While the man's wife watched from her wheelchair in their house.
Read the whole thing from Rawstory in the above link, but long story short-
Elderly couple witness a car accident, call the police, 84 year old Mr. Henderson investigates the car accident, finds the driver is drunk, does a citizens arrest, waits for the cop, is assaulted by cop with an arm bar takedown and smashed into gravel which includes broken nose, torn arm cuff and bone chips in his eye socket. The cop sent away the first ambulance, a superior officer finally arrived (Mrs. Henderson called 911 again when her husband was assaulted) and Mr. Henderson finally got an ambulance, hospital care and are suing for damages suffered. The police officer is still on the force. No word of an investigation.
More after the fold.
I have previously blogged on this site about police brutality here, but this is one of my research topics while I've been finishing grad school. I used to trust the police implicitly, until I actually interacted with them when I moved to the South.
Anyway, the NPMSRis the best source for stats on police brutality. As an academic, police brutality is not something people get grants for. The NPMSR is its own project, and the stats files are open to the public in an amazing show of transparency (most academics jealously guard their data- after all, collecting data is hard work).
As for this case, Alabama is 36th place for police violence for 2010. Henderson (the victim) lives in Fairhope, which is southeast of Mobile- which ranks as #19 in the top 20 for police agencies in its class. So Mr. Henderson has the unfortunate luck of calling police near a hotspot of police brutality. The only witness to the officer's crime is Henderson's wife, who is wheelchair bound.
So it is now 2 witnesses vs. 1 cop. Hardly fair if this complaint goes to court. Considering that testilying (lying under oath to avoid punishment or to cement a case) is commonplace in America, and that most prosecutors are loathe to hold any officer accountable, I predict that the Hendersons will end up another statistic and that cop will remain prowling the streets. After all, even when there is video of an assault taking place, the police often still escape justice. The largest cases where this happened was the Rodney King episode and the killing of Oscar Grant, but here are 5 other (with some video links broken) of Youtube caught police brutality.
Updated by ravagerofworlds2 at Thu May 19, 2011 at 12:16 PM PDT
Bobdevo in the comments found that Alabama citizens actually can do citizens arrests. Smitherman v. McCafferty, 622 So.2d 322 (Ala., 1993):- Moreover, the public policy of this State, as expressed in §§ 15-10-7 and -14 and Rule 4.1(b), is to authorize, in certain circumstances, private citizens to arrest or detain suspected criminals, and the legislature has expressly recognized that some citizen's arrests involve pursuit and has provided that in such a case the arrestor need not inform the arrestee of the cause of the arrest. See § 15-10-7(c) and Rule 4.1(b)(2)
Thanks Bob!