Antonio Love is a deaf and mentally disabled 37-year-old man from Mobile, Alabama. During a recent visit to a Dollar General store, Mr. Love went to the bathroom to deal with a severely upset stomach.
After Love had been in the bathroom for about an hour, store managers called the police, who on their arrival displayed their celebrated good sense and compassion.
As the police tried to force open the door, Love — seeking to preserve his privacy, and not knowing it was the police on the other side — held the door shut. So the police deployed pepper spray through a crack in order to subdue Love.
Once they pried open the door, the police then used their favorite lethal toy — the Portable Electro-Shock Torture (PEST) device, or, to use its brand name, Taser — on the hapless and terrified man.
When it was clear that Love was the victim of a misunderstanding created by his disability, the police compounded their unwarranted assault with an additional crime and a gratuitous insult.
The crime consisted of needlessly charging their victim with “disorderly conduct,” a charge that was quickly dropped by a local magistrate.
The insult, according to Love, was the derisive laughter that issued from the tax-devouring skull caves of the cretinous “public servants” who arrested him.
Love, who received a huge “knot” on his head when the door was busted in, was found helplessly choking on pepper spray and frantically washing his eyes before he was attacked with the PEST device. Not surprisingly, Antonio and his mother, Phyllis Love, plan to file a lawsuit against the police department.
According to Mobile PD spokesliar Christopher Levy, the use of potentially lethal force against a terrified deaf man with the mental capacity of a 10-year-old was “justified” because “he had an umbrella.”
No, seriously, that’s what Levy actually said.
Presumably, if Love had been “armed” with a walking stick, the police would have been “justified” in summarily gunning him down.
Incidentally, despite his disabilities, Antonio Love has worked in the garden department of a local retail store for several years. By holding an honest job in the productive sector, Mr. Love has proven himself a far worthier man than his tax-fattened assailants.
(Thanks to freedom blogger Jake Smith for tipping me to this story, and Sean Kennedy of Canadians for Liberty for suggesting the acronym PEST.)
2:08 pm on July 28, 2009
