Policing In Nashville, Tennessee: Shackling Women In Labor To The Bed, Committing Blatant Perjury In Federal Court

This tidbit from the Nashville Tennessean:

A federal jury awarded Juana Villegas $200,000 because the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office shackled her to a bed while she was in labor in 2008.

In April, U.S. District Judge William J. Haynes Jr. ruled that the agency violated her rights when it shackled her and later denied her a breast pump after her son Gael was born.

Villegas, who was in the country illegally, was arrested during a traffic stop in Berry Hill and detained under a sheriff’s office immigration program while she was nine months pregnant.

Metro Legal argued that Villegas' anguish was not from the shackling but because she was under the threat of deportation. But the judge said jurors could not know that she was in the country illegally while deciding the issue of whether she should be compensated.

Attorneys had asked for $1.2 million.

Anyone who visits OS's front porch knows his opinions about illegal immigration. So let's get that one out of the way. This case is not about illegal immigration. It is about the Metro Sheriff's Department torturing a person in their custody, and therefore under their care.

There is no place for torture in a culture that operates under the rule of law. Full stop. End of story.

There is also no place for perjured testimony offered by the police during a trial.

Full stop. End of story.

The police claimed that the video of this poor woman's arrest did not exist, and so testified. In fact, it did. It strains credulity to then assert that they simply 'forgot' about its existence.

So, why are the officers who shackled the woman not the subject of a grand jury investigation--and that means all the way up to the sheriff himself? Why haven't they been perp-walked, in shackles, to send the message to the city and state that this sort of behavior is prosecuted? Otherwise, anyone subject to a traffic stop could find themselves tortured by any local police department with impunity.

Why wasn't the officer (and the prosecutor who prepped his testimony) who committed perjury not facing a contempt hearing, and time in jail? The rule of law must extend to all, or the culture will fly apart at the seams.

And, finally. Why didn't the Federal Government do its job of securing the border in the first place, and prevent this horrible thing from happening at all? Of all the damaging things George Bush the Younger did to this country, his willful neglect of this issue will prove over the long run to be the worst. For this, he deserved impeachment and removal.

Full stop. End of story.