Source: Ferdinand Perry/Getty
Cops have done some pretty ugly things in the past, and even if we didn’t have an Olympics of police brutality, this would rank pretty high on the list.
According to CNN, on April 6, 2020, a Springfield, Illinois, police officer conducted a traffic stop after seeing Dartavious Barnes driving at a high rate of speed and running a stop sign. The officer reported that just before he saw this, he had received a call on his radio reporting a shooting in the area. The officer, whose name has not been released, believed that Barnes may have been a suspect in that incident. Barnes was eventually handcuffed and taken into custody, but was not arrested. He sat in the back of his patrol car and consented to officers searching his vehicle.
Then everything disappeared.
In body camera footage released to the public, the officer is seen grabbing a sealed jar and a small metal object that appears to be “shaped like a rifle bullet.” In the police report, the officer says he saw the objects used to store illegal drugs. He is seen unsealing the jar and performing a drug test. After the test, the officer approaches Barnes and says he found the container and that it tested positive for meth or ecstasy.
“No, no, no, bro. It’s my daughter. What are you doing, bro… Bro, give it to me. It’s my daughter,” Barnes says in the video as police show her the jar.
Barnes’ daughter, 2-year-old Ta’Naja Barnes, died on February 11, 2019, in the care of her mother, Twan’ka Davis, and her boyfriend, Anthony Myers. Ta’Naja suffered from extreme neglect, starvation, dehydration, and a severe cold. Davis and Myers were later convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 20 and 30 years in prison, respectively.
That was like the ashes this stupid cop poured on the ground trying to become the best cop of the year.
Dartavious Barnes is suing the Springfield Police Department for violating his Fourth Amendment rights. According to a new report from NewsChannel20, a circuit court judge recently dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the officers acted reasonably “given the circumstances.”
Isn’t that really stupid?
