On March 10, 2022, Lexington KY police officers responded to a report of a “disorder” at St. Joseph Hospital. The call was dispatched to LPD officer Myles Foster and officer Daniel Helo. The caller was a hospital employee reporting that a 61 year old female was being “disorderly” and was refusing to leave Emergency Room #3. The 61 year old female was later determined to be Linda Trapp, a homeless woman. Rather than help her, within 21 seconds of meeting her, Officer Myles Foster threatened physical force. He would make good on that threat shortly afterwards, violently breaking her left leg. Then the nurses and emergency room physician would do nothing to help Linda Trapp, leaving her in agony for another 18 hours.
Police Practices expert witness Ryan Wilfong’s report on the incident:
Two years ago I posted body cam footage submitted by Janet, of Union County, Illinois, showing her son, who suffered from meth-induced mental illness, being tased by police officers. Imagine parents calling 911 for an ambulance, and instead, police officers, aware that they have a warrant for the son, show up instead, and without an ambulance. Instead of medical treatment, they use force. I just found out that the officer resigned and the civil lawsuit settled.
Yet again, police officers pulled over an innocent driver, subjecting the individual to the so-called “felony stop” or “high risk stop,” which is the process wherein they treat an innocent American citizen as if they were a terrorist serial killer, forcing the person to get out of their car, walk backwards, and so on, all occurring at the barrel of a loaded gun. This time the victim was a teenage girl in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
The taxpayers shouldered the burden of the $250,000 settlement for the obvious police misconduct that occurred. However the police department has “no comment” for the community that employs them. And the city itself doesn’t even bother to say “no comment.”
Here’s the blog post where I last ranted about the unconstitutionality of these “high risk stops” based solely on computer (or human) mistakes about a car being stolen, along with some links to prior videos I’ve done involving similar situations. Therein I list numerous instances of this occurring to innocent people across the country, including Aurora, Colorado, Raymore, Missouri, Fairfax, Virginia, Norwalk, Connecticut, as well as Lehi, Utah (which is what the blog post and video from that post was about).
It all boils down to this: without more, police officers should not be aiming firearms at people. Reasonableness is the key. Aiming guns based on clerical entries and government policy is rarely going to be reasonable. Doing so should be based on actual perceived threats presented by the persons with whom they’re dealing. Here, the officers actions of handcuffing the teen at gunpoint could not have been reasonable, and thus they would most likely be found to be unconstitutional by the courts (which is why they settled).
You may remember the video that went viral showing police officers in Aurora, Colorado, holding a black family hostage in a parking lot outside the car. Supposedly the cops thought their car was stolen, based on their (the cops) mistake. The family filed a civil rights lawsuit and just settled for a whopping $1.9 Million Dollars. But, this will continue to happen. Here’s why…
Here’s my prior post on why it’s an unconstitutional policy for police departments to perform these types of detentions without specific information that is particular to the subjects being detained.
