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Former soldier, charged for making a citizens arrest:  A MUST READ PEOPLE! JUST UNBELIEVABLE.

 
 


Posted by Drew458    United Kingdom   on 06/29/2008 at 08:50 AM   
 
  1. The liberals rule the land. sick  puke Farewell Brittania.

    Posted by cmblake6    United States   06/29/2008  at  03:51 PM  

  2. It happens here in America too. It took me 6 years to settle a civil suit after 2 sheriffs broke into my 90 year old Mother’s house, terrified her so badly that she ended up in the hospital on a respirator and I was attacked, beaten, had my back fractured and then in a nightgown and bare feet and handcuffs, thrown into a police cruiser and driven out to the dessert where they drove around for over an hour, before dropping me off over 20 miles from home, no money, no shoes, no ID. I was convinced they intended to kill me or at the very least leave me in the dessert with temps over 100 degrees. I was called every name in the book, starting with “you effin c**t.” They claimed they were there because they had a report that “someone” had killed my Mother, that “someone” they thought was me. When they found us sleeping and then that my Mom was alive and kicking and very angry at having her home invaded, it was like they didn’t know what to do next. They had to try to generate a reason for being there. I refused to play the game with them, despite the confrontational traps they tried, which just seemed to make them angrier.

    When my Mother died 4 years later at age 94, I had to be sedated before my family could let the coroner with uniformed officer escorts into the house to remove her body to the funeral home. And when we had a neighborhood crime where the police canvassed the neighborhood for witnesses, I fainted in fear when I opened the door and saw a uniformed officer standing there. I understand this couple’s feelings. I wouldn’t call a cop now even if it meant my life.

    Settling the case for a substantial sum gave me a feeling of some vindication, but for most of that 6 years, I felt that most people had the attitude, “she must have done something to deserve it.” Like Mrs. McCourt, who really doesn’t want to blame her husband, but does in some way, so did my family and friends. It is a terrible place to be.

    And before any cops on the forum jump all over me about not all cops are bad guys, let me say that intellectually I know that, but the kind of fear that overwhelms is not exactly based in rational thought. It just consumes and no amount of apologies change those feelings. When everything you have believed to be true your whole life gets turned upside down and inside out, you can’t compute and your subconscious takes over to try to make sense of it all.

    Posted by Pal2Pal    United States   06/29/2008  at  04:36 PM  

  3. We were never 100% sure how they got in or how they ended up at my Mother’s home. We were all asleep, me, Mother and my future daughter-in-law, who had arrived the day before to start planning the wedding. Since I knew the doors were locked and the alarms on when I went to bed, we suspected they got a key from the next door neighbor. She was a real piece of nasty work and, although we could never prove it, we all suspect she was getting even at me for coming to take care of my Mom when she broke her hip. The rumor was that she expected to have free reign. I had never suspected a problem with her and it was all rumor.

    They didn’t leave me in the dessert, but 20 miles away on a back street. I had to walk about 2 blocks to find a 7-11, where I borrowed a quarter and called my cousin to come get me. I could barely stand upright because of the pain in my back and my feet were all cut up. And, I was in a nightgown. I was so distraught and crying so much, I didn’t care what people thought, but not a single person asked me if I was in trouble or needed help. No one cared.

    I immediately filed a complaint with the substion commanding officer and another with IA. I was told I was a liar and they shined me off. The emergency room doctor also filed a complaint. He also took pictures and we also had the xrays. When I got home, we took more pictures with a good high res. digital camera. By then the welts and bruises were beginning to show. They never touched my face.

    As to the 2 sheriffs, it took us nearly 4 years to get their full names and serve them. The blue line was in full force. There were so many things that happened, like stalking, intimidating phone calls, they even told me that if I brought my attorney with me to their deposition, he would be subject to arrest. I was treated like I had an IQ of about 10. Later, their attorney told me that they weren’t used to deposing people of “high” intelligence. I’m above average, but they didn’t count on my Mom, whose IQ was over 170. They also didn’t count on the fact that she spent her career as the Executive Director of a major international non-profit and she didn’t take BS off of anyone. Between the two of us, they met their match, or so says my attorney. He said he quickly learned the best thing he could do was stand out of the way.

