Bad policing costs taxpayers real money. We recently profiled a case in Normal, IL where the police there failed miserably in an interaction with an 18-year-old ISU student. Instead of practicing de-escalation, a cop with a wounded ego escalated a verbal dispute over the unlawful seizure of the student’s cellphone into a full-on melee in the Normal PD lobby.
The woman, Taylor Brown, found herself on the bottom of a dogpile of cops, arrested for one or more felonies, taken to jail where she was booked and strip searched… and then released without charges two hours later – with her phone no less. Do ya think someone on staff realized they sodomized the duck.
She just filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Town of Normal and the officers involved in a FAFO moment. Good for her.
For an idea of the payday that may await young Miss Brown, here’s another case very similar from Scottsdale, Arizona. Police there arrested a woman for a hit-and-run after she approached nearby cops to report vandalism of her car that she discovered after she left a bar. Cops ignored evidence pointing to her innocence while making up “evidence” of her guilt and then taking her to jail.
And now, a couple of years later, the City of Scottsdale unanimously approved a $200,000 settlement to make the case go away.
Unlike Brown in Normal, Yesse Garcia wasn’t dog-piled by cops. But like Yesse she was strip searched.
Unlike Brown, Garcia got an apology from the chief. And cops faced discipline for their conduct that night arresting an innocent person despite an abundance of evidence that she wasn’t a suspect. But not in Normal, IL.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Yesse Garcia thought she was calling police for help; instead, she was handcuffed.
In May 2020, Garcia was leaving a Scottsdale bar with friends when she found her car with a broken windshield.
Surveillance camera footage showed a person jumping on Garcia’s car and smashing the windshield.
The group flagged down nearby officers who were investigating a hit-and-run to help. However, those officers accused Garcia of being involved in the crash, body-worn camera footage showed.
“A guy got hit. Your car is involved,” A Scottsdale officer tells Garcia in a body camera recording.
“It didn’t register that they thought I could be a suspect,” Garcia said.
Garcia was arrested on DUI, leaving the scene of an accident, and possession of drug paraphernalia charges. Her clothes were stripped to collect the glass evidence officers claimed was on her clothes.
Scottsdale police admitted last year the arrest was a mistake.
The officers who violated department policies received some degree of discipline or counseling, including one who had a 40-hour suspension and another who received a 20-hour suspension, both unpaid, officials said.
See if you can see any similarities in the conduct of the police.
By the way, the video above has now been seen 632,000 times in the past four days. And love the expression on the Normal PD officer in the above featured image on the video. NOT a good look.
Then again, these are the same cops that arrested a GSL member after he was stabbed 19 times in his own front yard by a drunk neighbor with a criminal history of stabbings. That’s some mighty fine police work there.
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