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mostreal favorited a video
(2 days ago)
PEKIN Three Tazewell County jailers accused of using excessive force ag...
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PEKIN Three Tazewell County jailers accused of using excessive force against a female inmate last fall have been absolved of the administrative charges against them and ordered reinstated with back pay.
But Tazewell County Sheriff Bob Huston said Tuesday that he will fight that ruling in circuit court in an attempt to have correctional officers Jeffrey Bieber and Justin Piro and Sgt. Richard Johnston permanently removed from their positions at the jail.
All three have been on administrative leave since October, when Becky Behm was brought to the jail after her arrest on drunken driving charges in Creve Coeur shortly after midnight Oct. 17.
By 5:30 a.m., she had been swung into a concrete wall head-first by Piro, punched in the face by Bieber and pepper sprayed on Johnston's order.
The incidents have been the subject of hearings before the Tazewell County Sheriff's Merit Commission since late last year, though those hearings didn't begin in earnest until May. Huston wanted the commission to allow him to terminate the jailers.
Attorneys for the officers were scheduled to begin presenting evidence for their clients Tuesday morning, but instead asked the commission to make a direct finding of not guilty and reinstate the jailers to their jobs with back pay.
The commission unanimously agreed.
"I felt after the prosecution was done that they didn't prove their case - any of it," commissioner Harvey Richmond said. "We all felt - what we saw in (the video), she would not do anything that they told her - they used only the minimal force that was needed to control her."
Richmond, a former deputy, said the commission didn't need to hear testimony presented by the officers' attorneys to find them innocent of the charges leveled against them by the sheriff because of Behm's behavior.
"If she at any time would have complied, she would have been out of there in half an hour," Richmond said. "If I would have seen something that I think was way out of line with the situation, I would have gone the other way, but I didn't see it."
Richmond said the 30-minute portion of the video shown during Behm's testimony in May needed to be examined very closely and in the context of the several hours before that footage to better understand the situation officers were trying to control.
But Huston maintained Tuesday that the 30-minute segment, which he released to media outlets after the ruling, was enough to justify the officers' termination. In the first couple of days after the incident, he called it the worst case of unnecessary force he'd seen in a decade as sheriff.
"I can not understand how anyone can watch the video of that incident and just let them all go," Huston said after the ruling Tuesday. "I believe that officers should be held to a high standard of conduct, but not to impossible or unattainable standards. Today, the merit commission refused to hold them to even the lowest standards of conduct or even to basic human dignity."
Attorneys for the jailers couldn't immediately be reached for comment later Tuesday.
Behm, who testified before the commission in May, said she couldn't recall most of the night at the jail and had no specific recollection of the beatings in a segregation cell in the A-block of the jail.
She said she had drank four or five beers at Behmer's Dugout, the Peoria bar she owns, over the course of about five hours before her arrest by a Creve Coeur police sergeant on suspicion of drunken driving.
Piro and Bieber claimed in their testimony before the commission that Behm was extremely intoxicated and belligerent and had to be transferred to the segregation cell to maintain order in the usual holding area.
Piro eventually swung Behm head-first into a concrete wall but testified that he was attempting to execute a sanctioned "takedown" technique and lost his balance. Bieber punched Behm in the face, but he claimed she attempted to leave the cell and lunged at him.
The merit commission's rejection of Huston's charges is the second such outcome for a high-profile Tazewell County case. The commission in December vetoed Huston's request to fire Deputy Jeff Bass for neglecting his duties and intimidating his superiors, though Bass was found guilty of those offenses.
Huston said he will appeal Tuesday's decision because he believes he was denied a fair hearing and the result was contrary to the evidence.
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mostreal favorited a video
(4 days ago)
www.missinfo.tv exclusive
This Fall, Cam'ron presents Cousin Bang, The Mo...
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www.missinfo.tv exclusive
This Fall, Cam'ron presents Cousin Bang, The Movie.
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mostreal favorited a video
(5 days ago)
In the first 5 seconds you can see Drake falling and re injuring his ACL...
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In the first 5 seconds you can see Drake falling and re injuring his ACL! Poor weezy was left all alone on stage haha still love them bothhhhhhh!
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