Man Wins $1.4 Million Settlement From Boston Police In Video Recording Incident
By Carlos Miller
March 16, 2012 @
1:08PM
A man who was tackled by a cop and placed in a chokehold while video recording a traffic investigation won a $1.4 million settlement this week.
Michael O’Brian said the 2009 incident left him brain-damaged and unable to return to work as a corrections officer for the Middlesex Sheriff's Office.
The Boston
police officer
who tackled him,
David Williams,
was fired in
January.
It was the second time he was fired. And the second time his violent tendencies - towards fellow law enforcement officers - resulted in a costly lawsuit for the city.
According to the Boston Globe:
Williams, who is 6-foot-3 and 242 pounds, was fired for using an “unreasonable amount of force’’ to arrest O’Brien, who is 5-foot-9 and 160 pounds. The department also found Williams was “not truthful’’ when interviewed several times about the arrest, a fireable offense.
Williams had previously been fired for his role in the 1995 beating of a plainclothes officer, Michael Cox, after police mistook him for a homicide suspect. An arbitrator determined that Williams was wrongfully dismissed and reinstated him with nearly $500,000 in back pay in 2005.
Cox, now a deputy police superintendent, sued the city for civil rights violations and won $877,000. He sued Williams after he was reinstated and reached an out-of-court settlement with him.
The case is just another example of how cops can pretty much get away with anything.
The article doesn’t mention anything about the actual video that was recorded, but the fact that it took take three years to fire Williams is absurd.
In November 2011, Maury Povino filed a lawsuit against the Boston Police Department after they arrested him for video recording them.
Paulino was charged with felony wiretapping along with assault and battery on a police officer, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest in the 2009 incident.
The wiretapping charge was quickly dropped and he beat the other charges in court.