Pregnant woman hogtied and handcuffed by California coppers during traffic stop gets $250,000
A pregnant woman who was pulled over for talking on her cellphone — and then hurled to the ground and hogtied by CHP officers on the shoulder of the busy Harbor Freeway — has been paid $250,000 in damages.
The 30-year-old woman was charged with resisting arrest and driving with a suspended license, but the charges were dropped after a judge was shown a video of the incident, captured on a camera mounted on the dashboard of a California Highway Patrol cruiser.
In their report, the officers said the incident had escalated because the woman had ignored their orders and appeared to raise her arms in an aggressive manner after hopping out of the van.
Based on the report, Gaglione was charged by the Los Angeles city attorney with misdemeanor evading and resisting arrest and driving on a suspended license.
After the charges were dismissed, Tamara Gaglione pleaded no contest to a simple infraction of using her cellphone while driving.
CHP officials declined to discuss the incident, saying only that both sides concluded that settling the lawsuit for $250,000 was in the best interest of everyone.
Gaglione said she discovered the existence of the dashboard video when the officers later drove her to the hospital, discussing it in play-by-play fashion.
Her attorney, Howard Price, said Hernandez failed to mark a box on the arrest report noting the existence of the dash cam video and a prosecutor initially told him none existed. But Price said his client persisted.
Initially, he said, Price got a video from a backup patrol car and was told the dash cam video could not be copied. He said he went to the CHP and videotaped the original recording himself.
For Gaglione, now the mother of a 9-month old son, the incident on the freeway changed her life, she said. She left Los Angeles, where she worked as nanny and ran a pet care business.
“I will always be scared of police officers because of these knuckleheads,” she said.
Dishonest cops. Dishonest prosecutor. Complicit in covering each other’s buns. One of the most typical examples of the kind of corruption that happens on a day-to-day basis in American society.
I holler a lot about the big guys who commit historic crimes – from Bush’s Wars to Rand Paul’s lies about healthcare, economics and civil rights – but, their corruption is established as acceptable by the least of bureaucrats and civil servants who lie and cheat on the job, every day.
And as usual, it’s the knuckleheads who make life difficult for the good guys and the good cops.
Holler at your Congress-critter to support Bernie Sanders' bill to 
I think the problem of police brutality could be solved (or at least seriously mitigated) by requiring each police officer wear a couple of webcams on the uniform which would automatically turn on when the officer leaves the car or precinct building, with the webcam feed sent and saved to several independent servers – e.g, at least, to precinct, headquarters and DA’s office, and possibly for ongoing viewing in the precinct, to see if help is needed or not. (Multiple cameras and feeds will make it extremely difficult to tamper with and easy to archive and present for subpoena)
That would also help get convictions when there may not be enough evidence otherwise, and throw out cases when the officer is in the wrong. This would not be that difficult or expensive to implement.
List of X
January 18, 2013 at 6:17 pm
[edit: juvenile humor]
Scrappy Coco
January 31, 2013 at 8:59 am