Horrific: 12-Year Old Girl Beaten By Police for 'Resisting Arrest'

By Jill Filipovic, Feministe

This is horrific.

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.

So plain-clothed police officers beat up a little girl who they were wrongly arresting, and now the girl and her father are the ones in trouble for trying to defend her?

Dymond and her father did exactly what most people would do in that situation -- if anything, Dymond was exceptionally brave in fighting back and yelling for help. The fact that she's being criminalized for it is beyond comprehension.

Apparently the Milburns have filed a lawsuit against the police department. Hopefully they're successful.

This case is especially compelling because it involves an innocent 12-year-old girl who did not fit the description of the alleged criminal the police were looking for, and instead was targeted because she happened to have the bad luck of opening her own front door while wearing shorts and being black. But if the allegations against the police are true, it's troubling on an even deeper level -- because it's an illustration of what sex workers face every day, but are rarely able to fight back against.

Police offiers and other people in positions of power can victimize and abuse sex workers with almost no fear of retribution or legal consequence. The police beat up a 12-year-old girl because they thought she was a prostitute, and, if the news report is accurate, have said as much. Had she actually been a prostitute, that treatment would have apparently been acceptable.

The whole story is disgusting. I haven't read anything about the officers being suspended or fired, but I sure hope they're out on their asses for this.

Galbeston Chief of Police, Charles Wiley, can be reached by phone at 409-765-3790, or by email at cwiley@cityofgalveston.org.

Jill Filipovic is a New York-based freelance writer and a law student at NYU. More of her writing is available online at her blog, Feministe.

© 2008 Feministe All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.feministe.us/blog//114505/

House Committee Holds Rove in Contempt!

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/93312/

The campaign to Send Karl Rove to Jail just won a major victory this morning The House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Rove in contempt by a 20-14 vote, and it was your efforts that made this a reality!

Just 12 days ago, we were pointing out Rove's arrogance and blatant disregard for the law when we launched our video and petition drive. But in the last week-and-a-half, you raised over 127,000 signatures, 40,000 of which came within the first 24 hours.

This fervor attracted other progressive groups to our cause, including CREDO Mobile, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, The Nation, Campaign for America's Future, Progress Now, and People for the American Way. And each organization helped gather more signatures for our list—CREDO Mobile and PFAW added tens of thousands of names alone.

The petition drive culminated yesterday, when I headed down to DC in the blistering heat to hand-deliver three boxes worth of signatures to Capitol Hill. Together with Drew Courtney of PFAW and Isaiah Poole of CAF, we took our message to HJC member Linda Sanchez (D-CA), crowding into Sanchez's Longworth House office surrounded by press and congressional staffers.

Sanchez, who has been a true leader in the fight to hold Rove in contempt, was visibly impressed by the sheer number of signatures. "I think it's ridiculous that Karl Rove thinks that he doesn't have to follow the law," Sanchez told me. "And nobody in this country should be above the law." Judging from today's HJC ruling, Sanchez was as good as her word.

Just think of what today's decision today will mean. Until now, Rove's been lying and avoiding questions about his involvement in leaking Valerie Plame's identity, the politicization of the Justice Department, and the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. Just look at his written denials to ranking HJC member Lamar Smith (R-TX), when he refrained from denying that he spoke to longtime confidant Bill Canary, who links Rove to the Siegelman prosecution. Rove has also claimed immunity and touted executive privilege, which doesn't apply in this case.

Now that the decision to hold Rove in contempt will move from the HJC to the full House, however, Rove could be forced to testify under oath or face jail time. That's where you come in. Keep pressuring your elected officials to hold lawbreakers like Rove accountable. Keep contributing to Brave New Films so we can remain ever vigilant in this battle. And keep signing and passing along those petitions, because they obviously can make an impact.

ZP Heller is the editorial director of Brave New Films. He has written for The American Prospect, AlterNet, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Huffington Post, covering everything from politics to pop culture.

© 2008 Brave New Films All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://bravenewfilms.org/93312/

Billy O Goes Ballistic On Inside Edition In The Early 90's

Apparently Mr. O'reilly was given nothing to read on his teleprompter and became belligerent. He then decided that they were going to "do it live", meaning, for Billy at least, that he would have to improvise due to the obvious complete lack of a run-through. Watch for yourself:

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Good Riddance!

Karl Rove - media manipulator, political dirty-trickster, rat-fink bastard - please don't come back. We won't miss you.

Some of us are painfully aware of the fact that you've built a home in the Florida panhandle - The Republican Riviera - and that Jeb Bush will be 59 soon. Please take stock of the damage you've done to the republic thus far, and reconsider dressing up this turkey for the consumption of the living room sheep. They'll buy anything the consensus manufacturing machine tells them to (but you know that).

Perhaps your Machiavellian egoism prevents you from truly viewing your machinations objectively and historically, but you must have some sense of shame, do you not - some sense that all you've accomplished has been done in the most divisive, underhanded fashion. I honestly don't know how you can sleep.

Don't take the fawning adulation and revisionist history of the corporate media to heart. They've always been your bitches. Your legacy will be as tarnished as your soul.