[Peace] Sgt. Myers this Monday

[Brian Dolinar]

Sgt. Myers is in Courtroom A this Monday, February 26 at 3pm.
Champaign County Courthouse, downtown Urbana.

Sgt. Myers is expected to accept a plea bargain on Monday.  If he
agrees to the deal, he would plead guilty to a felony charge of
disorderly conduct and misdemeanor aggravated battery. State's
Attorney Julia Rietz says that she could not prosecute felony
aggravated battery because there was "no great bodily harm." Read
excerpts from documents from an investigation into Myers' offenses
conducted by the Sheriff's Department and determine for yourself if
such harm was done.

The following is an account by an inmate who was witness to Sgt. Myers
torturing inmate Ray Hsieh, a 30 year-old Chinese man, the incident
for which Myers is being prosecuted. The inmate describes the scene:

"It was Officer Alexander, Officer Wakefield, Officer Mathews, and
Officer Heath were all crowded around, and Sgt. Myers told them all to
go back to the, their sides, or whatever they're supposed to be, and
then he came back and he told him to stop spitting cause he didn't
know if he had fucking AIDS, and, and he couldn't, he said sorry, he
couldn't stop spitting, but he, so he kept spitting and Officer Myers,
I guess, tasered him, cause I could also hear, hear it in the, his
voice, I guess. Not Myers' voice, but Ray's voice. I can say Ray,
Right?"

"And I could hear it in Ray's voice like, and the taser, and I was
kinda worried about Ray cause, you know, he just got out of the
shower. He was still pretty wet and, after that, I, he tasered him
like five times and I think you're only supposed to taser somebody,
you know, like a second or two seconds, something? But kinda went a
little bit longer."

Another inmate described the scene he witnessed from his jail cell and
the actions of the other officers involved:

"Before, before they took him into the room that you take a shower in,
they had some, I mean, Officer, Officer Heath had his face on to the
wall right there, right there where the, where the gray lockers is at,
and had him, had his face on the wall and when, and then when they
brung him up, up in the room where the, where, where the shower is at,
they told him to hold his head up under the water so it was, so, so
his eyes can stop burning and then when Ray took his, took his eyes
from, from, took his head from out the shower, that's when they just,
just kept on…, just, just kept on hollering at him for no reason, and
just, you know what I'm saying, just treated him, just treated him
real fucked up…."

Investigator: "Okay. Did, did Ray say or do anything after he was tased?

"No. He just said, he just told them that he was sorry and, and then
he told Officer Myers, you know me real good, man. You know that, that
I'm not gonna do nothing."

The Sheriff's Department investigated a total of four incidents where
Myers had used a Taser on inmates under questionable circumstances,
although the only charges against him are for the incident with Ray
Hsieh. Another inmate, Michael Alexander, a 28 year-old black man was
tasered just days before Ray Hsieh. Judge for yourself if Myers caused
"no great bodily harm" in this instance. After he is shot, Michael
Alexander recalls:

"Officer Myers gives a direct order to [Officer] Thompson, take the
prongs out of him. Officer Thompson comes in and he's slowly picking,
trying to take the taser little thingys up out of my chest, but I was
so close range that it was like stuck. I mean, I mean, I felt like it
was stuck in my rib cage, man. I'm a little boy guy, so… he was just
that close to me and it's that powerful that it must have went in
pretty, pretty far where he couldn't just snatch them out….. So they
had, Officer Thompson couldn't do it because while he's trying do it
because while he's trying to pull them out, I'm yelling. I'm like,
ahhh, ahhh, that hurts, so Myers like, man, you just got to snatch
them out, man, you just got to snatch them. So I said, no, I prefer
for Officer Winters to take them out. I was like, Winters, man, I'm,
I'm just holding on to you, man. Just snatch them out, just snatch
them out. It hurts like fuck. Officer Winters snatches them out. I get
to bleeding all over the place and…

Investigator: Did you go see the nurse that night?

"No, sir, I did not.

Investigator: Did they take you to see the nurse?

"No, sir, they did not."

On September 19, 2005, Myers used a Taser on Trina Fairley, a 27
year-old black woman who was one month pregnant. She recollects
falling to the ground when she is shot. It was a humiliating
experience:

"Urinated on myself. He asked, after I did that, just seemed like it
was forever, that electricity going through me. It just, then he asked
me to roll over, you know, he's like, roll over, roll over, just, uh,
demanding. Then he handcuffed me. Then he took me down, he took me
down to the hall. Then he just jagged me my, my cuffs up tighter, and
he, I had to scream because I didn't want to him to, that shit hurt.
Then he, just like pushed me down in the chair hard and strapped it
like so tight like I couldn't even breathe."

Perhaps the most brutal account is from Michael Rich, a 21 year-old
student from Chicago, who was tased by Myers on November 6, 2004, a
year before Myers was turned in. Rich describes in detail the
nightmarish scenario:

"Sgt. Myers then grabbed me by my hair and started slamming the right
side of my head into the wall. He said, 'This is the way we do things
down here.' After about half a dozen times of this, he then turned my
face into the wall and threw me face first into the wall. At this
point my lower lip, nose, and forehead began bleeding. A female
officer in the cell said to Sgt. Myers, "you should stop that, he is
bleeding." Sgt. Myers did not stop and another officer brought in a
restraint chair. He sat me down in the chair with my arms, still
cuffed, wrapped around the back of the chair. My legs were pulled back
as far as they could go on either side of the chair and my ankles were
cuffed. I was leaning forward in the chair to take the pressure off of
my arms when they took a strap across my chest and tightened it as
hard as they could nearly pulling my arms out of their joints, and
preventing me from breathing normally; I was only able to breathe by
taking short breaths. The same was done across my waist and knees
causing bruising and swelling across my knees and chest. The cuffs
were fasted as tight as he could tighten them so much so that my
ankles and wrists began to bleed and swell up. A hood was placed over
my head, and Sgt. Myers and another man took turns hitting me in the
back of the head with an open hand. As they were hitting me I asked
them how they were going to explain why I came into the jail cell fine
and was leaving all bloody. The second man who was hitting me said,
'You came in here like that.'"

"After some time had passed, my friend [removed]  came to the jail to
bail me out. Sgt. Myers and the second man came into the cell and
uncuffed my ankles from the chair and then stood me up. He wiped the
blood away from my ankles and wrists and then uncuffed my hands and I
immediately grabbed the hood from over my head since it was soaked in
blood. Had I come into the jail like that, the bleeding would have
slowed down, if not stopped and there would have been little if any
blood in it. In addition, I was worried that upon my release, had
there been no physical evidence of me bleeding in the jail, Sgt. Myers
would claim that my cuts and bruises were caused by myself. At this
point I did not know if Sgt. Myers would say that I had inflicted
these injuries on myself after my release, that I had inflicted these
injuries on myself while in custody, or as he said, that I had entered
the jail like that. Sgt. Myers screamed at me to let it go and I told
him I would not. Sgt. Myers then tasered me in the upper left side of
my back and I fell to the ground. He then dropped to the ground and
began tasering me in my chest and arms and I gave up and turned over
onto my stomach so he could cuff me. He then tried to push the taser
in the crack of my butt and I rolled back onto my side and pushed Sgt.
Myers off me."

To read the investigation conducted by the Sheriff's Department see
case file 2005 CF-2105.

-- 
Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.
303 W. Locust St.
Urbana, IL 61801
briandolinar at gmail.com