I must admit, I'm somehow not surprised that the Portland, Oregon, police department settled this lawsuit out of court.
The city of Portland has agreed to pay $145,000 to an elderly blind woman after police pepper-sprayed and shocked her with a stun gun.
The altercation began as an attempt to remove shrubs and appliances from 71-year-old Eunice Crowder's yard, and ended with police citing her for harassment and disobeying an order.
This week, the city agreed to settle her excessive force lawsuit out of federal court, a month after a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge dismissed the violations against her. "This case goes to show that police misconduct and excessive force can happen to anybody outside the mainstream," said Ernest Warren Jr., Crowder's lawyer. "It does not have to be an African American; it can be someone who is elderly and white."
(Insert eyeroll, followed by, "Well, DUH," comment.)
Just imagine the picture that it would make in court: a few large and healthy (or in any event, quite a bit younger) men confessing that, for whatever reason, yes, they did in fact pepper-spray and taser a 71 year old blind woman. I'm thinking that any lawyer worth their salt said, "You know what? The merits of this case don't matter. It doesn't matter if she was calling you every foul word in the book, it doesn't matter if she was kicking you with steel-toed boots, it doesn't matter even if she bit you in the nads -- which she didn't. None of that matters in the slightest. The jury will look at you, and then they'll look at her, and then they'll look at you again, and at her again, and then they'll award her a million bucks or so, because you're strong healthy young men, and she's a 71-year-old blind woman! Whom you not only peppersprayed, but then you tasered her when she was on the freakin' ground! What the hell were you thinking?! WERE you thinking? ... Ahem. Yes. Anyway, you need to make this case go away. Settle. Now."
(Purely a side note: I just keep wondering what they were thinking when the woman's eye fell out. I mean, granted that the police do see a wide variety of incidents not normally witnessed by the general public. Still, that first moment when her eye just sails out of her head had to be rather startling, wouldn't you think?)
Posted by iain at April 26, 2004 05:09 PM
