Worse than Rodney King. Shocking dash cam video shows suburban Detroit police brutally beating man.
Worse than Rodney King. Shocking dash cam video shows suburban Detroit police brutally beating man.
Floyd Dent is an amazing man. He has worked his entire adult life, from age 20-57, for Ford Motor Company in suburban Detroit. Never a day in his life has he been in trouble with the law. Loved by his family and community, he's about as upstanding of a citizen as a man could be.
So, when the Michigan State Police in Wayne County, outside of Detroit, trailed Floyd's car, suspecting him of purchasing drugs, what happened next may be the most preposterous case of police brutality in modern American history.
Yanked from his car and put into a brutal, illegal choke hold, officers begin to repeatedly punch Floyd in the face, nearly knocking him unconscious. Another officer comes up and shocks Floyd three separate times with his Taser—putting him at great risk of death. In all, ten officers, all of them white, made contact with Floyd during this ordeal.
While in the hospital, Floyd was forced to take drug tests, which all came back negative for drugs.
They eventually charged him with not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign. Floyd even disputes this charge. One of the officers, as you will see in the video, was previously cited by the government for falsely planting evidence.
See the brutal video below and share this immediately.
Noteworthy: the judge dropped all charges as the cops were clearly in the wrong.
More about Officer Melendez........
Dent opened his door and was dragged out of his Cadillac; almost immediately, Melendez put him in a chokehold. Melendez then proceeded to deliver 16 blows to Dent’s temple. This all took place in about 15 seconds. Another officer arrived moments later and proceeded to use a taser stun gun against Dent, three times. In the video, Dent, with blood dripping from his forehead and cheek, appears not to be resisting Melendez’s efforts to arrest him.
In the police report, Melendez contended that as he had approached Dent’s open car door, the 37-year veteran Ford employee, who had no criminal history, looked at him “with a blank stare as if on a form of narcotic” and plainly stated: “I’ll kill you.”
Dent says Melendez choked him so tightly he couldn’t breathe.
“At one point, I just gave up,” he said in an interview on Sunday at his attorney’s office. “I thought that was it for me.”
At a later hearing, Melendez testified that even before any traffic violation occurred, he planned to investigate Dent simply because he had stopped to visit someone in a part of Inkster known for problems with drugs.
Melendez, 46, claimed Dent was immediately combative and bit his forearm, though he would later testify there were no marks because he was wearing several layers of clothing. Dent denies the accusation. Melendez said the bite was enough reason to begin repeatedly punching Dent.
“I was afraid that I might contract something,” Melendez testified, earlier this month. “I needed to assure that Mr Dent would not do that again.”
For that, Dent says he spent two days in hospital for a fractured left orbital, blood on the brain and four broken ribs.
While Dent was sitting in the back seat of a cruiser, police say they found a small bag of cocaine underneath the passenger seat of his vehicle.
Dent, whose post-arrest drug test came up negative, says police planted that evidence. Rohl, Dent’s attorney, contends that a close review of a video released this week shows Melendez pulling a bag of drugs from his pocket.
“I saw [an officer] with drugs in his hand, and I thought, ‘Look at them dirty dogs,’” Dent said. “After that I just held my head down.”
Dent has two children, including a 30-year-old son who says he is now unsure if he wants to pursue his dream of being a Michigan state trooper.
“He told me, ‘If cops are like this, I don’t wanna be a state police officer’,” Dent said. “I told him not all cops are bad, just the ones I ran into.”
Hilton Napoleon, a former Inkster police chief, said the allegations levied by Dent came as no surprise.
Citizens told him during his three-year tenure that officers planted evidence at a crime scene, he said.
“I tried to get them to come forward and make an official complaint … but they’re scared,” said Napoleon, who resigned in 2014. “And rightfully so.”
Over nearly two decades, Melendez has been named as a defendant in a dozen federal lawsuits, accused of planting evidence, wrongfully killing unarmed civilians, falsifying police reports and conducting illegal arrests. Some suits were settled out of court. Others were dismissed.
In 1996, Melendez, who was known in Detroit as “RoboCop”, and his partner shot and killed Lou Adkins. While Adkins was on the ground, several witnesses said the officers shot him 11 times, according to the Detroit Free Press. The case was settled for $1.05m, court records show.
Later, in 2002, Melendez and a group of officers arrested Detroit resident Darrell Chancellor, a convicted felon, for possession of a firearm. Chancellor testified that he was sitting in a car with a group of friends when Melendez drove by with his partner. Chancellor and his friends exited the vehicle quickly “because it was RoboCop”, Chancellor testified.
Accounts of the incident between Chancellor and Melendez vary wildly. The officer claimed Chancellor threw a gun; Chancellor denied he had one. About 15 minutes later, according to Chancellor’s testimony, Melendez put a gun on top of the vehicle and said: “Chancellor, this is your gun.” Chancellor denied the accusation.
While Chancellor was being transferred to the police precinct, an argument broke out. Melendez, Chancellor said, told him to “shut the F up” or he would also plant drugs on him.
Chancellor spent 213 days in jail. When federal prosecutors reviewed the case, the firearm possession charge against him was dismissed.
The US prosecutor’s office examined Chancellor’s case as part of an investigation into allegations against Melendez, who was cited as the ringleader of numerous officers indicted by a federal grand jury in 2003 on civil rights violations. The officers were acquitted in 2004; jurors who spoke with the Detroit News explained they didn’t believe the government’s witnesses, many of whom had criminal records.
Around the time Chancellor’s case was concluded, in 2007, the city of Detroit settled another suit involving Melendez for $50,000. The lawsuit alleged Melendez and his partners knocked on Ernest Crutchfield III’s door in November 2003. When they received no response, they entered the premises without a search warrant and, in the kitchen, shot Crutchfield dead. According to the case, the officers planted a gun near his body before falsifying statements and lying under oath.
Melendez, who could not be reached for comment, is currently named as a defendant in one case related to conduct in Inkster. In July 2011, he is alleged to have assaulted Deshawn Acklin, choking him until he lost consciousness. Acklin was using the bathroom at a friend’s house when Melendez and other officers arrived, on suspicion of an alleged shooter being inside.
Melendez – who would later contend Acklin resisted arrest – is alleged to have beaten Acklin until another officer said “that’s enough”. While being treated in hospital, Acklin testified that Melendez asked him how he liked his “wrestling moves” while he was choked. Melendez denies ever saying that.
Eventually, a court filing stated, Acklin “succumbed to the pain and lack of oxygen and passed out while defecating on himself”.
After he was treated at a hospital for a closed head injury, a left foot sprain and bleeding from his eyes, Acklin spent three days in custody, according to the case. He was never charged with a crime.
Melendez had been sued nine times. Only 26 officers in Detroit had been involved in as many cases.
A demonstration is scheduled for Wednesday – the day Dent will be back in court on the drug charge – at 4.30pm, outside Inkster police headquarters. Protesters also plan to convene on 3 April at the spot where Dent was pulled over, and then march to Inkster police headquarters.
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How a traffic stop left a Michigan man beaten, bloodied and bitter at police | US news | The Guardian
