When the police order you to listen up, you’d better listen up. And if you can’t listen up because you’re deaf … well — you’re in for a beating.
That is what happened to an innocent man in Hawthorne, Calif., when he tried to tell police he was deaf by using sign language.
The Raw Story notes that Jonathan Meister was Tased and beaten senseless by Officers Jeffrey Salmon, Jeffrey Tysl, Erica Bristow, and Mark Hultgren. The four were responding to a report of an alleged break-in phoned in by a neighbor who witnessed Meister silently retrieving boxes from a friend’s home.
When the police arrived on the scene, they ordered Meister to stop loading the boxes into his car, but initially his back was turned to them. When one of the officers seized Meister’s hand and spun him around, the frightened Meister began signing wildly in a vain attempt to communicate with the officer. They in turn interpreted his sudden movements as resistance, so they “struck him with fists and feet, and forcibly took him to the ground.”
Once he was down, one of the officers allegedly shot him twice with a Taser. Another then delivered a “drive stun” to Meister’s abdomen. They continued to whale on the prone man until he was unconscious, then escorted him to the hospital, where he was charged with assaulting the officers. The charge was later dropped.
Meister is suing the police for violating his civil rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The lawsuit, which is being brought on his behalf by the Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness, states:
[T]his incident occurred in substantial part because the [Hawthorne Police Department] HPD does not provide its officers the training and resources to serve people who are deaf or hard of hearing. [The HPD fail] to provide effective communication to deaf and hard of hearing individuals, including himself, who come into contact and interact with the HPD, thereby discriminating against them.
Related Articles
- NM police subject man who ran stop sign to excessive rectum probe
- Mom, daughter try to smuggle large sums of cash across border in bras
- Woman busted for smuggling drugs in vagina cops plea
- Women caught at JFK smuggling drugs in makeshift diapers
- UK man who gave cocaine to trick-or-treaters sentenced to community service (Photos)
- Mother jailed for up to 30 years for burning off teen son’s penis and nipples with lighter
- Man has 4-inch fork removed from inside penis after sex goes wrong
- Escort who tried to bite off man’s penis charged with attempted murder
- Sunni man castrated by wife’s family to protest interfaith marriage
- CA woman gets life for chopping off husband’s penis
- News reporter unwittingly draws large phallic symbol on live TV
- Man with world’s largest penis frisked by TSA, other TSA-related news (Photos)
- People attempt to smuggle animals stuffed in their clothes onto planes
- NY mom arrested for feeding baby cocaine-laced breast milk
