[nfbmi-talk] not totally blindness related but

[Martha Moore]

What happened to treating people "innocent until proven guilty"?  A little respect and a few questions go a long way.  Excessive force was definitely not needed here.
--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 6/16/14, joe harcz Comcast via nfbmi-talk <nfbmi-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:

 Subject: [nfbmi-talk] not totally blindness related but
 To: nfbmi-talk at nfbnet.org
 Cc: "BRIAN SABOURIN" <BSABOUR at mpas.org>, "Elmer Cerano MPAS" <ECERANO at mpas.org>
 Date: Monday, June 16, 2014, 10:11 AM
 
 This tragic story goes to not only
 how people with other disabilities are treated but also
 people who are blind.
 
 We certainly have been bullied illegally by BSBP for example
 and we know that many cocorporations, etc. violate our
 fundamental civil rights too.
 
 Still this is just so outragious an affront to a person with
 disabilities that I submit it to this list for
 consideration.
 
 Joe Harcz
 
 Parents of mentally disabled woman sue Wal-Mart, Livonia
 cops over her arrest By Tresa Baldas Detroit Free Press
 Staff Writer Wendy Kozma was wrapping up
 
 her workday with a client when she got a mind-numbing phone
 call from her mentally impaired daughter: "Mom, this man is
 trying to take me from Wal-Mart.
 
 Kozma feared the worst: a kidnapping. Within minutes, she
 would learn what was really happening. Her 25-year-old
 daughter, Jodi, who has the mental capacity
 
 of an 8-year-old, was being questioned for shoplifting at a
 Livonia Wal-Mart. Jodi was suspected of stealing hair ties
 and hiding them in her waistband
 
 and purse during a shopping trip with her grandmother,
 records show. Jodi wound up in handcuffs, muscled to the
 floor by Livonia police. Wal-Mart and the
 
 Livonia police wound up in court. Turned out, Jodi had
 bought a 30-pack of hair ties and stickers that day, and has
 a receipt as proof. The suspicious
 
 bulge in her waistband was her cellphone. In a civil rights
 lawsuit unfolding in U.S. District Court, Wendy and John
 Kozma of Novi are suing the retail
 
 giant and Livonia police, alleging they used excessive force
 on their daughter and scarred her emotionally. Jodi grew up
 learning to trust the cops, her
 
 mother said. Now, she's terrified of them. "If she were ever
 lost or stranded, we always taught her to turn and look for
 police. All of that has been completely
 
 destroyed," Wendy Kozma said in an interview with the Free
 Press. "I know that this has traumatized her. I want it to
 go away. What happened It has been
 
 nearly two years since Jodi was arrested at the Livonia
 Wal-Mart, but her parents still are reeling. They want an
 apology from Wal-Mart and Livonia police,
 
 who, records show, dispatched four officers to the scene
 that day "in a SWAT-like approach, parking the cruisers on
 the sidewalk directly in front of the
 
 store doors. Among the lawsuit's claims is that store
 security and police were repeatedly told by family that Jodi
 was "special needs," but failed to treat
 
 her accordingly and instead traumatized her when she didn't
 have the mental capacity to understand what was going on.
 Jodi just wants an apology - and
 
 a bouquet of flowers. That's what apologetic people do in
 the movies, she told her parents. The parents want an
 apology, too, along with unspecified financial
 
 damages and assurance that police and store security follow
 proper procedures when dealing with disabled people. The
 Kozmas filed their lawsuit in May
 
 in Wayne County Circuit Court, but Wal-Mart requested on
 June 9 that the case be moved to federal court. Initially,
 the Kozmas filed a citizen's complaint
 
 with the Livonia police department, alleging officers used
 excessive force on their daughter and were unprofessional.
 They filed it the same day of the
 
 incident: Aug. 3, 2012. Livonia police declined to comment.
 But according to a letter they sent the Kozmas, they deny
 any wrongdoing. "In order to make
 
 the situation safe for all parties involved, the decision
 was made to handcuff your daughter, who was initially
 compliant, but then began to struggle.
 
 Officers used the minimal amount of force necessary to gain
 control and handcuff her. There was no indication that your
 daughter was injured when she was
 
 detained," Livonia Police Lt. Francis Donnelly wrote in the
 Sept. 18, 2012, letter. "I have reviewed both video and
 audio recordings of the incident and
 
 find no evidence of unprofessional behavior or excessive
 force on the part of our officers. Based on my
 investigation, I have determined that your complaint
 
 against our officers is unfounded. Wal-Mart, which declined
 to comment on specifics of the lawsuit, issued this
 statement: "First and foremost, a cornerstone
 
 at Wal-Mart is respect for an individual. We expect all of
 our customers to be treated with dignity and respect,
 regardless of the situation. Based on
 
 the information that we have (about the Kozma case), we
 believe our associates acted appropriately and followed
 protocol. Wendy Kozma tells a different
 
 story. Here, according to Kozma, a police incident report
 and surveillance video obtained by the Free Press, is what
 happened that day: Jodi, who was born
 
 with a condition that deprived her brain of oxygen and left
 her mentally impaired, had gone on a shopping trip to
 Wal-Mart with her grandmother. After
 
 checking out, two plainclothes Wal-Mart security officers
 surrounded Jodi in the lobby and accused her of stealing
 merchandise. Unbeknownst to Jodi, she
 
 was being monitored in the store by a surveillance camera
 operator who said she had footage of Jodi picking up hair
 pieces and concealing them in her purse
 
 or in her waistband. When store security stopped Jodi, she
 became afraid and upset. The grandmother informed the
 security team that Jodi is mentally challenged
 
 and would not intentionally steal. She tried to show them
 the receipt for the hair ties her granddaughter had
 purchased, but the security team wouldn't
 
 listen to her. And they wouldn't let her calm her
 granddaughter down. Jodi, meanwhile, had called her mom, who
 immediately headed for Wal-Mart. By the
 
 time her mom arrived, police were there. According to a
 police incident report, Jodi was screaming "at the top of
 her lungs, causing a scene. A sergeant
 
 asked Jodi to put her hands behind her back because he could
 not confirm if a bulge in her waistband was a weapon, a
 cellphone or stolen merchandise. Then
 
 came the handcuffs. Jodi pulled away and began screaming,
 reaching for her grandmother. She was placed against a wall.
 Two officers "muscled Jody to the
 
 ground and handcuffed her behind her back," the report said.
 They took her to a private office and started questioning
 her. She repeatedly denied stealing
 
 anything. Within minutes, her mom showed up. She tried to
 enter the interrogation room, but police stopped her. After
 pleading and threatening a lawsuit,
 
 she got in. The image of her catatonic, handcuffed daughter
 broke her heart. "I said, 'Jodi, It's OK. Mom's here,' "
 Kozma recalled through tears, noting
 
 her daughter assured her she was fine. "She said, 'That's
 OK. God is with me.' ... I believe that God was with her and
 kept her calm. During questioning,
 
 an officer threatened to conduct a body search, but Kozma
 intervened and searched her daughter herself. She lifted her
 shirt, her pant legs and opened
 
 her waistband. Nothing was found. She emptied the contents
 of her purse. No stolen goods were inside. The police let
 her go. A bigger problem? Jodi left
 
 the store, tears streaming down her face. She has not been
 to a Wal-Mart since. And she gets frazzled when she sees
 Wal-Mart TV commercials, or a Wal-Mart
 
 truck on the highway. "How did it get to that? said a
 frustrated Kozma, who believes Wal-Mart and police escalated
 the situation by not letting Jodi calm
 
 down and handcuffing her. Prominent plaintiff's attorney
 Deborah Gordon, who is representing the Kozmas, agreed,
 saying Wal-Mart and police "over-reacted
 
 in a goonish way. "We're not talking about a (stolen) gun or
 a plasma TV or cash. We're talking hair ties. And it turned
 out she didn't have anything,"
 
 Gordon said. "Instead of everybody taking a deep breath and
 telling the grandmother, 'Would you mind sitting in a chair
 here and wait for her mom,' they've
 
 gotta do their ramped-up Rambo crap. Gordon said the case
 highlights an all-too-common problem with police
 authorities: a lack of procedures in place to
 
 deal with people with disabilities. "Everybody who has a
 child who is compromised relates totally to how
 out-of-control this can get," said Gordon. "They
 
 wouldn't let the mother in? Why? Are you people all insane?
 Kozma, meanwhile wants assurance from police that this
 doesn't happen to anyone ever again.
 
 And, she added: "I want them to go a step further and say,
 'We were wrong.' 
 
  
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