BY K. BURNELL EVANS Charlottesville Daily Progress
When a half-dozen men and a woman in street clothes closed in on University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, she and two roommates panicked.
That led to Daly spending a night and an afternoon in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Her initial offense? Walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream just purchased from the Harris Teeter in the Barracks Road Shopping Center for a sorority benefit fundraiser. Advertisement
A group of state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents clad in plainclothes approached her, suspecting the blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water to be a 12-pack of beer. Police say one of the agents jumped on the hood of her car. She says one drew a gun. Unsure of who they were, Daly tried to flee the darkened parking lot.
"They were showing unidentifiable badges after they approached us, but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform," she recalled Thursday in a written account of the April 11 incident.
"I couldn't put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were ... terrified," Daly stated.
Charlottesville Commonwealth's Attorney Dave Chapman read Daly's account and said it was factually consistent.
Prosecutors say she apologized profusely when she realized who the agents were. But that wasn't good enough for ABC agents, who charged her with three felonies. Prosecutors withdrew those charges Thursday in Charlottesville General District Court, but Daly still can't understand why she sat in jail.
"This has been an extremely trying experience," she wrote. "It is something to this day I cannot understand or believe has come to this point."
A gents at ABC's regional office in Staunton deferred to the agency's public affairs office in Richmond. Spokeswoman Carol Mawyer would not provide details of the arrest or ABC's investigative procedures, except to say that all agents wear plainclothes and carry metal badges.
Agents charged Daly with two counts of assaulting a law enforcement officer and one count of eluding police, all Class 6 felonies carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison and $2,500 in fines per offense.
Chapman said he'd never encountered a situation like this in his 34 years of experience.
"It wouldn't be the right thing to do to prosecute this," he said, noting that no one was hurt during the exchange, which took place around 10:15 p.m.
Daly incurred the assault charges when she "grazed" two agents with her SUV, according to court records. She drove the SUV past the agents after her front-seat passenger, in a panic, yelled at Daly to "go, go, go" and climbed into the rear of the vehicle to gain space from the men on her side of the car, the records state.
The woman was on edge after spending the night listening to stories from dozens of sexual assault survivors at an annual "Take Back the Night" vigil on Grounds, said Daly's defense attorney, Francis Lawrence.
The women dialed 911 as they pulled out of the parking lot to report what was happening and ask whether the agents were police officers. Daly said she was planning to drive to a police station. She stopped the SUV nearby for an agent driving a vehicle with lights and sirens, Chapman said.
Chapman stood by the agents' decision to file charges, citing faith in a process that yielded an appropriate resolution.
"You don't know all the facts until you complete the investigation," he said.
Now someone from the right wing or the left wing can jump up and say how wonderful the cops are again, and defend them round and round and round until they are blue in the face, but this is typical of modern law enforcement training which is to come in heavy and hard and leave no room for the possibility that they may ever be wrong. Never mind speaking to someone first, they must all be storm troopers ready to do battle with their fancy weapons and tough guy attitude, especially when dealing with a college girl.
Sickening.
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
I wish this state had the resources they do there, all those valiant agents standing by to protect me from a rogue twenty year old who might be planning on having a glass of beer or something. Sitting here just thinking about it, I feel so unsafe. What if a young adult is having a drink right now? Scary.
All charges have been dropped against the girls and an investigation is underway.
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
Thanks for the clarification. That changes everything.
Actually, it does.
IIRC (and someone can confirm this), uniformed officers are generally required to be on or near the site of sting operations so as to not to cause this type of confusion that could have resulted in the death of either these girls, state agents, or a combination of both.
So yes, there is a difference.
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
IIRC (and someone can confirm this), uniformed officers are generally required to be on or near the site of sting operations so as to not to cause this type of confusion that could have resulted in the death of either these girls, state agents, or a combination of both.
So yes, there is a difference.
I think the larger point is the culture of state law enforcement agents and the over zealousness and over aggressiveness when busting two girls with what they thought was beer. They were stalked by 6 plain clothes agents and jumped on the hood of their car and drew a gun like they just robbed the store for crissakes.
