You know what is hard to fake? How about hand-shaped bruises on your breast?
Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillan has been sentenced to 3 months in jail and five years probation for assaulting a police officer, a charge that sparked outrage and protests earlier this month. McMillan, who said she threw her elbow up behind her instinctively after the officer groped her breast, faced up to seven years in prison for felony assault. The perceived injustice inspired multiple petitions on McMillan’s behalf and close public scrutiny — but could the 25-year-old graduate student’s case help bring attention to others like her?
Despite medical photographs of McMillan’s bruises, including a hand-shaped mark on her breast, Officer Grantley Bovell said McMillan attacked him unprovoked, and prosecutor Erin Choi said McMillan’s claims were “so utterly ridiculous and unbelievable that she might as well have said that aliens came down that night and assaulted her.” Grainy cell phone footage of the altercation makes it unclear whose version of events is accurate.
Bovell has a slew of complaints against him, including allegations that he kicked a suspect in the face while he was on the ground, slammed a man’s face into the stairs of a city bus while arresting him, and ran a motorcyclist off the road. He is also being sued by another Occupy activist for using excessive force during an arrest the same day.
It seems to me like the person who should be sentenced to three months in jail is Officer Grantley Bovell.
And how are the prosecutions of the armed Cliven “militiamen” (i.e. domestic terrorists) and Mormon ATV trespassers going?
The surprise here was that the NY jury apparently believed the abusive copper (not that they knew anything about his other, um, excesses). Our authoritarian Kapos hate lib’rul protesters as much as they hate anything. Right, Dogberry Bovell?
Good to know I am not the only one wondering about that. Quite a set of double-standards there.
Just shows you what the Second Amendment does for you [ducks]. Gotta get back to that Hobbesian libtertarian war of all against all don’t we?
I think I read somewhere that the evidence the judge allowed the jury to see was, shall we say, limited. Not sure if it’s true, though.
Unfortunately avoiding jury duty is practically an official NYC sport. I just went through this a couple of months ago with (as it happens) a civil case of police abuse. You wouldn’t believe how many people claimed they couldn’t be objective because of their bad police experiences and fled the courthouse to go back to work. (In the particular case, as it happens, the cops clearly were in fact innocent. Wish I could have been on this one instead.)
Her lawyer should have brought them in “for the limited purpose of impeaching the witness’ credibility” or have I been watching too much Perry Mason?
>>It seems to me like the person who should be sentenced to three months in jail is Officer Grantley Bovell.
not in the reality-based world, where pigs get away with murder every day.
For reporting on Cecily McMillan and Chicago laws in NATO 3 trial. TarheelDem @Firedoglake …
○ Cecily McMillan on Trial for ‘Assaulting’ NYPD Cop at Zuccotti Park: Oh…the Po’ Po-Po
Guilty until proven innocent.
If only Obama had the votes to do something about this.
It’s actually worse than that. Before the day in which McMillan was assaulted, there were no reports (despite all the other excesses) of officers grabbing women’s breasts at OWS. That day, there were apparently dozens.
So, yeah, Bovell is by any sane reckoning a thug with a badge. But it seems likely that, on that day, he was merely helping execute a planned strategy of sexually assaulting women OWS protesters, presumably as a way to get women to stop showing up at the protests out of fear for their personal safety.
Try this thought experiment: what if cops did that at a Tea Party protest? How would have the protesters and media reactions been different? The question answers itself. Cecily McMillan isn’t a real person, she’s just some hippie chick (by virtue of having been in the vicinity of the protest), one of any number of categories of people (most comprised of people of color, women, the poor, and immigrants) who are by definition disposable. She could claim anything she wanted to, back it up with clear and unambiguous evidence, and it wouldn’t matter.
That’s the reality of cops and the American “justice” system for any number of classes of non-people. It’s open fucking season, and while plenty of officers genuinely try to do a difficult job well, there’s also way too many cops who just get off on their unlimited power to fuck people up.
How unlimited? I’ll use a local example. Since King County, Washington (population 1.9 million) adopted its current inquest system, there have been about 160 instances of law enforcement officials using lethal force against a civilian. Despite compelling evidence to the contrary in a number of those cases, every single one of those deaths has been ruled justified. Every. Single. One. Nationally? FBI, same thing. Any number of other large cities, same thing.
Cops in this country can and, when it happens, almost always do quite literally get away with murder. It’s inevitable that some forces’ internal cultures thrive on that knowledge. The fact that they routinely get away with lesser crimes (like sexual assault) – or even that some forces would embrace coordinated criminal acts as a policing strategy – is way less unthinkable in this country than some privileged people would like to believe.
I’m on the left but not a radical. And yet, as an attorney, I can say with certainty that there are many horrible, brutal, disgusting police officers. There are also some really good ones. It’s a profession that attracts the best and the worst, much like law.
I hope a day comes when police departments stop closing ranks around the corrupt ones. When that happens, we’ll have turned a corner as a society.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? It is impossible to be a really good police officer if you close ranks around the corrupt ones. It’s impossible to be an adequate police officer if you close ranks around the disgusting ones. If you close ranks around the disgusting ones, you’re a disgusting one.
I thought criminal convictions required allegations to be proven beyond a reasonabnle doubt.
Silly me. I thought I was living in America, not Amerika.
Sorry for any “good cops” out there but I view the entire profession with contempt, disdain, and hostility. Cops are not our friends, they are the protectors of the wealthy class.
If we treat the video evidence as “inconclusive” then how is she found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
Yeah, it’s the rabid feral dogs that give the good ones a bad name.
Too bad they all run in the same pack.