I just read a very disturbing story in the Indianapolis Star about the police department in South Bend, IN. The incident that is the main focus of the article apparently happened in 2012 but I don’t recall hearing about it before today. What happened is horrible but the worse part is the officers involved all still have their jobs.
Have you heard of the cinnamon challenge? It’s a prank where someone talks an unsuspecting person into trying to ingest a spoonful of cinnamon in 60 seconds without the aid of liquids.
Often the tricksters shoot video of their gullible victim as the spice stimulates a gag reflex, causing uncontrollable choking and vomiting. Some teenagers have ended up on ventilators or suffered collapsed lungs after falling prey to this practical joke.
Hilarious stuff, right?
Now imagine an on-duty, uniformed police officer — or three, in this case — conning you into taking the cinnamon challenge and then posting their handiwork on the internet. It happened in August 2012 in South Bend to Jonathan Ferguson, a mentally disabled 7-Eleven clerk.
Three uniformed South Bend police officers did this to a mentally disabled man, whose skull was crushed in a dog attack when he was a small child. Why did they do it? Retaliation against the clerk for reporting police misconduct and an earlier act of retaliation. Honestly, this story is so disturbing it’s hard to know where to begin. I also don’t want to violate fair use rules, so please read the full article.
The gist of it is this. The three officers came into the 7-Eleven one evening and were told by the clerk that an intoxicated person had just driven away and should be stopped before they injured someone. The officers declined to act because they didn’t want to have to do paperwork. The clerk filed an official complaint. A few days later, one of the officers (driving a marked police cruised) slashed the clerk’s tire in the 7-Eleven parking lot. The clerk filed another complaint and then the disturbing incident with the cinnamon happened.
This was not the first time these three officers had been in trouble. Six months before the cinnamon incident, these same three officers entered a home without a warrant and beat and Tasered DeShawn Franklin, a teenager, as he slept in his bed. Why? A case of mistaken identity. Adding insult to injury, a jury found the officers liable for unlawful entry and unlawful seizure. They awarded Franklin and both his parents $1 from each officer for each violation, a total of $18. Then the city asked them to pay $1,500 for expenses incurred defending the case. Because the case was heard in another jurisdiction, this included hotel and mileage fees for the three officers.
The South Bend Fraternal Order of Police’s defense of the officer who appears to be the ringleader of the group is disgusting.
“Was it a stupid thing to do? Absolutely. But they took their lumps for it,” Demler said.
Really? Not only are none of the three officers in jail, they all apparently still have their jobs. Disgusting.
