Consumer Law

Overzealous Police Apologize?With Gift Cards

By Andy Hoffman

What do you do if you?re a police lieutenant whose officers barge into a house without a warrant (looking for drugs and guns), terrorize the innocent occupants for two hours, brutalize a mom and 7 children, and then realize (woops) that it was all a big mistake? 

Do you come back the next day, tell them you feel bad and offer them $25 dollar gift cards to Target and Walmart, $100 cash, and a promise to give the mom a cashmere coat (which the Detroit News characterized as ?a bribe to be quiet?)?

We?ve blogged before about police who beat up children and other kinds of police brutality.  But the police response in this case, assuming it's true (and it seems so, given the way the police reaction is being reported) takes ?insult? to a soaring new level.

As in these other cases, the mom, Tasha Flowers, has now sued the police department.  And she has since turned over the money and gift cards to Detroit police.  A rep from the Detroit Internal Affairs Section says it?s investigating.

Full post as published by ThePopTort on January 30, 2009 (boomark / email).