The Houston Press reports that final arguments are being held in the criminal assault trial against Dymond Milburn who was 12 years old when four Galveston police officers (David Roark, Justin Popovich, Sean Stewart, and Sgt. Gilbert Gomez) allegedly beat her up with a flashlight and threatened to shoot her puppy, while she was in her yard attending to tripped circuit breaker.
Three weeks later, police showed up at Milburn’s school and arrested her for assault. Hence, the trial against her.Why aren’t the media screaming about this?
I just read the related articles to this story. The girl went out to check on a circuit breaker at the request of her mother. Three plainsclothes narcotics officers in an unmarked van were in the area working on a prostitution ring. Their suspects were three white prostitutes. They claimed they thought this (black) girl was a prostitute because she wore “tight shorts”.
They approached her and declared “You’re a prostitute, you’re coming with us” then tried to grab her. When she resisted, they beat her up causing, among other injuries, a black eye and ear drum damage.
The prostitution charge was dropped but she and her father, who came to her aid when she started screaming out for Daddy, were later arrested for assault of a police officer. Police arrested the (honour roll) girl at her school three weeks later.
There are also some comments about how she was thrown in juvy because she wouldn’t plead guilty to a lesser charge.
No amount of ‘wtf’ can describe how completely broken this story is.
If you were a 12 year old girl, and three weird men came up to you, told you you were a prostitute and that you were going with them and then tried to bundle you into their van, what would your thoughts be? For most sane people and children who were taught “stranger danger” etc, I’m sure my first thought would be “Oh fuck, I’m about to be kidnapped and gang-raped, I should defend myself”. When I fought back and they started to beat me down, I’d still be thinking the same thing but with an added “they’re going to kill me”.
And the father? If you were a parent and three randoms appeared to be abducting your child, the natural response would be to beat the crap out of the people trying to hurt your kids, no? The officers in this case weren’t exactly behaving in a manner that would lead you to believe they were upstanding members of the community…
Argh, reading-news-rage.
