Henry Davis (c. 1957- ), an American welder, was beat up by the police in Ferguson, Missouri in 2009. After that they charged him with “damage of property” for getting blood on their uniforms.
Davis is not from Ferguson. He pulled off the road there in the middle of the night to wait out bad weather. It was raining so hard he could barely see.
The police approached his car. They took his phone from his hand, put on hand cuffs and took him to the police station. They did not say why.
At the station the police found out that he was the wrong Henry Davis – the one they were looking for had a different middle name.
Instead of letting him go, they threw him in jail and beat him up while hand-cuffed. Then they charged him with bleeding on their uniforms:
“On and/or about the 20th day of Sept. 20, 2009 at or near 222 S. Florissant within the corporate limits of Ferguson, Missouri, the above named defendant did then and there unlawfully commit the offense of ‘property damage’ to wit did transfer blood to the uniform [of four officers].”
The officers signed a complaint to that effect on pain of perjury. 222 S. Florissant is the police station.
Note that Davis did not resist arrest or attack them, since they would have certainly charged him with that if he had.
They had beat him up so bad, there was so much blood, that paramedics said he had to go to the hospital. At the hospital they gave him a CAT scan and said he had a concussion. Pictured above is how he looked at the hospital.
Several days later Davis posted $1,500 bail and got out of jail.
Davis took the police to court. His lawyer told police to save the surveillance video from the time of his beating.
The videotape was recorded at such a high speed you could not tell what was going on. Oh, and it was from 12 hours after the beating.
Police records were so screwed up (at least before 2010) that the lawyer could not tell whether any of the officers had a history of excessive force. The police said there was no way to tell which officers had one or more citizens’ complaints. Officers wrote their own use-of-force reports, a copy of which was NOT put in their personnel file.
By the way, Darren Wilson, Michael Brown’s killer, was not part of the Davis case, but he had been on the force two years by that point. That means there is no record of any citizen complaints from at least his first two years.
Under oath the police said that they did not beat up Davis, that he did not get blood on their uniforms! Despite that complaint they signed under pain of perjury. Despite the CAT scan.
A federal judge ruled that there had been no “excessive force” and that the police perjury was “minor”.
Davis is appealing the decision. The hearing is set for December 2014.
Source: Daily Beast (2014).
See also:
Haven’t heard of this yet, but even in America, this is a bit hard to believe. No more can anyone say that America is the land of the free or that it’s any different than China or Egypt with respect to police brutality.
LikeLike
I saw that on MHP on Sunday morning. This is just straight up insanity.
LikeLike
So it seems you just can’t trust the justice system period.
LikeLike
I am glad he is fighting it.
LikeLike
wow, i’d never heard of this, I looked it up and one of the officers is now a city councilwoman,
“Davis pleaded guilty to reduced charges and ended up moving to Mississippi. Officer Tihen, for her part, is no longer with the Ferguson Police Department. In 2012, after four years on the force, she won election to the city council, becoming one of the six-person body’s five white members. (The sixth is Latino.) Two-thirds of Ferguson’s residents are black, but the city holds elections in the spring, making for low turnout—in April 2012, when Tihen was elected, less than 9 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. (The Ferguson police force is even less representative of the city’s African American majority: Just 4 percent of its members are black.) Last week, after police cracked down on residents protesting the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed teen, Tihen and the rest of the city council issued a statement calling on demonstrations to cease at dusk.”
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/ferguson-cop-who-charged-suspect-bleeding-her-uniform-now-city-councilwoman
LikeLike
mstoogood4yall
You know you have been missed right?
LikeLike
aw thanks. I missed yall too, I’ve just been lurking and following all the bs going on.
LikeLike
@mstoogood4yall: Hey young queen, been missing you
LikeLike
Hi mary I missed u too. *cyber hug*
LikeLike
Unsurprising at this point
LikeLike
It turns out the officer in the Michael Brown case has a shattered orbital socket from being attacked. 12 eyewitnesses confirmed his account of events. And the autopsy showed the claims that Michael Brown was shot in the back and/or had his hands raised were false. If the Ferguson police department had dashcams like every other department a lot of this could have been avoided.
The Henry Davis case further demonstrates the department’s utter incompetence at carrying out basic recording and documentation. The Henry Gates incident was recorded on VHS. I haven’t had a VHS player in 10 years! That the department is incompetent doesn’t mean they’re abusive. It’s hardly unusual for suspects to violently resist or for cops to go overboard. I don’t think you can assume either party is guilty just because they can’t prove they’re not.
However, they should be held accountable for failing to maintain recordings and documentation. Police departments should be required to do that. Not doing so only provides an opportunity for abuse and makes them appear guilty even when they are not.
