I wonder where @INVAR goes to retrieve his life's savings? That cost gets forgotten by a lot of people, the process was used to punish.
We don't. We had some help from a couple of church congregations who learned as we did, how backwards our injustice system is as this process went on for almost two years. Without that help - we would have had no choice but to submit to taking a deal to keep our girls out of prison - and the felony record of assault on a police officer would be on their records for life.
My oldest daughter wanted to fold under the pressure, and they were told their lives would be made a living hell - such as getting pulled over and harassed by cops for any minor infraction they could muster for the rest of their lives unless they took the offers. My youngest had that exact thing happen - because she adamantly refused to deal - which is what kept the case going. Delay after delay. Continuance after continuance. One plea deal after another - all of them promising no jail time and just community service. But a felony on their records nonetheless. And - as we learned - they had to prove their innocence - because reality is that they are guilty in the eyes of a jury the moment they walk into a courtroom. A cop's word against a civilian always gets awarded to the cop. As it was - when our attorney asked him to demonstrate how my youngest daughter (5'6" and all of 120 lbs) punched him in his right jaw when she is right handed, the cop changed his story as said she snuck up behind him and punched him from behind. The video on the cruiser did not show my daughter coming out of the doorway to come behind the cop whose back was at the doorway. The court and the judge laughed out loud - AND STILL they pushed to take the case to trial instead of dismissal because she refused to take the plea deal.
They took it to the day of the trial - and the Commonwealth prosecutor called our attorney to tell him they would drop the case if my girls signed affidavits promising not to sue the department or the city. They took that - as they were exhausted and wanted to be done with the whole thing. My youngest had some regrets later when it took us another year and another $1500 to get the CHARGE expunged from her records. Because we learned THE CHARGE itself reads as a felony charge - even without a court verdict. So if she got pulled over in another state for a tail light out - the first thing the cops see is felony assault on a police officer when running her license.
We did not have clear video and audio as this nurse has to her benefit. I hope she uses it to the fullest extent possible and OWN that department.
In our case the data from the cameras and the mics both cops had on them went 'missing' and all we had was blurry video and bad audio from the police cruiser in their driveway. The cops were heard to say they were going to break the door down, you faintly heard 'not without a warrant citing probable cause', one cop shouted 'you just gave us cause' - followed by two loud exclamations of "Menacing!" - and then you mostly heard my girls screaming as things were breaking and "Stop resisting! Stop resisting, stop resisting!" and my girls yelling "we are not resisting!" followed by more swearing and screaming of "stop resisting!". Both of my kids had the living crap beat of out them by fully grown men. My oldest was slammed face first onto her laptop which shattered, my youngest was thrown like a rag doll across the small living room and then he had a knee in her back with her face pressed into the floor with his fist full of her hair.
I cannot state what my thoughts were in my head during that time. My faith in law enforcement was shattered in total. My thoughts were the darkest thoughts any person could possibly have, and for a long time - we were truly thinking this railroad job of corruption was going to take our girls from us and ruin their lives forever - when they are both exemplary citizens, never having been arrested or even sent to the principle's office in their lives. I lost a lot of innocence and false assumptions about things during that trial, and I really learned just how far gone our Constitutional rights are and how irrelevant they really are. As our attorney told me when I was ranting about the rule of law while stewing in incredulity at each instance of corruption we were presented with: 'There is the fantasy of rights you think you have, and the respect for them you assume government and the courts have to uphold them and then there is the reality of how the system actually operates - and unless you have money and lots of it - your average American cannot afford "justice".
I hope this nurse gets a lot of help to own those cops and that city for what they did to her so she can retire and buy her own island somewhere.
I view HER as a hero for she did what was right in the face of tyrants and thugs for the state.
