Saints I always try to practice forgiveness and strive to see the good in things but in this story I feel like justice wasn’t being served. Captured on tape was the beating of a teen and 4 officers were indicted. Would you say justice is served??? Normally, but this is a crime isn’t it? TYhe officers only got fired. That’s it. Here’s the stroy from the myfoxhouston.com website.
HOUSTON – It all began at Uncle Bob’s in west Houston in March. A 15-year-old claimed he was brutally beaten by at least 8 Houston Police officers.
After a two-month-long investigation, 4 Houston officers were indicted and fired: Raad Hassan, Andrew Bloomberg, Drew Ryser and Phillip Bryan.
Those officers ,who have a total of 30+ years on the force, are accused of official oppression and civil rights violations. It stems from the arrest and alleged beating of then 15-year-old Chad Holley, a burglary suspect.
Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos says, “I don’t anticipate anything like this arising in the future, but if it does, we’ll be down on them like a duck on a June Bug I assure you that sir.”
The encounter between the high school 10th grader and the officers was captured on video tape. It was handed over to the Harris County Grand Jury as evidence against the officers.
Mayor Annise Parker says, “If these officers who are under indictment are convicted they will never be police officers again.”
The video tape is still not being released to the public. But what’s on it is apparently so damaging, it not only resulted in the indictment and termination of four officers – three others were also fired. five more were suspended.
HPD Chief Charles Mcclelland says, “In my administration there will be zero tolerance for gross violations of policy and or the law.”
The charges the officers were slapped with amount to misdemeanors. The attorney representing Holley, the alleged victim – says that’s not enough.
Wilvin Carter says, “They wanted the grand jury to come back with felony charges. They wanted them to come back with at least assault charges and they did not.”
Houston defense attorney Joe Owmby represents one of the officers charged. Almost predictably he doesn’t feel his client Raad Hassan got off easy with the misdemeanor indictment.
Owmby says, “He is not guilty of this offense we’re anticipating that we will go to trial so I don’t know what you mean by easy.”
If convicted on the charges, the indicted officers could face at least a year in jail and $4,000 in fines each.
