The Southern Thirty Adolescent Center near Mount Vernon, IL, filed the lawsuit on behalf of three children in its custody, who the lawsuit says were tasered by Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies who had been called to help subdue two misbehaving children, aged 11 and 12. Neither of those children were among those who were tasered during what one news service described as a police “rampage.”
The incident took place on July 4, 2008. The federal lawsuit was filed in an East St. Louis court on Friday. In the suit the children are named only by their initials: B.B., R.E., and Z.P.
According to the legal filing, quoted in the Mount Vernon Register, one deputy “physically pushed R.E. towards his bunk and shocked him repeatedly with a taser. … R.E. was tased multiple times to multiple locations on his person, including, but not limited to, his neck. Deputy Bowers shouted to B.B. to lie down in his bunk and physically forced him to lie down.
“Without physical provocation and/or physical gestures from B.B., Deputy Bowers held B.B. down on his bed and shocked him repeatedly with a taser. While he was tasing B.B., Deputy David Bowers threatened to sodomize B.B. As a result of this repeated and excessive tasing, B.B. urinated and defecated himself. Deputy David Bowers was aware that B.B. urinated himself after the tasing.”
The filing goes on to say that a 17-year-old female visitor to the center, who had pleaded with police to stop the attack, was grabbed by an officer, choked, and locked in a closet.
Raw Story: Lawsuit: Cops tasered 3 kids, threatened one with sodomy
(via Atom Jack)
