Last week an elderly man from India that was visiting hs son and family here in Alabama was severely injured by the police and is still in the hospital here. This happened locally, so I have been following the story, and watched the dashcam video of the whole incident. Apparently, Mr. Patel, who can barely speak or understand English, had gone for an early morning walk dowwn the street from his son's house. A neighbor saw him walking along and looking at houses as he passed them, and called the police to investigate. When the police arrived, they tried to question the man, but he had no idea what they were asking him. He said the only words that he knew. "Walking, Indian, No English", and then he tried to tell them his son's address. When he turned around to point, the police told him to stop running and stand still. Then he started to pat him down, at which point the elderly, confused, and probably frightened man tried to step away from the officer. By this time there were several officers on scene, and the man at no time tried to resist, run away, or even struggle. The officer just kept yelling at him not to move, and then they grabbed the poor old fellow and threw him violently to the ground. You can see all of this on the dashcam video. The man was taken to the hospital, where he was found to have severe neck and back injuries, and was also paralyzed. I can understand that our police officers have to protect themselves; but this seems like way over what was needed in this case. This man never tried to threaten the officers, resist, or even to escape; he simply didn't understand what they wanted from him. This kind of thing is becoming more prevalent in America. It was not that long ago, maybe a month, that an elderly veteran was shot with beanbag rounds at pointblank range and died from it, only because he didn't want to have a flu shot. http://www.azcentral.com/story/news...alabama-police-government-disturbed/23360671/
Police are human and can make mistakes, but I do think there are too many occasions when they overreact and fail to use any common sense, as in this case. There is no excuse for how this Indian man was treated by police and I suspect that the reason they were brutal is because he is dark skinned and 'foreign', which they associate with Islamic extremism and terrorism. I can understand how a visitor who speaks little English would become confused and, not understanding their orders, would be frightened and might appear to be trying to escape. This happens in other countries too, but in the US it more often tends to be fatal, because police will shoot first and ask questions later.
Since Huntsville is the home to both NASA and the Redstone arsenal; we have people of many nationalities here, and I doubt that this small, elderly man looked much like he could be a Muslim terrorist. Not only that, there were at least 4-5 police officers at the scene and surrounding the man, who had no weapons, and was not acting in a dangerous or even suspicious manner. Just throwing him to the ground like they did was a very unnecessary response. The fact that more and more, this seems to be the first response of the police , is a worrisome thing. Police are now being trained to shoot accurately using targets that look like children, pregnant women, and elderly people; where it used to be that the targets looked like a dangerous man with a gun. Even some of the schools in large cities are now getting those huge armoured vehicles called MRAP's , which means that they are intended for use against our school children if they think it is necessary. As much as I don't like to think so, it seems like our law enforcement is becoming more and more like trained military, than like the old-fashioned policeman, who was there to "protect and serve" the community. We used to think that this could never happen here in America; but we are now seeing it become more and more of a reality every day. http://www.infowars.com/dhs-supplier-provides-shooting-targets-of-american-gun-owners/
The police are trained to stop the person they think is the agressor and ask questions later. In my area which a suburb of Washington DC, several lawsuits are filed yearly due to the abuse from the police departments. One officer had a dog attack a man that was already done then stood there and watched the dog bite the man. The man had not committed a crime, he was just a little loud at the time the officer approached him. I reviewed this case for the company I worked for to determine how much money the attorney could get for this type case. Reading the disposition of the case just really made me uncomfortable. Not only is this abuse it cost the counties a small fortune in court cost and payments to the plaintiffs. The mental condition of the police officers is also in question here as well as the training. Racial profiling and lack of sexual tolerance is taught and accepted behind closed doors. Very sad situation we have growing here.
The other thing that police too often do is to respond to a call with the mindset that they have to do the bidding of the caller. When someone calls to say that there is a man walking down the road with a gun, I can understand that they may have to respond in order to assess whether there is a threat but there are no laws against walking down the road with a gun in Maine, yet they will inevitably try to take the gun or threaten to charge the person with something rather than simply explaining to the complainant that there are no laws against carrying a gun in Maine. They did the same thing to us a few years ago. We were standing outside the post office, on the sidewalk, not on post office property. collecting signatures to recall three of our town councilors when someone, presumably someone from the post office, but it might have been one of the three councilors we were recalling, called the police to complain that we were on post office property collecting signatures. Rather than simply driving by to see for themselves that we were on the sidewalk, not on post office property, the police told us we had to leave. I had to call the city manager to threaten a lawsuit against the police office before they would agree that we had every right to collect signatures on the sidewalk. Prior to that, when I pointed out that we were not on post office property, the cop said, "Well, we got a complaint so you are going to have to move."
This and a few the other examples quoted here by members are pretty sad. I am wondering how many hours of training these cops receive. The majority of times I have been personally involved with the police I have been treated fairly but that seems to be limited in today's world.