cop throws preg. woman to ground, hog ties her, for talking on cellphone while driving

[dixiegrrrrl]

Woman sues and gets 250,000.

The California Highway Patrol has agreed to a settlement of the recent case of a pregnant driver, Tamara Gaglione, 30, being hogtied by police after being stopped for talking on her cellphone. Gaglione will receive a $250,000 settlement.

The video ( video at link) shows Gaglione weaving between lanes before being stopped. The officers claimed that she raised her arms in a menacing manner. However, the video shows Gaglione not responding to instructions to throw out her keys and put her hands on the van. Instead she just stares at the officers who have their guns drawn. One officer then kicks out her legs and pushing her to the ground. One officer appears to kick Gaglione while she is on the ground and before she was hogtied. Police told her lawyer initially that there was no video and her attorney says that he was only shown the video after he persisted in his demands.

She was charged with evading arrest and driving on a suspended license. Those charges were dismissed and Gaglione pleaded no contest to using a cellphone while driving.

Officer Daniel Hernandez says that he kneed the woman in an effort to distract her so that his partner, Officer Roberto Martinez, could handcuff her. The officers say that it was Gaglione who escalated the incident to violence by raising her arms in a menacing fashion . . . in front of officers with their guns drawn.

http://jonathanturley.org/2013/01/23/california-highway-patrol-settles-case-of-pregnant-woman-being-thrown-to-ground-and-hogtied-after-talking-on-her-cellphone-while-driving/#more-59596

[uponit7771]

1. eating while driving is causes 80% of ALL traffic accidents (link)

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/eating-driving-80-car-accidents-study-shows-article-1.427796

...don't know why this guy would react like this to someone on the cell phone

[dipsydoodle]

4. Some things never change

[d_r]

27. hey

I think the authors of that NY Daily News article made some sort of mistake. I'm not sure what the mistake was, but I don't think that 80% number is accurate. They wrote that in 2009, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (which the authors cite as the source of that statistic):

"18% of injury crashes in 2010 were reported as distraction-affected crashes."

Distraction-affected crashes included:

Texting
Using a cell phone or smartphone
Eating and drinking
Talking to passengers
Grooming
Reading, including maps
Using a navigation system
Watching a video
Adjusting a radio, CD player, or MP3 player

link: http://www.distraction.gov/content/get-the-facts/facts-and-statistics.html

I can't imagine any way that eating while driving could cause 80% of all accidents in 2009, then a year later be a part of a group of distraction factors that affected 18% of crashes in 2010. In less there were that many non-injury crashes, which still is hard to think of it swinging the numbers that significantly. I couldn't find a mention of the 80% figure.

[99Forever]

2. Video...

... the dirty, brutalizing cops worst enemy.

[srican69]

3. I hate cops ... they get to retire at 47 with a 100 k pension ...

all they do is sit in a car all day and eat donuts ...

[bigwillq]

8. Let's get real

That's not all they do. They put their lives on the line every day. Yes, there are some bad eggs out there, and when they do something like this, we hear about it because it's posted all over the web and in every news report.
We often don't see a lot of the good that cops do on a daily basis.

[srican69]

12. I see that often enough ...

for eg if you have a water line being repaired on the road ..and sure enough there will be a cop car with the lights on ..... the cops sits in the car for days ..... what a useless job for a grown man to do !!!! ..

all this is to rack up overtime in the last year before retiring ... that makes my city taxes close to $10,000 a year (and going up ... it was $8,000 couple years ago)

I live in a small town in NJ ... trust me the cops here dont do squat ... they laze around and file reports ....

[Dawson Leery]

13. What you say is true.

Coppers in the New York City/North Jersey area are of the most overpaid in the nation.
Ever wonder why taxes are so high on Long Island?

[Sekhmets Daughter]

5. 6 men to restrain one unarmed woman...WTF?

I'm all for law an order, but this is absurd.

[Mariana]

30. 6 cops and not one of them tried to stop the abuse.

It's the same as every other video of police brutality out there. If there's more than one cop on the scene and abuse takes place, ALL of them participate. Every single time.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

33. Yep...

disgusting behavior.