    For two years we were jerked around in court and then found out the judge was the sister-in-law of one of the cops. So, my attorney asked for, and got, a change of venue. After that, things moved along faster, but it still took abou 3 1/2 more years. I got a pretty sizeable cash settlement, plus I insisted I wanted a letter of apology and an admittance that the cops were scumbags. The one who was the rookie at the time wrote a very heartfelt letter and even offered to testify for me. The other jerk-off continued to be a smart ass. I wanted him off the street, in jail, and away from the public. The last we heard, he’d been put on xray duty at the courthouse and busted in rank and working under close supervision. No one would even entertain the possibility of prosecuting these two.

    We were able to find out that there was a “gang” of officers from the same substation that had already been in trouble for excessive force on at least 3 prior occasions and there was another serious incident that involved an unprovoked shooting after me. The CO who had shined me off was listed as the leader of this “gang,” according to a newspaper article I was able to dig up.

    One of the reasons I had such a hard time dealing with it all for a long time was because I never really understood any of it. Why they were there? How they got in? Why they hurt me? Why, once they determined my Mom was just fine, they then seemed to become very confrontational like they were egging us on to have an excuse to take action. It was like I was in a constant nightmare and just when I thought I had it figured out, everything would turn upside down again. Nothing made sense then, and it isn’t much better now, except that I feel vindicated after feeling for years like I was wearing a scarlet letter. Even my own son said, “what did you say, you must have said something to piss them off.” Even when my d-i-l told him I didn’t say anything, I felt everyone was thinking it was my fault. That’s why I can identify with the man in the article. It sucks, frankly. But the day I got that check, I looked at the whole lot of them, attorneys, cops, etc., and said, “eff you assholes! You messed with the wrong people this time.” They all looked down at the floor and I knew I’d won. The nightmares stopped that night, although I still have trouble going out alone and I still check the doors and windows a couple of times a night, even though I now have both my son and nephew living with me. My Mother, after this incident, never went to bed at night without her baseball bat under her covers, but I felt terrible, because she blamed herself for not protecting me. Her 90 years old and recovering from a broken hip, but I think if she’d been awake when it started, she would have been on those bastards even if it killed her. I had never ever seen her so angry as she was over this. It almost did kill her because she went into an anxiety attack when they drove me away and my d-i-l had to call the paramedics. She ended up in ICU for several days.

    One word of advice to everyone and it was the best advice I was given. Write everything down right away. Timelines, conversations, names, and keep a record of all contacts. We all did this and it really helped when things dragged on for so long. But it was the photo documentation that really won it all for me. I wasn’t in court during a pre-trial hearing when my attorney handed them the photos, but he said that when the judge saw them, he turned to the county attorney and told him, “settle this thing now.”

    I wish I could say this is unusual, but this is So. Calif. and it is SOP in these parts, although not usually with elderly and middle-aged white women as the targets. BTW, within 6 weeks of the incident, we sold my Mom’s home of 29 years and moved to a different county at the suggestion of two different attorneys I consulted. It was like an order to get out of Dodge for self-preservation.

    Posted by Pal2Pal    United States   06/30/2008  at  07:25 AM  

  4. Welcome to the nazification of america. When these guys eventually get what they want, Stalin will seem like a great guy. Pal2Pal, you got bad cops. The folks in England got a bad system.
    Look and wake up folks, we are headed that direction.

    Posted by Jeremy    United States   06/30/2008  at  09:43 AM  

  5. When the cops enforce a set of rules on all of us, but don’t obey them themselves or enforce them on one another, they aren’t cops anymore. They are just another gang. That goes for legislators and judges as well.

    I know several cops, like most of them, consider them good people. The ones I know well, I consider to be doing their best to do a quite literally impossible job. That doesn’t change the above statement even a little bit. Either they don’t realize they have become gang members, are in denial so they don’t have to face up to it, or know it and are staying in to do the best they can, in hopes that a gang of armed thugs won’t be the ONLY thing the local police dept. is. Or possibly they don’t dare speak out, for fear of being treated as Serpico supposedly was.

    Posted by GrumpyOldFart    United States   06/30/2008  at  11:35 AM  

  6. Just a final note. I wanted to go to the press right away, but every attorney I talked to discouraged me from doing this. I still regret, to some extent, that I listened to them.

