Friendly Office Chris

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

I mean, Jesus Christ! Who hires people like this?

A 10-year-old boy attending a Tularosa, N.M., Intermediate School’s Career Day expected it to be fun and educational, but instead he ended up in the emergency room.

The boy, identified as R.D., blacked out after receiving 50,000 volts of electricity when struck by a police officer’s Taser gun.

Rachel Higgins, a guardian appointed by the court to protect the child’s privacy filed a lawsuit Oct. 26 in 1st Judicial District Court in Santa Fe County against Police Officer Chris Webb and the New Mexico Department of Public Safety on behalf of R.D., claiming that Webb fired his electronic control weapon at the boy on May 4, 2012.

Webb has been charged with battery, failure to render emergency medical care, unreasonable seizure and excessive force.

Higgins will appear in court to represent the boy because the family members live in a small town and do not want to reveal their identities.

The lawsuit claims police officers drove their patrol cars onto the intermediate school campus, where Webb asked a group of boys which one would like to clean his patrol unit.

R.D. raised his hand to say he did not want to clean the police officer’s car.

Webb then said, according to the lawsuit, “Let me show what happens to people who do not listen to the police.” He then “shot his Taser gun at the boy’s chest,” said the family’s attorney Shannon Kennedy of the Kennedy Law Firm of Albuquerque.

Kennedy said instead of calling paramedics over, who were also on campus for the Career Day event, Webb pulled the barbs from the Taser out of the boy’s chest.

Child abuse is cultural

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

icecreamstore

Almost 40 years ago, I was working in my brother-in-law’s pizza and ice cream shop on the Main Line. (In case you don’t know, this is where a lot of the Philadelphia area’s 1% live.) One day, an older guy came in with his two little grandkids, a boy and a girl. The girl was maybe two or three, the boy about four. The boy was standing on his tip-toes, eager to make his choice.

“Can I help you?” I said, leaning over the counter to see him.

As he opened his mouth, the grandfather hauled off and slapped the kid so hard, his head hit the floor. “I said, ladies first!” he roared. Well. I wasn’t about to let this pass.

“How dare you hit that child?” I said, coming from behind the counter to yell at him. I called him a bunch of names (“sick, twisted old fuck” seems to ring a bell) and told him if he hit the kid again, I would call the police.

After he left in a huff, my brother-in-law told me he was the CEO or president (I forget what) of Sun Oil, which was headquartered nearby.

“I don’t care who he is,” I said. “You don’t get to hit children like that.”

More on Jim Webb

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

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From Charlie Pierce:

Chances are, I won’t agree with Webb on a great number of issues. (The Tenth Amendment, Jim? Really?) Chances are, I might not even vote for him. But, as is the case with Bernie Sanders, to dismiss Webb now, and thereby dismiss the issues on which he would run, is to spavin the intellectual life of the presidential campaign, and presidential campaigns have a pretty spavined intellectual life in the first place. If Jim Webb runs, the country will be better off for the campaign it wil have. Dammit, that’s enough for now.