I wish I could say the following story comes as a surprise but being a criminal defense attorney has shown me, if nothing else, just how brutal police can be when performing "routine" traffic stops. I say "routine" because that is how they are referred to but in reality there is nothing routine about what occurs during the course of many such stops.
Being reported nationwide on various news outlets, Hammond, Indiana police recently tasered an unarmed man riding as a passenger police a traffic stop for riding without a buckled seatbelt. The man was accompanied by a woman and two kids. The tasing followed the man's refusal to exit the vehicle upon being stopped. He and the driver told the police in a (very) calm manner they did not want to exit the vehicle because they feared for their safety as the officer had already flashed their weapons. The family was on the way to visit the mother of the passenger at the hospital.
According to the ABA Journal, after the passenger "refused to exit the vehicle, police busted out a passenger window, spewing shards of glass on 7-year-old and 14-year-old children in the back seat, then twice used an electronic stun gun on Jones, once after he was on the ground, the suit says. On a cellphone video recorded by the 14-year-old, the adults can be heard protesting and at least one person begins loudly sobbing as the car window is broken."
The police contend that the passenger kept trying to reach for something in the back, forgetting the fact there was children in the back. Watch the video for yourself and ask yourself whether this is ok police conduct:
