Police abuses once again including 12 year old in handcuffs

Here are more examples of police violating the basic liberties of their fellow citizens. I wish that there came a time when there weren't more examples, but sadly I can't even write about all of them, unless I devote my column to just police abuses, and no other issues.

In this video, a citizen named Carlos Garcia was not involved in any criminal activity, but his friends might have been. He had his hands up when a cop, Terry Daniel, gets out of his police car and elbows him in the head hard from a full running start.

Mr. Garcia actually gets brain damage from this hit. In a sad but not surprising result, Garcia is charged with assaulting an officer. Well, which he did of course. It was very illegal for Garcia to hit the cop's elbow with the back of his head like that.

Fortunately dashcab video of the attack wasn't erased, as they often "accidentially" are, but preserved. Daniel was amazingly fired but of course rehired by a new police department. Giving brain damage to someone who isn't even a criminal suspect, isn't enough reason not to hire someone, I guess.

In this case, a 12 year old girl accidently took a picture of another girl in a locker room as the girl was pulling down her pants. The first girl was trying to take a picture of her and her friends. The girl immediately erased the video and showed the other girl that she had erased it.

Many problems with this. First of all, the police searched her phone without a warrant, but as I have learned, police don't think warrants apply at all for minors, especially at a school. Usually this involves searching bags or purses for drugs, but not always.

Second, she was punished even though there is no actual picture, because once again, she had erased it. Third, they took the girl away in handcuffs, which is an incredibly stupid policy. Yes, child pornography is a problem but I don't think this is what the public and legislators had in mind when creating these laws. I don't know if the 12 year old girl has to register for life as a sex offender, but I wouldn't be all that surprised.

Lastly, at least for now, Joel Franco, a 17 year old student at a Miami-Dade high school in Florida, who saw a security guard slam a student who was involved in a heated argument with another student. That guard, another guard and even the assistant principal either threatened suspension or physically manhandled him to get him to erase the video.

Depending if the guard used excessive force, which isn't necessary the point of this example, the two guards and the asst. principal are guilty of destruction of physical evidence of a crime by the threats applied to Joel Franco. If I had any confidence that maybe the most corrupt police department in the nation would take action, they could have faced charges.

By the way, so many cops in Miami are corrupt is because of course, the war on drugs. Miami is a center of illegal smuggling and when money is to be made, there are corrupt officials.

By the way, if you want to work to protect civil liberties in the U.S., I highly recommend the American Civil Liberties Union.