    Also, I had a hard time finding a good attorney at first. Not that there weren’t plenty from which to choose, but most of them did not want to take the case and would say, “I have to practice in this county after your case is long gone.” They were worried about future cases. I finally hired someone who lived and worked primarily in another county and seemed braver about taking on the cops and the system. Some might say he suffered from “ism” disease. He was an Hispanic man and one of the two cops was black. He was livid that the black cop is the one who jumped me and threw me face down across my bed. When he saw pictures of one of my worst bruises, one 4” wide and 7” long that extended from my right hip down almost to my crotch, he went ballistic. I know he planned to use this if we got to court. He kept saying, in this area, 90% of the jury will be Hispanic and they aren’t going to like it that a white woman was attacked by a black man. I didn’t think there were any racial overtones in the attack, but, hey, if he did, and it worked in my favor or motivated him as a man as well as an attorney, who was I to argue? Friends of mine kept saying, “hire Johnny Cochran.” I thought about it, but as it was, he died before the case really got going. A couple people wanted me to hire Gloria Allred. My Mother put the nix on that. She couldn’t stand her, called her a media whore. And I’m not much on being the center of attention and she would have turned it into a media circus for all of us. My little (he was 5 inches shorter than I) attorney was quiet, unobtrusive, and mild mannered and I doubt you would ever notice him, but he was like a dog with a bone when in court and he was very protective of all of us. Every time I had personal interaction with him, I grew to admire him more. I know there is a special place for him in heaven.

    The biggest hurdle to overcome was ourselves. None of us could believe what happened. We weren’t street savvy and we were used to being treated with respect and having our word trusted, not as lowlife scum and liars. It took awhile for us to come around to even processing that something like this could happen to ordinary law abiding citizens just minding our own business, in our own home. I know that for about the first two years, I was like the walking dead. A zombie. Like someone having an out of body experience, standing on the sidelines watching events unfold like they were happening to someone else, like watching a movie. I wanted to be 7 or 8 years old again and curl up in my Daddy’s arms and feel safe, secure and protected. I kept thinking, I’ll wake up and this will only have been a bad dream. The human mind is an amazing thing and it goes into overdrive to protect us from our own emotion and fear. My Mom channeled her emotions into an intense white hot anger. I had a very different reaction and I shut down for a long time. An old friend (male) finally said to me one day, “Good Lord Girl, stop blubbering and be the “ballbuster” I’ve known and loved for 30 years.” That made me burst out laughing and I think at that moment the healing of my psyche and spirit began.

    Posted by Pal2Pal    United States   06/30/2008  at  03:07 PM  

  7. ... CONTINUED. Shoot can’t believe I exceeded the comment allowance. Anyway, the conclusion of the Soap Opera:

    So, I never knew for sure that this woman was behind the police invasion, but everyone else thought she was. I’m not an intrigue-type person and I guess I never fully appreciated that there were people out there that would bring hurt and pain into someone else’s life like that. I lived my life with my glass always more than half full. Kind of polyannish. I guess I knew in an abstract way that there were bad people out there with less than savory motives, I just didn’t think there were any in my world and certainly not in my Mother’s world. Dumb, naive, perhaps rather immature, but I had lived a rather protected life and that was my outlook at that time. I really didn’t wake up until I got a call one day from some government agency saying they were processing an application for a conservatorship for someone no longer competent. I was shocked and started asking questions. Turned out this neighbor had gone and filed to have my Mother declared incompetent and have herself declared the conservator, since “she had no known relatives.” My attorney nipped that in the bud. But I finally realized that it was all about the money. My Mom wasn’t all that rich, she was well set in life, but not wealthy, but apparently this neighbor thought that Helen was wealthy and she thought my Mom was her sole heir. She wanted control of that money. My Mother then told me, “dear, I didn’t want you to know she was like that, I thought I could handle her.” This is the kind of thing she was warning about when she said she “discovered she had less than honest intentions.” She’d seen her pull the same kind of stunt when the neighbor did it to her own sister. So, even though I was in my early fifties, my Mom was still trying to protect me from the “bad” people of the world, just as she’d done when I was a child. I blindly went through life in my own little cocoon.

    When I mentioned in Allan’s memorial post last week that I met him during a time everything in my life had turned upside down, this is what I was talking about. I was struggling to make sense of everything, I was struggling on how to deal with this new found sense that no one could be trusted. I was struggling with a loss of faith. I was afraid of everything. Me, who had been an active, independent self-possessed person was suddenly afraid of everyone and everything. I felt helpless and hopeless. I went into a deep depression for several months. I cut myself off from everyone except immediate family, even from my oldest and closest friends. My marriage of 32 years fell apart. I was very full of repressed rage coupled with terrible embarrassment and deep disappointment at myself for being so stupid. I didn’t know that I was exhibiting classic symptoms of PTSD.

