, those of us who have been damaged or had our rights infringed upon by the Coquille PD are glad to know you are thinking of us as well.

UPDATE: Paula Knight who has been forwarding cards and well wishes to Kaycee Faught from the beginning recently had surgery. Please send her your thoughts and prayers for a speedy recovery.

Also, a reminder that there is a fund setup at US Bank for Carl Foster which you can donate to to help Kaycee offset the costs of moving nearer her father.

Interim District Attorney Paul Frasier has revealed that some laws are less important to him than others. Frasier has apparently declined to prosecute the owners of horses starved to death for animal cruelty and he will not prosecute two Coquille police officers for breaking a suspects neck.

He will, however, prosecute a sixteen year old kid for smoking a joint in the park, or an elderly citizen for not securing a seatbelt. He will prosecute someone for sleeping it off in his car because he may have had the intent to drive. These crimes must be like low hanging fruit for his office, but two egregious crimes he makes short shrift of.

Selective prosecution is well within the discretion of a district attorney but his office is charged with protecting the public. Stressing an already struggling working class with fines for petty violations may seem like a practical use of his annual budget but the impact to the taxpayer may not be. Presently Oregon spends 10% of its general fund or $684 million on its prison population compared to $648 million on education. Depleting meager resources from families will only contribute to the 1.1% growth of Oregon’s prison population from 2006 to 2007.

These are legislative issues but Frasier does have broad discretionary powers as we have recently witnessed. It is natural that he would side with the police, they are the fruit pickers after all. But what about the taxpaying citizens who pay his salary?

The status quo has held too long and Frasier merely offers more of the same. Register your desire for change at the ballot box and vote against Frasier even if you have to write in a candidate. And speaking of status quo make another change and vote for Bob Main for commissioner.

This is the difference between a DA in Fresno and the DA in Coos County, 1200 pages of testimony and five days for hitting people with a nightstick. Compare that to two days and many potential witnesses uncalled in the case presented by DA Paul Frasier regarding breaking the neck of Carl Foster.

Family and friends were enjoying themselves at a welcome-home party for U.S. Marine George Rendon, who had just returned from Iraq in March 2005. But about midnight, a brief scuffle between two of Rendon’s relatives broke out and prompted a neighbor to call police.

By the time Fresno police officer Marcus Tafoya arrived at the southeast Fresno home, the scuffle was over. But instead of asking questions, Tafoya attacked family members, waving his baton around and bludgeoning one man and his wife, witnesses testified to a grand jury in December.

Tafoya is now charged with eight counts of excessive force and one count of burglary. A judge this week unsealed a 1,200-page transcript of the five-day grand jury hearing, shedding new light on an incident that cost the city a $1.6 million settlement and raising more questions about the behavior and oversight of its police officers.

Frasier expects to run for the office of DA on what? A protect the police over the citizen ticket…

What a whirlwind tour I have had these last two days traveling from the southern border of Oregon all the way to the top and back again. Managed a stop at the Roseburg VA Hospital to visit my son and learned much more about the program and the extent of the physiological damage caused by high levels of stress hormones on our troops. I am going to invite Dr Staggenborg from the VA clinic in Bandon to contribute to an article about PTSD and what our returning vets are facing in the future.

From there I went on to Portland for meetings with PSU about wind turbines, distributed energy, my own ultra cool generator and the future of power in Oregon and beyond. Dr Gerald Sheble will be contributing material and articles for a series on energy I want to write specific to the Oregon coast.

On my way home I stopped off in Eugene to meet with Carl Foster and Kaycee Faught. I am happy to report that Carl is speaking very well now though he has to wait for the ventilator to catch up to him and we were able to have a good conversation. There are many issues with quadriplegia that are worth educating the public about.

Anyway, I am a bit weary so I am not going to dig into the political scene ’til tomorrow morning.