Police Shootings / Possible Abuse Threads [merged]

Across from an industrial hose and gasket supplier’s office, in a mostly empty and fenced-off lot behind a precinct house belonging to the police department of Louisiana’s capital city, there sits a white storage shed without any markings explaining its purpose.

That single-story warehouse – within a couple of blocks of a daycare center, an eatery specializing in chicken wings and a gasoline station frequented by unwary residents – is now the focus of local and federal authorities examining alarming claims that officers with the Baton Rouge police department (BRPD) took detained people there and brutalized them.

Allegations portraying the warehouse once used by the Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination, or Brave, anti-street crime unit as a sort of black siteor torture chamber are contained in two federal court lawsuits filed relatively recently.

One of the lawsuits maintains that a woman was illegally forced to disrobe and endure a humiliating search of her body. Another contends a man was so badly beaten by officers who took him to their so-called “Brave Cave” that one of his ribs was broken.

The plaintiffs accuse police of violating their civil rights and have demanded damages, prompting not only public outcry against the local law enforcement establishment – but also having an impact, at least at this early stage of the scandal.

After the first of the two lawsuits, the Brave unit primarily addressing drug-related complaints was disbanded, and its warehouse was shuttered. One of the officers named in both lawsuits – Troy Lawrence Jr, the son of the BRPD’s deputy chief – has resigned, and he has also been arrested on a count of battery in connection with a third case that got a closer look because of the Brave Cave allegations.

Meanwhile, in a statement provided to the Guardian, a police spokesperson said the department’s chief, Murphy Paul, had asked the FBI to assist his agency as it conducted “administrative and criminal investigations” into the circumstances surrounding the Brave Cave. “The Baton Rouge police department is committed to addressing the troubling accusations,” Paul said…….

A lawsuit filed Monday by Baton Rouge grandmother Ternell Brown provides chilling details about one such search. In filings at Baton Rouge’s federal courthouse, Brown recounts how she was out driving on 10 June when two officers, Lawrence Jr and Matthew Wallace, noticed prescription medications in her car during a traffic stop.

Brown asserts that she had offered to show the cops that she had a valid prescription, but they didn’t want to hear it. They took her to the Brave Cave, ordered her to fully undress, and made her spread her vagina to officers who were men, the lawsuit alleges.

Police ultimately released Brown without having booked her with a crime, according to Thompson, as Baton Rouge’s daily newspaper, the Advocate, has previously reported.……

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ouge-warehouse-torture?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other