[Bennyboy]

6. Unusual for HP officers in CA...

usually they are the good guys, not jerks. So let's not paint all CHP officers with the same brush.

[DogPawsBiscuitsNGrav]

10. It gets harder to not paint them all as jerks when several of these kinds of stories come out almost

daily. You'll also notice the news reports and videos almost always show between 2 and 5 cops on these innocent people at one time. That's a lot of bad cops out there running around thinking it's ok to beat or murder your loved ones for raising their hand the wrong way.

[kestrel91316]

14. They're obviously starting to take their cues from LAPD.

[frylock]

18. they are, traditionally, the easiest LEOs to deal with..

not this time evidently.

[Politicalboi]

28. They're jerks

I got a ticket one day from a CHP asshole. I was NOT speeding. I always speed, I admit it. But that day I was not speeding at 83 mph. Besides, there was another car in front of me, and we both saw the cop on the side of the road. He got on his motorcycle, and pulled me over. Total asshole. I just wish I would have fought it. I moved 4 hours away from the Valencia court house, and didn't want to risk getting another ticket on the way. As things were, I was going into Lancaster to check up on a camera red light ticket when I got this one on the Antelope Valley 14 freeway. My brother had the same thing happen to him recently, and he has an expensive radar detector that didn't go off when the cop supposedly clocked him. Those CHP's on the 14 are cheaters and thieves.

[Dawson Leery]

7. Fire them and take their bloated pensions away!

[TeamPooka]

20. The money the state paid out to this woman should come from the officers paychecks.

[lpbk2713]

9. Driving while gestating cannot be condoned.

[datasuspect]

11. for cellphone use or texting while driving?

good.

i'd hogtie all of them and slap them with $5000 fines and jail time.

[nick of time]

15. Article says so far there's no indication of any disciplinary actions

against the officers.
This is exactly why cops believe that they can brutalize the general population even with video of them doing it, because they know that 9 times out of 10, nothing more than a mild rebuke will happen.

[ecstatic]

16. Poor lady. She appears to have been oblivious to how they were stalking her

When she finally realized it and heard them yelling, she must have been terrified and too shocked to respond appropriately. I'm glad she received a settlement; I hope that one day we will see similar compensation given to non-white victims of police brutality.

[Mariana]

31. She may not have been able to make out what they were saying

over the sound of the traffic.

[frylock]

17. fuck tha police..

and, to a lesser degree, idiots yakking on their cell phones while driving.

[TeamPooka]

19. these guys still have their badges and that's the real crime here. nt

[nick of time]

21. So it's ok to throw a pregnant woman to the ground,

hog tie her for the dastardly crime of talking on a cell phone while driving? And to top it off, it's ok for the cops to lie about how it really happened, or to lie about no dash cam video?
These cops should have been fired and the city should have been made to pay out a hell of a lot more money.

[TeamPooka]

22. i agree and whoever lied about the video should be fired too.

conspiracy to cover up the truth.

[nick of time]

24. I misunderstood what your earlier post was about.

My bad and I apologize for the misunderstanding. Here, have a beer on me.

[TeamPooka]

25. no worries mate

[Mariana]

32. I don't agree.

Whoever lied about the video should be fired and prosecuted.

[Iggo]

23. Yay, Cops!

Thay're the best!

[One_Life_To_Give]

26. Brain Dead?

For gods sake she changes lanes more than once with a set of flashing lights on her rear bumper and doesn't notice? Why does this woman still have a license?

Yes cops should be in trouble for taking her down so. And she should never be allowed on the road again? Menace to everyone else on the road.

[Mariana]

34. Because the asshole cops didn't ticket her for that.

They could have written her up for a number of things she actually did, but they preferred to make up false charges instead.

[Politicalboi]

29. She should have got more than $250,000

Using her phone in bumper to bumper traffic is not going to cause a horrific accident. Granted it is against the law, but was she really a danger in that situation? Having that fat assed cop kneeling on her must have been painful.

[RandiFan1290]

35. Pig Rage!