Galveston police haven't apologized for beating 12-year-old girl

December 19, 10:18 AMCivil Liberties ExaminerJ.D. Tuccille

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What would you do if you were a 12-year-old girl and several men jumped you, insisted you were a hooker and tried to drag you to their car? Would you submit or would you fight and scream for help? From the Houston Press:

It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.
 
As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."

Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.

I'll bet you already guess that the three men were police officers. They were investigating allegations of prostitution two blocks from Dymond's home. The prostitutes they sought were white and elsewhere, but the officers apparently decided that Dymond, who is African-American, would do because she was wearing tight shorts. Really.

Even though "Dymond was hospitalized and suffered black eyes as well as throat and ear drum injuries," she was arrested at school three weeks later for assaulting a public servant. With her face, I guess.

Two years later, Dymond and her family have filed a lawsuit (PDF) and expect to go into mediation in 2009.

This story is already getting plenty of buzz, but it needs more attention. Galveston Police Officers Justin Popovich, Sean Stewart and David Roark, and Sergeant Gilbert Gomez (who apparently supervised the attack) assaulted a young girl who didn't begin to match the description of the suspected prostitutes they were investigating. The women they were seeking allegedly engaged in non-violent, consensual activities of the sort that would hardly seem to justify a violent arrest anyway.

And the men were in civilian clothes in an unmarked vehicle, giving a frightened girl no reason to believe that the people attempting to kidnap her did so under color of any "legitimate" authority whatsoever.

They also, by the way, threatened to shoot her dog. What is it with cops and dogs?

This is bad enough. Once the dust settled, the Galveston Police Department would have been well-advised to issue an abject apology to the Milburn family and to, at least, pick up the tab for medical expenses. A little butt-kissing would have been in order, along with harsh discipline for the officers on the scene.

Instead, having sent a 12-year-old girl to the hospital after a severe beating by grown men, police apparently stewed for three weeks, and then compounded their error by arresting the victim at school for putting up whatever meager resistance such a girl is capable of under attack from three adults.

So the Galveston Police Department's position is that it's a criminal act for a little girl to resist being dragged into a van by strange men? If that's the lesson the police want to send to the community, then it's nothing more than an association of thugs intolerant of the slightest challenge to its authority. It's certainly not an agency for preserving the peace and defending the rights of local residents.

A police department like that shouldn't just be sued; it should be disbanded.

Hat tip to Radley Balko, a top-notch civil liberties journalist, for stirring the pot in this case.

Poll: Should police officers in the Dymond Milburn case be prosecuted?

Contact J.D.: civilliberties (at) tuccille.com