Graham called it. Somebody was going to be an apologist for the increasingly violent police state. The first apologist came from the right.
I am no longer silent in support of the over-zealous policing and violent and confrontational training that young officers have been getting for too long now. We are bordering on a dangerous and militant police state, and there is evidence of it from all 50 states. It is not the American way. I am a former apologist and excuse maker for the police, and what I have seen goes way too far and I no longer and able to countenance it, or abide by it. These tactics are being turned on law abiding citizens more and more frequently as the raw power has enabled many of the officers to lose reason and self-control and then hide behind the badge and the threat of "terrorism" and "danger." Enough is enough. These forces will some day become federalized and we will have a standing army holding us hostage in our communities in such a manner as to make the Gestapo look disorganized, IF WE ARE NOT CAREFUL!
Oh, at first they just beat up the minorities and I was not a minority, so I said nothing and went along. And then they beat up the peace protestors and hippies and I was neither so I said nothing and went along. And now... Now we have shoot first, brutalize, tase (weapons that cannot be used on the enemies of America on the battlefield under the United Nations Convention against Torture) mentality that is a danger to us as civilian citizens of America. We are at risk as must from brutal law enforcement aggressors as we are from criminals and terrorists. Many Americans have had enough, including me.
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
The whole thing illustrates an insane waste of resources. If 7 agents were utilized just to try to catch one girl on a B misdemeanor (for something that was legal a few years ago), then it seems to me that we have too many agents.
And people wonder where all the tax money goes.
That reminds me of a "case" in Schenectady where "several detectives over the course of 5 weeks", managed to pull off a sting against a Craigslist prostitute from Lathem.
Really? The salary of several investigators for 5 weeks to lure a prostitute that isn't even from Schenectady into a "B" misdemeanor? Either Schenectady has too many investigators, or too few prostitutes.
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
Why would law enforcement need a M2 50.cal Machine Gun
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
It's interesting, what Buck says about the procedures...I don't agree that they should be doing this stuff, but if they do, there are long-standing policies and procedures as to how to go about it in a safe, effective manner. Like the case in Scotia with the smoke shop sting, for some reason these purportedprofessionals decide to go rogue and just ignore established, tested rules. Why? There is money for all those agents, surely there is money for top quality training. We see this time and again.
Up to date statistics on the issue are hard to find.
Quoted Text
While the prevalence of police brutality in the United States is not comprehensively documented, statistics on police brutality are much less available. The few statistics that exist include a 2006 Department of Justice report, which showed that out of 26,556 citizen complaints made in 2002 about excessive use of police force among large U.S. agencies (representing 5% of agencies and 59% of officers), about 2000 were found to have merit.
Other studies have shown that most police brutality goes unreported. In 1982, the federal government funded a "Police Services Study," in which over 12,000 randomly selected citizens were interviewed in three metropolitan areas. The study found that 13.6 percent of those surveyed claimed to have had cause to complain about police service (including verbal abuse, discourtesy and physical abuse) in the previous year. Yet only 30 percent of those who acknowledged such brutality filed formal complaints. A 1998 Human Rights Watch report stated that in all 14 precincts it examined, the process of filing a complaint was "unnecessarily difficult and often intimidating."
Statistics on the use of physical force by law enforcement are available. For example, an extensive U.S. Department of Justice report on police use of force released in 2001 indicated that in 1999, "approximately 422,000 people 16 years old and older were estimated to have had contact with police in which force or the threat of force was used." Research shows that measures of the presence of black and Hispanic people and majority/minority income inequality are related positively to average annual civil rights criminal complaints.
Police brutality can be associated with racial profiling. Differences in race, religion, politics, or socioeconomic status often exist between police and the citizenry. Some police officers may view the population (or a particular subset thereof) as generally deserving of punishment. Portions of the population may perceive the police to be oppressors. In addition, there is a perception that victims of police brutality often belong to relatively powerless groups, such as minorities, the young, and the poor
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
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