12 Year Old African American Girl Beaten And Arrested By Galveston Texas Police Who Mistook Her For A White Prostitute

I know, I normally don't do this for stories outside of the Seattle area... But... Offered in it's entirety from the Houston Press blog via Radley Balko's The Agitator with the only comment being some tidbits about the lawyers involved... and that I think I'm going to be ill.

"It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.

As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."

Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.

As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galveston police officers who had been called to the area regarding three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black drug dealer.

All this is according to a lawsuit filed in Galveston federal court by Milburn against the officers. The lawsuit alleges that the officers thought Dymond, an African-American, was a hooker due to the "tight shorts" she was wearing, despite not fitting the racial description of any of the female suspects. The police went to the wrong house, two blocks away from the area of the reported illegal activity, Milburn's attorney, Anthony Griffin, tells Hair Balls.

After the incident, Dymond was hospitalized and suffered black eyes as well as throat and ear drum injuries.

Three weeks later, according to the lawsuit, police went to Dymond's school, where she was an honor student, and arrested her for assaulting a public servant. Griffin says the allegations stem from when Dymond fought back against the three men who were trying to take her from her home. The case went to trial, but the judge declared it a mistrial on the first day, says Griffin. The new trial is set for February.

"I think we'll be okay," says Griffin. "I don't think a jury will find a 12-year-old girl guilty who's just sitting outside her house. Any 12-year-old attacked by three men and told that she's a prostitute is going to scream and yell for Daddy and hit back and do whatever she can. She's scared to death."

Since the incident more than two years ago, Dymond regularly suffers nightmares in which police officers are raping and beating her and cutting off her fingers, according to the lawsuit.

Griffin says he expects to enter mediation with the officers in early 2009 to resolve the lawsuit.

We've got calls in to the officers' lawyer; we'll let you know if we hear something.

Update:
This is from the officers' lawyer, William Helfand:

Both the daughter and the father were arrested for assaulting a peace officer. "The father basically attacked police officers as they were trying to take the daughter into custody after she ran off."

Also, "The city has investigated the matter and found that the conduct of the police officers was appropriate under the circumstances," Helfand says. "It's unfortunate that sometimes police officers have to use force against people who are using force against them. And the evidence will show that both these folks violated the law and forcefully resisted arrest.""

Some somewhat interesting asides to this case include that the lawyer defending the cops, William Helfand, is a member of the libertarian-leaning Federalist Society that exists, supposedly, to increase individual freedoms and liberties... all this despite his penchant for defending bad cops and writing articles about how an absence of malice should negate police brutality claims since at least 1998.

Also interesting is that the lawyer representing the young girl and her family, Anthony Griffin, was essentially fired from the NAACP in 1993 for agreeing to represent a KKK Grand Dragon in a civil rights free speech case at the request of the Texas State ACLU, even though he himself is African-American.

The reason he gave for accepting that case was that "If I don't protect their rights to free speech, I won't have any rights either." Now that's a lawyer who's all about defending constitutional rights.

Hope he wins this case.