Death at a Sobriety Check
We learn from the Gobe, at a sobriety check in North Andover on Thanksgiving Day, a passenger in a car, died in police custody. The medical examiner will hopefully determine the cause of death in the coming days. According to the paper, police observed a passenger, making furtive movements. This caused the trooper to ask the passenger to exit the vehicle, where Mr. Howe jumped out of the window, hit the trooper and fled. After a short foot chase, Mr. Howe was charged with assault of a police officer. A fellow passenger told police, Mr. Howe had just lit a joint and was trying to extinguish it. No one else was ticketed.
Having been stopped more times than I can remember in my life, for no more than just having long hair or my license plate (NORML) on my MGB, I had to look up the word "furtive" as the reason the trooper asked a passenger to exit the vehicle, in a check point where impaired drivers behind the wheel are the main focus. Webster defines the word furtive as –adjective
1.taken, done, used, etc., surreptitiously or by stealth; secret: a furtive glance.
2. sly; shifty: a furtive manner.
Now that we know this, if ever in one of these situations, as a passenger, just play dead or asleep, as just looking like you are sly or shifty, could be a death sentence. Let's hope the family of Mr. Howe gets the truth behind his untimely death and if law enforcement went to far, they are held accountable. I also hope that an investigation is launched into who exactly are the cops after in sobriety checks, impaired passengers or impaired drivers.
posted by Jim Pillsbury @ 11:21 AM
8 Comments
8 Comments:
Something fishy here. You don't die without cause. Lets see what the autoposy shows.
I may be wrong, but I think that this sort of works like the seat belt law. They can not stop you for not having your seat belt on, but if they stop you for something else, then they can ticket anyone who is in the car not wearing their seatbelt.
This is not the first time we have heard about this. That young man in Boston dies in custody and they inquiry said it was not the officers fault. Then whose fault is it? Something had to have happened for a young, healthy, young man to die. If it was from too much drinking, then why didn’t the cops transport him to the hospital instead of doing what they did? If they are not equiped to assess if someone is in physical distress, then they should bring people to the emergency room to be assessed, or have an EMT with them. There ignorance is not a defense. I am sure that is the same thing in this case. They may not have directly caused the problem that killed this man, but I am sure there was some sort of indication there was something wrong before they guy was dead, so someone dropped the ball here. Problem is, they will get away with it yet again. People have died as a result of being tasered, and even then, the cops don’t get charged. But if some kid robbed a store and used a taser on the store owner, and he died, you can bet that kid would be charged with manslaughter, or worse. Rules are different depending on what your job is, and that is wrong.
Simply put, this is a disgrace and must be stopped. A community hires and needs police officers....NOT THE GESTAPO.
as of 4 PM this afternoon, the Globe is reporting this:
A man who died in State Police custody last week was beaten by as many as 20 police officers during a traffic stop in North Andover, according to the driver who gave a statement to investigators from the Essex County district attorney's office.
The driver was behind the wheel of a truck that stopped at a sobriety checkpoint on Wednesday night. His passenger, Kenneth Howe, was pulled by police out of the truck, beaten, and dragged before he collapsed next to a police cruiser, according to the driver, whose name has not been released. His taped statement was recounted for the Globe by attorney Frances A. King, who represents the Howe family and sat next to the driver when he spoke to investigators on Sunday.
Lets see how true the drivers account is.... but it would not suprise any of our readers that this could happen here in our great State, to any one of us.
20 cops against on 45 yr old guy. Sounds like the cops must be a bunch of sissys who can not fight a fair fight. Ridiculous!! How can they really expect to get away with this? But the truth is, the probably will get away with it. It takes a bully mentality to want to be a cop, and until we start holding all these bullys accountable, then nothing is going to change, and more people are going to die.
I say we find 400 big burly guys and divided them in to 20 groups, 20 guys in each group, assign each one of the 20 cops who did this to one of these groups and see what the outcome is. I suspect the cop, without the beneift of his gun and his brother cops, may exhibit some furtive behaviour of thier own confronted with this scenario and would that give the group justification to act as the cops did?
And now more details begin to immerge into what seems to be a beat down on the side of the road by angry, mob like cops, who think they are entitled to beat someone to death, for looking the wrong way.
The autopsy results will hopefully show how Mr. Howe died and I to wonder why Coakley has not jumped on this and asked for complete details. If only someone had made a you tube video out of what happened..... like so many that have shown how some cops just go ballistic when arresting someone on the side of the road.
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