Megalextoria

The Georgia cop who killed a teenager last month who was allegedly holding a video game controller — not a gun — was fired from her previous job, where she received numerous reprimands, personnel records show.

Euharlee police Cpl. Beth Gatny is on paid administrative leave after the Feb. 14 shooting death of Christopher Roupe, 17, at his home in Bartow County in north Georgia.

Christopher’s family say the Junior ROTC member who wanted to join the Marines was holding a Wii controller when he answered a knock on the door from Gatny and a second cop who were there to serve a warrant on his father. The police affidavit claims Christopher had a pistol in his hand.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation hasn’t yet issued its report saying who’s right.
A police officer shot and killed Christopher Roupe, 17, when he opened the door of his Bartow County, Ga., home on Feb. 14.
Personnel records obtained by NBC station WXIA of Atlanta show Gatny was fired from the police department in Acworth, a suburb of Atlanta, after a 10-year stint there, for failing to report to work. Her claims for disability compensation were rejected as “not medically supported,” according to the records, and she joined Euharlee police nine months ago.

Gatny’s Acworth records also show four car accidents in two years and reprimands for refusing to follow orders and for leaving her weapon with a civilian while she had her picture taken, WXIA reported.

And in an odd parallel to the shooting of Christopher, Gatny was investigated in 2008 for having fired her service weapon at a suspect who was trying to remove his backpack because she believed the suspect was going for a gun, the records show — even though her partner said he never thought the suspect was armed.

Source: Georgia Cop Who Killed Teen Was Fired From Previous Police Job

In May of last year, Bounkham “Baby Bou Bou” Phonesavanh, 19-months-old, was asleep in his crib. At 3:00 am militarized police barged into his family’s home because an informant had purchased $50 worth of meth from someone who once lived there. During the raid, a flash-bang grenade was thrown into the sleeping baby’s crib, exploding in his face.

Beyond the disfiguring wounds on the toddler’s face, the grenade also left a gash in his chest. As a result, Bou lost the ability to breathe on his own and was left in a medically induced coma for days after the incident. Bou was not able to go home from the hospital until July.

No officers were charged for their near-deadly negligence, and the department claimed that they did not know that there were children in the home. They defended their reckless actions by saying that they couldn’t have done a thorough investigation prior to the raid because it “would have risked revealing that the officers were watching the house.”

Now, a nearly $1 million dollar settlement has been reached between the family and the county. One of the terms of the settlement is that the family may not sue individuals involved in maiming their son. Instead of coming from the wallets of the negligent officers, it will come strictly from the taxpayers.

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Medical bills for the treatment of Bou’s injuries are expected to reach $1 million dollars.

In Los Angeles, settlements to resolve lawsuits against the LAPD amount to over one billion dollars a year. Across the country in New York City, a lawsuit is filed every two and a half hours against the NYPD. They are sued so often, in fact, that the city comptroller, Scott Stringer, said that the 2015 budget would have to include $674 million dollars for settlements and judgments against the police. The budget allotted for police negligence and misconduct is more than the budget for the Parks Department, Department of Aging, and the New York Public Library combined.

In October of last year, documents released by the New York City Law Department after a FOIA request was submitted by MuckRock showed over 12,000 cases against the NYPD since 2009. Over $428,000,000 was paid in settlements in these cases over only five years.

Full article: http://thefreethough … cover-medical-bills/