    Fortunately, time does heal and I gradually came back to my own life, older, wiser, and far less trusting, but back and ready to start participating again. As so many others have discovered, I found solace in online friends and blogging. It was a safe way to bring people interaction back into my life, but it took a few years before I was ready for face to face interaction again and I got over feeling I was a target for every con artist that crossed my path. It hasn’t been an easy recovery for me and it was hampered by a bad fall where I rebroke my back in the same place and spent a year in near suicidal pain plus my Mother passed away during that time at the age of 94. I felt that I lost my last safety net in life and my best friend. That was a biggie to get over and the idea that with her passing I became the family matriarch nearly did me in.

    Posted by Pal2Pal    United States   07/01/2008  at  04:19 PM  

  8. Peiper: She and my Mom had lived next door to each other for at least 25 years. She lost her husband about 4 years earlier than the incident, my Mom’s best friend of 60 years, who shared my Mom’s house the last 17 years had died also, so the two of them would often go to an early dinner together or the theater or some other leisure event. They bought Christmas gifts for each other and for each other’s grandchildren. They even took a trip to China together the previous year. Over all those years, I looked at the woman as a friend, although my Mother, who was a pretty private person, would often say she could only take so much of her, because she was a bit of a ditz and was too much of a gossip. And then she did something that made my Mother think she wasn’t very honest and at that point my Mom tried to tone down their association. But my Mom was one of the great ladies, very Victorian, and she wouldn’t do or say anything that could be considered impolite or against proper etiquette, so when she began to suspect her neighbor of having less than honorable intentions, all she did was cutback and withdraw somewhat from their association, while still being gracious and courteous.

    When my Mom broke her hip, the neighbor was with her and called the paramedics and was with her in the emergency room. I lived in another state. It took me a day to get to Calif. and to the hospital, where I found this neighbor ensconced in my Mom’s room, reading from the Catholic book of prayer, droning actually. My Mom was not very religious and she wasn’t Catholic and when she saw me come thru the door, she used her eyes to indicate the neighbor and then mouthed please and then a jerk of her head. Please get her out of here. The neighbor was in the only chair in the room. So after exchanging some small talk, I thanked her for staying with my Mother until I could get there and told her she could go home and get some rest. She got really offended and stomped out in a huff. I was oblivious, at that time, to the underplay going on. I hadn’t seen my Mom for several months and I was shocked at how small and weak she looked. I wanted to spend some time alone with her. When I thought about the neighbor’s actions, I thought it was weird that she was insensitive, but I didn’t know that she would take my easing her out of the hospital room as a personal challenge. The only indication I had came a couple of weeks later, after my Mom was home and recovering, when another neighbor asked how I got on the other neighbor’s sh!t list. My reaction was that I didn’t know I was on her list. The whole thing seemed really childish to me. I lived 2700 miles away, I was only going to be there a few weeks until my Mom was fully recovered. It all seemed rather stupid. My Mom’s attitude was that she was a neighbor not family or even a best friend, so be polite, don’t make waves, and ignore her. She also said, she’s just jealous that you’re here and she doesn’t have anyone to go to early dinner with her. So, dumb me, I started inviting her to go along with us for late lunches or early dinners. She would irritate me sometimes because she would say things like, “you shouldn’t bother your Mother with your problems, she doesn’t need to be burdened with your life.” I asked my Mom if she told the neighbor I was her burden in life and my Mom went ballistic. Note, I am an only child, the neighbor had seven. My Mom said, “of course not, I wish you didn’t have to go back to Indiana.”

    Soap Opera, new scene: My Mother’s therapy swim center. She and the neighbor went there 3 times a week, had for years, as part of their senior exercise program. So, while I was there and my Mom was recovering, I drove her to swimming and started meeting the other members of the class. After the 3rd time, one of the men in the class, said in an aside to me, “watch your back, you have some enemies here.” After recovering from my initial shock, I sort of forgot about it, thinking that these elderly seniors sure don’t have enough to do, they are all so bitchy and ornery. I chalked it up to being cranky old people. Call me naive. I was in a turf war and didn’t even know it, not that I would have known what to do, even if I had known.

