3/28/15
Be sure to read the related articles and watch channel 4 video below
The Inkster police officer (William Melendez) shown beating a motorist following a traffic stop has been involved in 12 lawsuits related to his conduct as an officer over the years, including similar allegations in a civil rights suit now pending in federal court.
According to a Detroit Free Press report…
William Melendez assaulted Deshawn Acklin in a home in Inkster during a drug investigation, according the 2013 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit. As Acklin lay handcuffed face down on the floor, Melendez “began to choke him and beat him until he was unconscious,” and defecated in his pants, according to the suit. Melendez would later claim that Acklin resisted arrest and he was forced to subdue him. Acklin, who was hospitalized for his injuries, was never charged with a crime, even though Inkster police kept him in custody for three days, according to the suit.
Photos in the court file show Acklin with “serious injuries to his head and face.” Acklin was never charged with a crime.
Melendez, a former Detroit police officer, is currently at the center of an investigation into the Jan. 28 beating of motorist Floyd Dent, 57, who was shown being dragged from his 2011 Cadillac, choked and pummeled by Melendez, then Tasered and kicked by other Inkster officers.
Thursday, Inkster Police Chief Vicki Yost said an independent investigation by Michigan State Police is under way.
Vicki Yost
The Acklin case is among 12 federal lawsuits filed against Melendez dating to 1996, alleging, among other things, that he planted evidence, assaulted people in their homes, fabricated police reports, and wrongly arrested people. Some of the suits were dropped, and some settled out of court. In one case, the city of Detroit paid $50,000 to the family of a man shot to death in his kitchen. The suit alleges Melendez — then a Detroit police officer — was involved in the killing.
Melendez also was among eight Detroit police officers indicted by a federal grand jury in 2003 on civil rights violations, charged with fabricating evidence, planting guns and drugs, lying and assaulting people. Federal investigators at the time said Melendez was known on the street as “Robocop.” The officers were acquitted in 2004. Melendez resigned from the Detroit force in September 2007. It is not clear when he joined Inkster.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain refused to throw out the case against Melendez and several other Inkster officers, noting that there was “sufficient evidence that Melendez’s purported actions were objectively unreasonable in light of Acklin’s clearly established constitutional rights.”
Former Police Chief Hilton Napoleon, who resigned last summer after a 31/2-year tenure that included internal strife and two officers’ union votes of no confidence, told the Free Press on Thursday that he’d known officers who would lie under oath.
“I’ve had complaints of Inkster officers taking money off of people and planting drugs,” he said.
“You have officers there that have questionable integrity, and they should not be wearing the badge, and they should not be out there policing people,” Napoleon said, as he’d also said during his time as chief. “You can’t change a person’s heart. And you can’t make a person do the right thing and be moral.”
Napoleon, who is the brother of Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon, said union and administrative bureaucracy made it difficult to fire officers during his short time there.
Unlike some other organizations who have become judge and jury. It is suggested you wait till the investigation is complete then decide personal judgment. It’s also understood…politicians, judges, cops, prosecutors and everyone on the planet lies at some point in their life. Some more than others and most in self preservation scenarios, self glorification and… career boosting… of course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TiLa24PdiKY
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