If people really want to make positive change that’s the change they should demand. Instead, people are focusing on hating the officers. The problem isn’t with officers. The problem is with the Ferguson police chief. He should be fired for incompetence for having no dashcams in the cars or proper cameras in the station. Those things should be automatic. In fact, officers should be equipped with a little camera that slides into their shirt pocket and records all their interactions. Anytime a cop shows up everyone whips out cellphones. But cops still don’t have a camera on them. If you want to put cops on a leash that’s how you do it.
LikeLike
@ Big Momma
A) This thread is not about Michael Brown B) There is no report out at all that days the cop had a shattered optical socket. C) No report says 12 witnesses confirmed his story and D) I think people have reading comprehension issues in cases like this because no one said he was shot in the back.
Many departments are abusive and the main ones don’t keep records or have records or magically lose them. These cases of police brutality are hardly new or unusual. I will be happy to provide other cases of police psycho killings across the states to give you and idea of the new realized police culture.
LikeLike
Hard to believe… But not shocked.
LikeLike
Mstoogood… 😀
LikeLike
I wish I could say, “Unbelievable”, but seeing how the police in that area operates, I actually do believe it.
LikeLike
Big Momma,
I don’t think it was incompetence on the part of the police. I strongly believe they knew exactly what they were doing and didn’t give a rat’s behind about it.
LikeLike
hi Bulanik great to see u too.
LikeLike
Sharina said:
That’s it in a nutshell.
There is not actually a justice system, only a “justice system” in quotes. That’s what people call it but it is really a law system that is a tool for protecting privilege, power and wealth. It has to be available for occasional use to the limited benefit of ordinary people in order to maintain the “justice system” illusion.
As supporting evidence for that assertion I submit the frequently demonstrated fact that the law can be ignored/twisted/circumvented in favour of privilege/power/wealth where those interests conflict with the interests of ordinary working people (especially POC).
Obama and the privilege machine will appeal to the people’s !Amierican values”, the sense of propriety and respect for authority that is drummed into us from childhood. People will eventually give in through attrition. They will gradually succumb to nagging doubts as to whether it is right to continue to defy authority, and to feelings of futility and frustration.
The same old crap will play out again and again.
There is no justice system.
There is no justice.
LikeLike
@big momma,
FOAD, thanks.
LikeLike
It’s not a justice system. It’s a control system where cops protect rich, straight white males(and females) from everyone else.
LikeLike
African Diaspora will never get any justice in any Western society because I’ve studied them all. From the United States to Brazil, From Cuba to Panama, from France to the U.K all these nations and many more European sovereign nations vastly discriminate against people of African descent. Even in Asia there’s an extreme hidden bias that puts us lower than animals, also in Arab countries African face extreme and sometimes violent discrimination. There is no ruler without the ruled, isn’t it time we thought about taking our dollars from every country and putting them towards investment in Africa? Because Africa desperately needs infrastructure that will make it just as comfortable to live as the standard of living in Western nations. This is a doable reality and any notions to hang to people who don’t love you is insane. We owe it to our children not to put them through another century of being ruled over by strange people who treat us with such affliction and sadism.
LikeLike
Yeah; this is pretty much an instance, where the entire department needs to be fired and replaced.
Take no chances kind of thing and lets be honest; many of the ones fired will get jobs at police departments elsewhere but at least it won’t be a concentrated group egging each other on and excusing one another/covering it up.
Also; the judge needs to be dismissed or at least severely fined whatever…..
LikeLike
That whole police force there in Ferguson is just dirty and corrupt they just need to dismantle that evil entity.
LikeLike
[…] Source: abagond.wordpress.com […]
LikeLike
…waiting for the racist to defend the murdering officer. Oh gee, but Henry Davis must’ve been doing something scary, he just must’ve been. Maybe he was trying to run away or charge at him. Blacks are always up to something… just look at the statistics I pulled out my ass.
LikeLike
^should’ve said “violent officers” instead of “murdering officer” but either way, it’s all about unnecessary force by the people we hire to protect and serve.
LikeLike
Resw77
They are saying he was drunk and had warrants. He got back to the station and got belligerent.
LikeLike
Right, he was so drunk that the cops forgot to charge him for DUI and so belligerent they forgot to charge him for assault or attempted assault.
LikeLike
St. Louis PD: the gift that keeps on giving.
On Tuesday, 20 seconds after arriving on the scene, they shot (12 times) Kajieme Powell, the brazen criminal accused of stealing 2 cans of soda. A video captured the courageous officers who subsequently risked life and limb to handcuff the dead man lying in a pool of his own blood. Police, using intelligence and discretion, further claim that the video is exculpatory.
The video and more information can be found at:
http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/st-louis-police-release-video-calls-city-shooting
LikeLike
I read about this a few days ago and was shocked even though I wasn’t holding any illusions about police. The fact that they charged him for soiling their clothes with the blood that they battered out of him reveals a depth of contempt that even I find difficult to fathom.
LikeLike
This is disgusting. Is police brutality on the rise? Abagond, is there a way for you to gather stats on this and post whether or not it is? These cases seem to be coming in more often. This is starting to scare me.