    Move ahead to Christmas: my son arrived for a 3 day stay. The neighbor cornered him and told him she thought I was trying to harm my Mother in order to steal all her money. My son told her to mind her own business, I was already a co-owner of everything my Mother had and all her bank accounts were jointly in hers and my name, so if I wanted to steal from her all I had to do was write a check, but that if I needed money, which I did not, I would just ask, my Mom would give me whatever I needed. He came home and warned me to stay away from that woman. He was quite upset. So was I, and my Mother was more than upset, she was livid. She said, “I broke my hip, not my brain, what is her problem?” But again, her attitude was just ignore her, she’s a lonely bitter old woman. Other neighbors were also dropping little hints about rumors this woman was spreading, but again, I didn’t see any danger. I was trying to be there for my Mom, but I had a family and home 2700 miles away, and I knew I would be going home shortly anyway, so I took my Mom’s advice and ignored it all. (What was going on at home was a whole other story that ended up turning my life upside down. Suffice to say, when I went home after nearly a 3 month absence, I found a real mess and I ended up staying only a couple of weeks and then back to Calif.) By then my Mom was pretty much recovered and up on her feet. We did some traveling together and it turned out to be a really good period of rediscovering each other as two grown women instead of mother and daughter. We were having a really good time. When my son announced he was going to marry his long time partner, my Mom insisted she give them the wedding of their dreams. So, that is why my future d-i-l flew in to meet Grandma and to plan the wedding. It seemed right then that life was good, we were all happy, we’d been out to dinner the night before with my two cousins and my widowed Aunt and Penny was getting a real taste of her future family. Everything changed at 8 AM the following morning.

    We figure that the busybody neighbor did not know Penny was coming and did not see us all leave in the afternoon. We left about 2 PM and we didn’t get home again until nearly 2 AM. We think she assumed I was gone and when no one answered the phone during the evening, she talked her sick mind into believing my Mom was lying dead at home. This is only supposition, based on a few remarks that were made during our morning ordeal with the cops. However, after they drove me away, this bitch showed up at the front door with a mylar “Congratulations” balloon and seemed completely shocked when Penny answered the door. Penny was a complete basketcase after what had just happened. The woman said, “oh don’t cry, here’s a balloon to cheer you up, be glad I got rid of her.” Penny slammed the door in her face. She was terrified. She didn’t know where she was, having just arrived the day before. She didn’t know who to call. My Mom was in a total panic attack. Penny finally reached my son long distance and he told her to find Grandma’s address book, call the cousin she’d met the night before and call the paramedics for Grandma. Of course, he also panicked since he was over 2000 miles away and had no idea what was going on. Penny was in auto mode, she was quite traumatized by the morning’s events, and she was scared and alone with a situation totally unfamiliar to her. She didn’t know where they took me or how long I’d be gone. By the time I got back home hours later, I found Penny in terrible shape, my Mom in the ICU, and my son on the phone telling us it would be at least 3 days before he could get there. I went to the hospital for my own injuries and to see my Mother and reassure her and afterwards the two of us checked into a motel, we were both afraid to stay alone at the house. I spent the next few days in a drug induced fog from the pain meds they gave me for my back and other injuries. When my son arrived, he told the neighbor that if he caught her on my Mom’s property, he’d have her arrested for trespassing. It got ugly. By then, the attorney had told us that we needed to move out of that county. So, that’s what we started to do. I bought a house where I live now and we packed out my Mom’s house and moved her before she even got out of the hospital. She put up the downpayment, so she was onboard, but it was hard on her too to leave her home of 29 years. She told me later that she was scared of what that “crazy woman” would do next and she kept apologizing to me for causing all this to happen. None of it made sense to me. I kept saying to my own friend, “How did this happen? How did everything go to hell so fast when it seemed everything was going so well?” My Dad died when I was thirteen and my Mom and I were always a team. Both working and busy with our own lives, but very close, nonetheless. Like I said, I was an only child. I was really all she had. When her friend joined her as a roommate, I was happy she had companionship and Helen was like a loving aunt toward me. After Helen died, I tried to make the Calif. trip more often because I knew how lonely my Mom was. We talked about her moving back to Indiana, but she wouldn’t hear of it, said she wasn’t going back to snow and harsh winters, she’d had her fill of that and she liked her independence and her own home.

    Posted by Pal2Pal    United States   07/01/2008  at  04:20 PM  

  9. # 10 is supposed to come before #9. See, I get myself all discombobulated when reliving the whole thing.

    Posted by Pal2Pal    United States   07/01/2008  at  04:22 PM  

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