In
a story of with multiple levels of criminal incompetence all leading to the
death of a woman in police custody occurred in downtown Houston at 3:30 in the
morning. A 21 year-old woman was
arrested on public intoxication, handcuffed and put in the back of a squad car,
but was not seatbelted in. It wasn’t
reported, but likely she had her hands cuffed behind her back for an easy out
when she got to jail.
A
terrible thing happened on the way, though.
The driver of a Chevy Cobalt ran a red light and rammed the squad
car. You can see the damage in the
picture to the left. It looks as though the side windows are up, but the rear window was
blown out in the crash. The Cobalt was
obviously going way, way too fast for Chartress, a slow neighborhood
street near downtown Houston. The woman in the squad car was thrown
from the cruiser and later pronounced dead at Ben Taub Hospital. The driver of
the Cobalt was charged with intoxication manslaughter.
There
was no report of what, if any, charges would come down on the officer, who put
an intoxicated, handcuffed woman in the backseat of a squad car and didn’t belt
her in. There have long been reports of
offers putting arrested individuals in
the back seat, with their hands cuffed behind their backs and not belting them,
letting them flail around in the back seat on the drive to the jail as a sort
of unamusing (except to the officer) extra punishment. Obviously this needs to end. It’s not funny when someone gets flung around
a squad car. It’s really not funny when someone
dies from a rear-end collision because they weren’t belted in by a police
officer.
Full
Story and photograph: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Suspect-killed-in-HPD-squad-car-crash-near-4862290.php?cmpid=hpts
No comments:
Post a Comment