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Boston to pay $3 million to family of man who died in police custody after 2008 Celtics win
By adamg on Thu, 06/17/2010 - 11:04am
Channel 5 reports on the city's settlement with the family of David Woodman on the eve of this year's Game 7 and exactly two years after Woodman's death on a city street corner after the 2008 Game 7.
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Comments
Where's my money?
The police of this city have not wronged me in any way. I'll take my $3 million in $20s and $100s please.
let's hear from Pete Nice, Dan Conley, his PR flack, Atty Stern
about how the BPD did nothing wrong and yet the city's going to pay $3,000,000 in damages to the Woodmans.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Bur seriously, why would the city pay anything unless there was legal liability. It doesn't make any sense for them to pay anything unless Dan Conley, his PR flack, The Police Commissioner, Atty Stern, Pete Nice and all of the other BPD apologists are wrong in their assessment of liability for the damages caused to David Woodman during his arrest.
I didn't say they didn't do anything wrong.
They did not get him medical attention in time when he should have gotten it. The officers thought he was just doing what a lot of drunk people do after they resist arrest, (pass out, pretend they are sick, catch their breath, stay quiet) They should have realized that this kid needed medical attention regardless of what has happend to these police officers in the past. They probably should have sat him up at the point he stopped resisting.
And do you only read what you want to read. There were several witnesses that saw the police slam Woodman to the ground. the police witnesses, Woodman's friends, and independent witnesses. The police and the independent witnesses had one story, and Woodmans friends had another. I'm going with what the independent witnesses had to say.
And if you resist arrest, you can legally get 'slammed' (insert whatever verb you want here) to the ground.
I didn't say they didn't do anything wrong =
= I said they did something wrong.
Such contortions. You're turning yourself inside out to claim you;re holding the BPD accountable for this tragedy. Oddly, everything you write holds them harmless for the tragedy. Such as: It wasn't the BPD, it was the transport. You are a double-talking apologist.
another case in point:
Oh I'm sorry, was Kaz being serious?
Sorry about that.
Dear Kaz,
You will not get a refund from the City of Boston since you did not take them to court. Please file your lawsuits at the Civil Court at 3 Pemperton Square, Boston, MA 02018.
Thank you,
Pete Nice
more to the story
Peter, if you remember the original story, Woodman was found to be underage and drinking in public. The police gave him a warning and told him to be on his way. Woodman then came back to the scene, still drinking, which is what lead to his arrest. He then was holding onto a fence and wouldn't let go when the police tried to restrain him, AKA being an a-hole.
When the cops have to use legit force to detain you, I highly doubt you're going to get the "nice" treatment of being sat up on the curb, etc. What happened to Woodman was obviously an accident, but in the end it was his own fault.
The insurance pays for this anyway.
The city will send you a increased premium rate insurance refund check in the mail.
BPD to implement civil right attorneys role in crowd control?
Commissioner Davis talked about having civil rights attorneys train police crowd control, attend the roll call meeting, witness crowd control in action at large gatherings, and write post-mortem reports for the BPD so they can adjust their training.
Now that the city has paid $3000000 in damages to the Woodmans, you'd think we could get this program off the ground.
It had nothing to do with crowd control. (snelgrove did)
This had to do with proper prisoner transport.
You are having a very hard time distinguishing the two.
pete, where do you work?
pete, where do you work? they should also let people throw rocks and trash at the civil rights lawyers during the training.
proper prisoner transport
What a lame excuse. It wasn't the ambulance that induced respiratory arrest or negligence in attending to the well being of the suspect in custody.
Crowd control was the mission of the nine cops on duty, one of whom took offense to the snark David Woodman spoke. Woodman's suffered respiratory failure, brain damage and coma because of cop took offense to his snark. Your ignorance and callousness is frightening.
prisoner transport.
Look, I have a lot of free time on my hands, but I don't have time to explain every single term and part of that is my fault.
Prisoner transport (or the policy of handling arrested persons) means that when you arrest someone, you are responsible for everything that happens to them. From the time you put those handcuffs on them, to the time they are placed in a holding cell, there are procedures you must follow. The Boston Police did not follow this policy the way they should have.
The did follow the correct policy when they arrested him, used force on him, and handcuffed him.
Those are the two different issues and they are pretty clear to 99% of the legal community.
You are a garbage cop and you
You are a garbage cop and you need to turn in your badge and let the adults take over. But you simply can't stand the idea of not being a "powerful man", can you? You can't just live, you have to impose your will on others. You are a disgrace, but you will never realize it.
Cardiac Arrhthmia
Not respiratory arrest, right?
he stopped breathing
and the cops didn't notice. they treated him with contempt becuase they thought he was drunk. his respiratory arrest resulted in brain damage.
Oxygen
Your blood is oxygenated in the lungs and pumped to your brain by your heart. When either system fails, the other usually will also and your brain won't get enough oxygen, causing brain damage. If an otherwise healthy patient (not choking, OD'ing, on certain meds, etc) who stops breathing has a pre-existing heart condition then chances are the heart stopped first and the lungs followed suit rather than the other way around. I'm not saying I know this happened with this patient, but if the news articles are accurate about his childhood heart defect then the problem was cardiac, not respiratory.
Does this remind anyone else
Does this remind anyone else of the final outcome of the OJ Simpson debacle?
The search goes on
The BPD won't rest until they find Woodman's real killer.
that is funny
Remember that the BPD homicide unit was assigned to investigate the death of David Woodman and even though there was a call to have the investigation moved out of the BPD, because of a potential conflict of interest, Commissioner Davis retained jurisdiction instead of turning it over to the FBI.
intentional
Was he killed intentional or accidental? It depends maybe on David Woodman family's decision regarding settlement. For me, they must pay them for settlement.
manchester united football club
Spam spam spam
spam
Not good odds
So, we've had 7 championships during past decade and two people have died as a result of the BPD.
28% chance of dying?
Only 6 championships so far
3 Patriots, 2 Red Sox, 1 Celtics. You're getting ahead of yourself a bit. Let's not jinx the Celtics tonight.
Those would be the odds....
If 1 person celebrated during each championship. The odds are a little different when you account for the fact that one of the two actually committed a crime, and the fact that there were a few million people involved in these celebrations.
Allegedly committed a crime.
Allegedly committed a crime. He was never convicted of any crime.
The fact that his friends admitted that he did.
commit the first crime, and that independent witnesses saw him commit the second, leaves me enough reason to believe that he actually did commit two crimes. It doesn't matter if he was convicted or not.
Lots of witnesses say lots of
Lots of witnesses say lots of things. That's why we have courts to protect the rights of the accused.
You are right.
I am assuming that these independent witnesses are real people and that the police didn't make them up in the reports and that the follow up investigations didn't make up the people or their statements as well.
And just because you aren't charged or convicted, doesn't mean you didn't do something. That's the main point.
And just because you paid out
And just because you paid out $3 million in reparations doesn't mean you did do something?
You're cutting the cops a ton of slack and giving them the benefit of the doubt, but you aren't giving the dead kid an inch.... what is your mission here exactly?
No it really doesn't mean that.
That's how litigation settlements go.
But the Boston Police were at fault here on several issues.
That's exactly what "allege"
That's exactly what "allege" means. When a bunch of witnesses claim something in a credible way, but those claims have not been evaluated in a criminal court, those claims are allegations.
I don't want to use this horrible example....
But did Hitler "allegedly" commit a lot of crimes, or did he actually commit a lot of crimes? He was never charged or convited of anything right?
Or do we as a civilized world have enough credible evidence have the right to say Hitler committed a lot of crimes?
You're using two different
You're using two different definitions of "crime", here. Hitler didn't commit any "crimes" in the sense that there were any laws against what he did: he changed the laws to make what he did perfectly legal. He was a horrible person, who did terrible, horrific things to people, they were not crimes in the American Legal System sense of the term.
The man you are talking about may have run from a police officer while intoxicated. I'm not sure, but there might have been a punch thrown. Nobody in their right mind would term such behavior as a crime against humanity or a crime so severe that we don't even need to bother with laws to declare it a crime. What he allegedly did was a crime in the "Section 32, paragraph 8" sense of the word crime, and we can't just go declaring such people criminals based on a few police reports, without a jury of the man's peers.
Ok, leave....
Hitler out of it for a second. Although he actually did commit various crimes (Although many were debated during the nuremburg trails for the same reasons you state). In the end his actions were criminal. Unless you really think his Germany did things "legally" just because he changed the laws?
The first issue is whether or not someone can say another commited a crime just because he wasn't charged or convicted of the crime. That is still true. The level of the crime does not matter. If you have video in s store that shows someone walk in, shoplift a piece of gum, walk out and get hit by a bus and dies, that person isn't going to be charged with shoplifting, but he still committed the petty crime of shoplifting.
As the law dictates, crimes like these are procesuted when "a reasonable person" would beleive that a crime did occur or was occuring. I never read anywhere that a punch was thrown, I was pretty much going by what Woodmans friends and independent witnesses said. And as a reasonable person, I tend to believe that independent witnesses would have a rational look on what happened.
NO, until he is convicted in a court of law or pleads quilty
he is SUSPECTED of and CHARGED WITH committing shoplifting. Police do not have the authority to find anyone guilty or anything.
I'm not talking about the police.
So if this man from Winchester ends up killing himself, does that mean he didn't kill his family because he was never convicted of it?
EDIT
Looks like the guy was arrested in Western MA afterall.
Who knows??
Who knows what the police made up or didn't make up about any witnesses being present. The officers who arrested Woodman NEVER filed any reports and the lieutenant who did file a report on the arrest wasn't even there at the time.
This is just one of the admitted "mishandlings" by the police related to Woodman's time in their custody.
here's what concerns me
Atty Stern's review made no issue about the fact that all nine officers on the scene were not required to file a report, and that the repiort was filed by a supervisor who was not there at the time of the incident.
Even the review of the police procedure fails to recognize the importace of having the BPD be accountable for their conduct and what they, as eyewitnesses observed in the course of the incident.
It's pretty tough to make up witnesses.
And some of the report writing policies have been changed since this incident. Many of them are intact because of state law.