LikeLike
@ Ebonymonroe
As I promised the now-banned sb32199, I will be doing a post on police brutality in the very near future, like when Ferguson stabilizes somewhat.
The American government does not gather crime statistics on it but there have been some studies.
It has been going on as long as I can remember. The difference now is that news has been democratized, so it is way easier to find out about these cases.
In the old days (the 1980s) you would mainly just hear about those in your own city. The national press in the US was and still is controlled by upper middle class Whites who do not give a damn about this stuff. But let some Black kids beat up an old Jewish man in New York and they will make a Disturbing New National Trend out of it.
LikeLike
I think this is a travesty of justice what happened to this man.
LikeLike
Yeah! Like the whole Black gangs pushing old people to the ground one. But these cases are always rare!
This seems to be on the rise though which is very concerning.
LikeLike
@ Ebonymonroe re:
I really doubt it. It has been this way all along, as far back as I can remember and back to the 19th century.
Maybe it is due more to the rise in social media rather than to the rise in incidence.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on revealingartisticthoughts and commented:
I read about this. Missouri has long been operating outside the law and its a shame they have been doing it this long.
LikeLike
Does anybody at all ever ask to see sources, or do people just believe whatever backs up their own issues or agenda, as long as somebody posts it somewhere on the internet?
You have statements from Davis and statements from his attorney. That’s what forms essentially the entire core of the Daily Beast article, an “as told to” piece. And even the Beast says there was an internal investigation and, as a result of that investigation, statements from officers were so inconsistent that the charge of property destruction was dropped.
It’s also not determined whether the charge related to the mere fact that Davis bled because of a beating, or whether he deliberately applied blood. To believe version A — the version put out by one cross-poster of the Beast article after another — you’d have to believe that several policemen thought they wouldn’t be laughed out of court by a judge and/or jury for filing suit against a guy who they’d beaten bloody and who had done nothing deliberate to destroy property. Really? Where’s the journalistic skepticism? Is it possible that a group of policemen were actually that stupid? Sure, I guess. But is it likely?
I mean, some of you guys think that if a guy says he acted like an angel when the police were there, if he says he was completely nonconfrontational, there’s no way he could’ve been confrontational. It could be that the police were inexcusable bad actors here. Or, it could be that Davis posed himself as a problem and a potential threat. Or both. Police generally do not beat people bloody for absolutely zero reason. It happens, but it’s rare enough that there should be at least some proper level of skepticism about it, especially by anybody calling him/herself a journalist. But not here. Not when doing so will get you branded a “racist.”
One thing’s for sure, if you can get out from under your agenda long enough to think rationally: Things have a way of shaking out differently under oath and with the requirements of actual evidence than they do in “as told to media, by alleged victim” stories that the media just run with. (Cf. all the “eyewitnesses” in Ferguson who are referred to exactly that way — not as “alleged eyewitnesses” — by media who never vetted whether the people who claimed to have seen the event actually saw it.)
Of course, for people who must have their race murder (in the Martin case, in the Brown case, wherever) and their police conspiracies, such balanced examination isn’t worth the time. Whatever the police are accused of, they must be guilty. One would think that people who themselves have been targets of “accused is as good as guilty” might be a little more careful and a little more rational.
LikeLike
The police have power of coercion over the public; as with ALL entities holding positions of power, they are institutionally corrupt and abuse the power vested in them. They are part of a mutually supportive political/judicial network that will protect them from consequences.
There are sufficient video records of clear and outrageous police abuse to leave little doubt as to the nature of the organisation. The police are there to protect and serve privilege (white, rich, male etc), not to protect ordinary people (beyond “window dressing” to keep up their disguise as a public service).
The police are an instrument of control and oppression.
LikeLike
Emncaity
People ask for sources all the time and I believe that is a contradiction on your part to make such statement and then go on to claim how bias the source provided might be.
As to the possibility of stupid police, wake up. I have seen much more stupid acts by police. Videos where they know they are recorded yet still decide to say and act violently or dumb. Then they do a rush to protect their own by any means necessary.
Actually you might want to check out cop block. It is bot as rare as you might think. What made you think you will get branded a racist for being skeptical? Did you come here with an assumed idea already.?
Hmm rationality seems to be words used by those who view it as “don’t agree with you way.c
LikeLike
Buddhuu
I just got through reading about a cops who would use department resources to stalk the women they liked. So this idea that some people have of what cops rarely do is the exact reason why cops are so comfortable doing it.
LikeLike
Sharina, they just feel invulnerable. Their support network (read “co-conspirators”) in law enforcement, politics and the judiciary will protect them in all but the most indefensible and politically embarrassing cases.
That stalking thing happens in the UK too. Also, undercover cops have been exposed exploiting women in groups they have infiltrated (often eco-activist and animal rights groups) for sexual relationships.
Killings and assaults by police rarely go to prosecution. They are routinely justified, regardless of evidence.
LikeLike