Innocent teenager who was assaulted and brutalized by the police gets $18 in damages

Innocent black man who was beaten up by police gets $18 in damages

An innocent young black man who was woken in the middle of the night, punched repeatedly, tasered, handcuffered and arrested by police officers has been awarded just $18 of damages by a jury.

DeShawn Franklin, who was 18 years old, was punched three times in the face in the summer of 2012 when three officers of the South Bend Police Department, Indiana, burst into his family's home. They told his mother, Vivian, to stay outside, and found Mr Franklin asleep.

His father, who is disabled, could only listen to the noise in the next room. Such was the commotion that he concluded officers had shot his son.

“It's traumatising,” Mr Franklin told the Washington Post. “It’s somewhat of a burden that you have to carry every day.”

The following year he and his family filed a civil rights lawsuit, alleging excessive use of force and unlawful entry.

In August a jury found the officers - Eric Mentz, Aaron Knepper and Michael Stuk - guilty of violating the high school student’s constitutional rights by arresting him and entering his house without a warrant.

Four years after the incident, the jury decided each of the defendants should pay the plaintiff and his parents $1, amounting to $18.

Peter Agostino, the police officers' lawyer, told The Post that the case was not about racial injustice but a lack of evidence, which made it impossible to supply the $1 million worth of damages the Franklins asked for.

He said the city had offered previously to settle by paying the family $15,000. Mr Franklin's lawyer said he would have settled if they had offered an "appropriate" sum. Similar cases are worth between $100,000 and $300,000, as reported by the Indiana Star.

Reverend Mario Sims, also from South Bend, told the Washington Post that the teenager, now 22, had no criminal history but had become distrustful of the police.

Officers were searching for his older brother at his parents’ house as they were responding to a domestic violence report.

The Indiana Star reported that the officers in question were given classes on Fourth Amendment - which protects the right of citizens to be secure in their homes - as well as ethics and diversity. They were disciplined for their actions, added city spokesman Kevin Lawler.

The force has also committed to hiring more officers of colour, theTribune reported.

The same three officers were named in a 2013 lawsuit by a man called Jonathan Ferguson, a shop worker with a learning disability whose car tyre was slashed by the officers and who was challenged by them to eat a teaspoon of cinnamon for $30 and a food voucher. He was sick for hours after eating it. The parties reached a settlement, according to the Post.

One of the same officers, Mr Knepper, was also saved by his department after he was accused of assaulting 55-year-old Tom Stevens in March 2014 after the latter failed to stop for a routine traffic stop for six blocks, until he had parked outside his mother's house.

Upon exiting his car, Mr Stevens was allegedly shot with a taser stun gun and was repeatedly punched in the face and chest until his dentures fell out, according to his mother, Suzanne Stevens. Her son was hospitalised. The city's department dismissed the claims

 

$18.00? What in the hell?

 

Appalling. A badge and a Human being are two different things. Just because they wear it, doesn't mean they become immune to being thugs. There was another case kind of similar to this in Pittsburgh a few years ago, where police officers beat up a black teen to the point they put him in the hospital with horrible facial injuries. I can't remember the guy's name to give further details.

 

Wow! Some would say the award from the lawsuit is a slap on the wrist of the defendants. No, it's more like a slap to the faces of the family. Not much different than the message of leaving a one-cent tip for a bad server.

All of that aside... This is a prime example of an incident in which there would be a BLM protest, then someone will come along, call them a hate group, anti-cop along with the ridiculous question. "What about black on black crime?"

 

Yep

 

When they throw those deflection tactics at me, I just show them how I can go look online too - https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-43 This is the latest statistics of arrest(2014) but if you look at rape and sexual crimes they are FAR out ahead of every other race.

Deflection tactics work both ways.

 

exactly!

 

Agreed! It's definitely the pile BS that it sounds like, and clearly used as a tactic to both deflect attention from police wrongdoing/alleged wrongdoing and continuous attempts at silencing BLM.

 

Ain't that just special

 

Disgusting.. the police culture of covering for each other and not having to be accountable is ruining this country.

 

Nauseating, but sadly not shocking.