I feel your pain, vagabond. I don't wish to "bash" police, several of my family members are LEO's (city cops and sheriff deputies in Fla). Cops are human just like the rest of us and like any group there are going to be some bad apples.
I ran into one several years ago. He beat the living crap out of me after he handcuffed me. I was a back seat passenger in a friend's car one night. My friend Bob was driving, another guy in the passenger seat and me in the back. As we were leaving a gas station Bob "lit 'em up", squealed the tires a bit. Not even much really, just a chirp. Immediately we got pulled over.
We pulled out of the gas station on the corner that is the town line between Amherst and the City of Buffalo, on Main st. As soon as we got onto Main as Bob chirped the tires the lights went on behind us, Bob signaled a right and turned onto the side street there, pulled to the curb and shut the car off. I could tell right away this was going to be bad. I was right. The cop didn't pull in behind us, he cut in front of Bob's '76 Monte Carlo diagonally. He got out of his car, slammed his door closed and stomped over to the driver's side. He was already extremely agitated, yelling at Bob. "What the **** was that, cowboy"? He went on like that for a bit, cussing a blue streak, not waiting for Bob to answer any of his questions which weren't really questions, just abuse really and getting more worked up. This was a Buffalo police officer, in uniform and a black leather jacket but he looked like a bum. He badly needed a shave and overall just had a disheveled appearance.
He told Bob to get out so Bob did, at least he started to. Officer Martin Dwyer grabbed his wrist as Bob got one foot on the street and wrenched it behind his back, forcing him to the street on his face and came down on him heavily with his knee to Bob's neck and handcuffed him. Mike, in the passenger seat said out loud "what the ****"! This infuriated Dwyer even more. He jerked Bob to his feet and handed him off to his partner, Faraco as he came around the front of the car, telling Faraco to "stuff him". Then he continued around to the passenger seat for Mike, pointing at him through the windshield as he came "You, hotshot, get the **** out"! Mike got the same WWF treatment on the sidewalk and was then dragged by the cuffs behind his back, on his knees scrambling to the back seat of the police car. Faraco came for me but I was already getting out and put my hands on top of the car as he approached me. He just cuffed me and walked me over to the police car and put me in the back with Bob and Mike. That's when I noticed he looked nervous, he kept looking nervous the whole time as if he was a bit taken aback by his partner's actions. Faraco got in the passenger seat of the cruiser and got on the radio while Dwyer was apparently occupied with searching Bob' car. That took awhile. A long while, it seemed. Finally he got in and drove us downtown to the police HQ building. We drove right in to the basement parking garage. Faraco took Bob and Mike and walked them to a set of elevator doors nearby. Dwyer got me out of the car and as I was halfway out and not fully yet on my feet he grabbed the chain between the handcuffs behind me and commenced to drag me on my knees like he did Mike back on the side street towards the elevator doors which where opening. He told Faraco "go ahead, take 'em up". He did, Dwyer kept me back and waited for the doors to close. He shoved me up against the wall face first, knocking me off balance and I took a step back away from the wall and straightened up. He slammed me back into the wall and held me there with his nightstick across my shoulder blades, "you just keep kissing that wall there champ"! Once he got me on the elevator he did the slam to the wall thing again, into the back corner. That's when he began hitting me. He must have slapped me in the head twenty or thirty times before the doors opened a couple of floors up. All I could do was try to shrug my head down into my shoulders but he kept slapping me so many times on the right side of my head as he held me by my collar with his left. By the time he dragged me off the elevator and past a couple of doors into the booking room my right ear was ringing.
Faraco had Bob and Mike there sitting on a bench. Dwyer had me stood at the counter to give my information to the woman officer seated there behind the counter, he kept slapping me in the back of the head. "Answer her"!
slap! "Give her your ****ing name"!
slap! Faraco, Bob and Mike were all wide eyed at this but the woman officer never batt an eye at it. I couldn't hear her questions because my ear was ringing so loud.
After we had given our names we got finger printed and photographed there at the counter and then walked out into the hall. Dwyer told his partner Faraco "frisk 'em". He frisked Bob and Mike and then Dwyer frisked me. He then pulled my shirt up, all the way up, forcing my handcuffed arms over my head with my t shirt up yo my elbows so I couldn't see. He yanked my pants down to my ankles, skivvies too. He left me there like that for what seemed like forever but was probably just a minute or two. Then he jerked my shirt down and told me to "pull your ****ing pants up", laughing. That's when I saw I was right in front of a doorway in the hall directly in front of a black woman officer seated at a desk facing me, five feet away. Faraco wasn't laughing with him. He looked just as nervous as before which gave me the impression that he felt Dwyer was out of line, unusually out of line.
That's the last I saw of those two of Buffalo's finest. We were taken t o cells by the black woman officer who was aparently waiting for me to get dressed before she came out into the hall as dwyer to his cuffs off me. He left me with blue fingers and a sprained wrist, BTW.
The next morning we were taken into a courtroom in front of a judge who read the charges. "Causing a disturbance", at least that's what I thought he said. There was no speaker system and I could barely hear him. "If you keep your nose clean I'll dismiss the charges". "Stay out of Buffalo for six months"!
About a year later I got a large envelope in the mail. Charges dismissed. I though about following up onn it but honestly I didn't want to pursue it because of the trouble it might bring. This cop was obviously out of his mind and I didn't want to give him a reason to come looking for me. Enemies are bad but criminally psychotic enemies are really bad.
It must have been about two years later (this happened in 1991) in '93 or so that the Buffalo News had for its headline one day "Officer Martin Dwyer disharged in disciplinary action" or words to that effect with a long article. This guy was likely the worst bad cop Buffalo had ever seen. He had a slew of people come forward with accounts like mine after he got into serious trouble and was fired, then reinstated and finally fired for good.
He beat up a lot of people in handcuffs in his career, pistol whipped suspects, shot at a private investigator and his Magnum Opus was putting his gun to the head of an off duty black New York State Trooper with accompanying racial epithets.
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=BN&p_theme=bn&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_field_label-0=Author&s_dispstring=Martin%20Dwyer&p_field_date-0=YMD_date&p_params_date-0=date:B,E&p_text_date-0=1990%20-%201999&p_field_advanced-0=&p_text_advanced-0=(%22Martin%20Dwyer%22)&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&xcal_useweights=no
