Here’s another keeper:
SOUTHWEST MIAMI-DADE, FLORIDA – All Gilberto Powell, 22, a five foot tall man with Down Syndrome, wanted to do was walk a half block home from a friend’s house, but this was enough time and distance for the police to intervene.
Police “followed” Powell because they noticed a “bulge in his pants.” He was not happy to see the cops; this was only his colostomy bag (which police ripped from his body). Powell was then beaten down in the street by police, leaving him bruised and battered from blows to the face.
The beating officer insisted Powell ran, but Powell disputes this and said he did everything he could to comply. When Powell’s mother asked the cop if he could tell her son had Down’s Syndrome, the cop said he wasn’t a doctor.
Powell said he felt “helpless” and wants an apology from the police. He also wants to community to be aware that this could happen to you.
On December 6, a Miami-Dade cop named Fernando Villa made national headlines by passing out drunk behind the wheel of his squad car, naked but for a pair of cargo shorts, with only his drunken foot preventing the vehicle from rolling into a busy West Kendall intersection.
The 32-year-old officer has been charged and suspended, but Riptide decided to dig deeper into his police file. What we found is scary: eight internal investigations, some with disturbing allegations.
The most serious allegation dates back to October 2007. Villa’s sister, Mercy Fiallo, claimed the cop headbutted and choked her during an argument at her house in Oviedo. “Fuck you, bitch. I feel like killing you,” Villa supposedly told her. Villa denied hitting or threatening her, and Fiallo’s complaint was not sustained.
Two years later, Villa was one of three cops in black, unmarked cars to spot Delroy Hibbert allegedly smoking a joint in Opa-locka. According to police, Hibbert fell while trying to flee over a fence. But Hibbert told investigators that Villa had kicked and elbowed him in his head so hard that he “defecated in his pants.” Both Hibbert’s mother and a neighbor said they saw cops hitting him, but his complaint was also dropped.
This past September 10, Villa and another officer were patrolling Kendall when they stopped 22-year-old Gilberto Powell. According to reports, Villa “observed a bulge in the area of Mr. Powell’s waistband” and ordered a pat-down. But Powell became “combative” and tried to get away. As he and Villa scuffled, Powell hit his head on the pavement. Then Villa struck him in the face and handcuffed him. Not until Powell’s father arrived did cops realize the young man had Down syndrome and the “bulge” at his waist was a colostomy bag.
Then there is Villa’s role in two deadly police-involved shootings this year. As a member of a heavily armed special team, Villa was present April 19 when cops shot and killed Durrall Miller. Miller was wanted for firing at police several days earlier, but he was unarmed when shot.
And June 30, Villa was one of 11 officers to open fire during a raid in the Redland. The flurry of bullets killed three robbery suspects and Rosendo Betancourt, a cooperating defendant. He had tipped off the cops to the crime ring but ended up with two bullets in his head.
It’s because he was black and the pig thought he had himself a “Trayvon Martin” on his hands.
Shit like this almost makes me want to give a bunch of real looking toy guns to mentally disabled people so they can walk around town pointing them at cops…I say “almost makes me want to” because I know these mentally disabled people would either get shot or have the shit beaten out of them like this kid…but it would expose the cops for being the dumbasses they are to the very much asleep general public.
Much of this rot derives from the odious “drug war.” This sick and twisted notion that some people (government agents, whether they are politicians or bureaucrats or their paid enforcers) get to arbitrarily decree that certain “drugs” – but not others – are “illegal” and that mere possession/use/sale/manufacturer (all peaceful activities as such that entail no victim, no harm done) is sufficient warrant to eviscerate the Bill of Rights and justify random rousting of anyone a cop (or a got-damned dog) believes might have said items in his possession.
The other day I was reading about a despicable case here in my area. Some poor trailer dweller sent to pound-you-in-the-ass prison for two years for the “crime” of manufacturing meth. The judge lectured this poor hillbilly about the “harm he has caused the community.”
I thought to myself: So, according to this judge’s logic, if the winery down the road sells a case of its “drug” to someone, and that someone subsequently gets loaded and then plows his car into a van full of children, killing them all, will a SWAT team be sent to the winery? Will the wine maker be arrested and caged and sent to pound-him-in-the-ass prison for two years on account of what someone else did with the “drugs” he made? No? Why not?
It requires a blank-out – the suspension of one’s critical thinking capacity – to parse the above. That, on the one hand, the meth-maker is a dirty drug pusher and criminal but the wine maker is a respectable member of the community.
Of course, neither of them “pushed” anything. They made an intoxicating substance and offered it for sale. Neither forced anyone to purchase or consume the intoxicants. People freely chose to do so. And their subsequent actions are not the responsibility of the persons who made the intoxicants – anymore than GM is responsible for what I do with a Corvette I buy from the local Chevy store.
The fact that some people commit an irresponsible or even criminal (in the sense that serious harm has been caused) act while “high” is not an indictment of their the intoxicant or the manufacturer thereof. Or if it is, then alcohol Prohibition must be re-enacted immediately. If the meth maker is a criminal merely because some of the people who bought his caused harm to others while high, then the ABC store that sold a half gallon of 190 proof grain alcohol to the college kid who later took a dive off the third floor of a building to his death below is just as “guilty.”
But, the Clovers who rule us cannot fathom this. Cannot grasp the sameness – and therefore, the arbitrariness eludes them. They accept group-guilt, not individual culpability.
Their petty prejudices drive them. The “good Christian people” in my area enjoy their whiskey, their wine and beer. So those “drugs” – and alcohol is a drug as much as THC as much as Meth, as much as any other intoxicating substance – are socially acceptable. And so, legal. And thus, it would never occur to these holy rolling hypocrites and non-thinkers to do a felony stop on the beer truck outside the country store. Nor send the SWAT team to kick in the door of the wine-maker at 2 in the morning and cart him off to pound-you-in-the-ass prison for the “crime” of making an intoxicant.
No, only the pariah “drugs” – as arbitrarily defined by these same unctuous frauds – are “illegal,” the object of no-holds-barred prosecution and punishment.
This is why we have forced anal probing – and thugs in costumes ripping the colostomy bags from the side of mentally handicapped people.
Clovers are psychopaths. Not only are they unable or unwilling to think. They have contempt for it. Their personal, subjective feelings are what matters. They don’t like this drug – but that drug is ok. Has anyobe actually been harmed? Irrelevant.
The law is the law.
Man, reading your stuff again tonight is making my head spin.
I saw you mention in another post that “Things are going to get interesting” when people finally wake up. What do you foresee happening? What do you actually recommend doing? Is there anything that can be done?
Like you, I try to educate people (Not nearly as effectively, I’m sure) but most people seem like they just aren’t willing to care.
Appalling behavior by the cops.
Please note: Eric, this story is two years old. The incident happened in 2011. Someone or some website, possibly OpposingViews.com, just rehashed the 2011 story without even an update. Everyone is missing the original date and thinks the beatdown just happened.
Trying to find an update now. A blog entry from late 2011 names the cop, Fernando Villa, and says he was not punished for the beatdown:
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2011/12/fernando_villa_dui_cop_was_inv.php
But nothing else pops up in my online searches. We don’t know the outcome, if a lawsuit is still ongoing, or anything else.