Five Connecticut law enforcement officials have been charged with misdemeanors Monday over their remedy of a Black man after he was paralyzed from the chest down at the back of a police van.
Randy Cox, 36, was being pushed to a New Haven police station June 19 for processing on a weapons cost when the motive force braked arduous, apparently to keep away from a collision, inflicting Cox to fly headfirst into the wall of the van, police stated. The incident was caught on video.
As Cox pleaded for assist, saying he could not transfer, a number of the officers mocked him and accused him of being drunk and faking his accidents. Then, the officers dragged him by his ft from the van and positioned him in a holding cell.
“It made me sick to my stomach, to treat somebody like that,” Cox’s sister, Latoya Boomer, advised CBS News.
The 5 New Haven law enforcement officials have been charged with second-degree reckless endangerment and cruelty to individuals.
The officers turned themselves in at a state police barracks Monday. Each was processed, posted a $25,000 bond and are due again in courtroom Dec. 8, in response to a news launch from state police. Messages looking for remark have been despatched to attorneys for the officers.
The case has drawn outrage from civil rights advocates just like the NAACP, together with comparisons to the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore. Gray, who was additionally Black, died in 2015 after he suffered a spinal damage whereas handcuffed and shackled in a metropolis police van.
Five officers have been positioned on administrative go away in Cox’s case.
“Mr. Cox was mistreated,” Karl Jacobson, New Haven’s assistant police chief, stated in June. “He should’ve received medical attention immediately. We can’t defend anything that was released.”
The mayor’s workplace introduced a number of coverage adjustments following the incident, together with putting in seat belts in all police division transport vans and requiring officers to buckle in detainees. Seat belts have been already required in police cruisers.