Colorado officer accused of assaulting woman with dementia thought arrest went 'great,' new video sh
Source: NBC News
The video showed Karen Garner being booked on June 26, 2020, inside the Loveland Police Department.
April 26, 2021, 9:17 PM CDT
By Tim Stelloh
Colorado police officers accused of assaulting a 73-year-old woman with dementia last year are seen in a video released Monday appearing to laugh about the arrest and commenting on the moment when an officer apparently dislocated her shoulder.
The video, which was released by Karen Garner’s lawyer, came from a camera inside the Loveland Police Department and showed her being booked on June 26, 2020.
Lawyer Sarah Schielke said she obtained the video after Garner was charged in the incident with theft, resisting arrest and obstruction.
Those charges were later dismissed, Schielke said, and county authorities launched an independent investigation into allegations of excessive force raised in a federal lawsuit filed by Schielke this month.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/colorado-officer-accused-assaulting-woman-dementia-thought-arrest-went-great-n1265428
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Video: Loveland Cops' Rough Bust of Elderly Woman With Dementia
MICHAEL ROBERTS | APRIL 16, 2021 | 7:46AM
It's been a tough week for Loveland. First came the controversy over a photo of city council member Don Overcash and other white officials wearing Afro wigs while costumed as members of a monkey band. And now, the city and three members of the Loveland Police Department are being sued over the extremely aggressive, injury-inducing arrest last year of Karen Garner, a 73-year-old suffering from dementia who's only five feet tall and weighs eighty pounds.
Accompanying the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court by Loveland-based The Life & Liberty Law Firm on April 14, is surveillance and body-camera footage from the Garner bust. The officers named as defendants are Austin Hopp, Daria Jalali and Philip Metzler.
The suit notes that Garner "suffers from dementia and sensory aphasia, which impairs her ability to communicate and understand." Her condition is emphasized in connection with the reason she originally came to the LPD's attention: On June 26, 2020, she allegedly left a Loveland Walmart without ponying up for a Pepsi, a candy bar, a T-shirt and some Shout Wipe refills cumulatively valued at $13.88. "Forgetting to pay for items at a store is one of the most common and well-known symptoms witnessed in elderly persons suffering from dementia," the document states.
Garner was confronted by an employee as she left the store, then escorted back inside, where the items were confiscated. At that point, Garner tried handing the staffer a credit card, but her offer was rejected — so she exited the store and began walking to her nearby home. En route, she was intercepted by Officer Hopp in a field alongside Mountain Lion Road; she was picking wildflowers, the suit says.
When Garner didn't immediately comply with instructions to stop, for reasons the complaint ascribes to her condition, Hopp is quoted as saying, "I don’t think you want to play it this way. Ma’am, police, stop," before asking, "Do you need to be arrested right now?" Shortly thereafter, the suit states, Hopp "leapt out and physically grabbed Ms. Garner’s left arm, and violently twisted it behind her back. Then he threw her 80-pound body to the ground and climbed on top of her, still inflicting upon her the painful rear wristlock maneuver he was employing to put her in handcuffs."
More:
https://www.westword.com/news/karen-garner-loveland-police-dementia-patient-arrest-video-11946248
= new reply since forum marked as read
and I’m not even on twitter
A guy responding to the footage of them brutalizing Ms Garner wrote, “If that was MY mother, there would be pieces of those cops lying around in every state”
I’m with him 
COLLEEN SLEVIN,
Associated Press
April 26, 2021
Updated: April 26, 2021 9:36 p.m.
DENVER (AP) — A Colorado police officer accused of dislocating the shoulder of a 73-year-old woman with dementia while arresting her seemed to be aware he had injured her. He told fellow officers “ready for the pop?” as he showed them his body camera footage, according to police station surveillance video with enhanced audio that was made public Monday by the woman's lawyer.
Officer Austin Hopp made the comment while showing the other officers the part of the arrest that shows Karen Garner being held against the hood of a patrol car in Loveland, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Denver last year, her handcuffed left arm bent up behind her head. The body camera footage, which can be heard but not seen on the surveillance video, was also previously released by Garner's lawyer.
The videos plus a lawsuit filed against Hopp, other officers and the city and investigations into the arrest came this month amid a national reckoning over the use of force by police against people — including those with mental and physical health conditions.
The surveillance video captured in the Loveland police station shows two other officers, one male and female, watching the footage with Hopp as he makes the “pop” comment. The female officer, who helped during the arrest and says “I hate this.”
More:
https://www.chron.com/news/article/Cop-accused-of-hurting-woman-s-arm-Ready-for-16130361.php#taboola-1
Cops Tackled a Grandma With Dementia Picking Flowers, Bodycam Footage Shows
The officer grabbed the 73-year-old woman, threw her to the grass, and twisted her arms behind her back.
EO
By Emma Ockerman
April 16, 2021, 1:20pm
73-YEAR-OLD KAREN GARNER WAS TACKLED BY POLICE WHO SUSPECTED HER OF SHOPLIFTING FROM A WALMART IN LOVELAND, COLORADO. (PHOTO: LOVELAND POLICE BODYCAMERA FOOTAGE)
A 73-year-old grandmother of nine was picking wildflowers on the side of the road in Loveland, Colorado, last summer when a local cop got out of his patrol vehicle and told her to stop—beginning a police encounter that ultimately left her with broken bones, bruised, and traumatized.
Loveland Police Officer Austin Hopp had been driving behind Karen Garner with his overhead lights on because she was accused of shoplifting from a nearby Walmart. But Garner did not appear to notice, according to body camera footage published by Garner’s attorney Wednesday.
Garner has dementia and sensory aphasia, an inability to understand spoken and written speech, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed on her behalf this week against the city of Loveland and three officers involved in Garner’s arrest.
Hopp asked Garner why she didn’t stop after he activated his lights and siren, at which point Garner gave him a blank expression, said something unintelligible, and started to move away.
“No, no, no,” Hopp said, according to bodycam footage.
Hopp then grabbed the 80-pound woman, threw her to the grass, and twisted her arms behind her back, bodycam footage shows. Garner was still clutching a handful of wildflowers. A second cop, Daria Jalali, arrived within minutes and assisted in the arrest.
More:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8487/cops-tackled-a-grandma-with-dementia-picking-flowers-bodycam-footage-shows
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Loveland officer placed on leave, 2 others reassigned after lawsuit filed in woman's arrest
By: Ryan Osborne Posted at 1:45 PM, Apr 15, 2021 and last updated 4:09 PM, Apr 16, 2021
The suit says when Officer Daria Jalali arrived on scene she, "put her own hands on Ms. Garner to hold her while Officer Hopp continued pushing painfully upward on Ms. Garner’s already-restrained left arm and while also violently touching her all over her body."
Throughout the video the 73-year-old woman is exclaiming, “I’m going home!” to officers.
"It makes you very worried about vulnerable people in the community with a police force like that," said Schielke. "The behavior is indefensible they knew they were being recorded and yet they did it anyway, we have to ask, 'why?'"
Garner was eventually taken to a hospital for treatment. The district attorney’s office completely dismissed the case and charges against her, the law office said. She is currently living in a memory care facility.
More:
https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/front-range/loveland/loveland-officer-placed-on-leave-2-others-reassigned-after-lawsuit-filed-in-womans-arrest
Photo courtesy of Life and Liberty Law Office
Officers Austin Hopp and Daria Jalali are seen fist-bumping each other while discussing the arrest of Karen Garner on June 26, 2020. This newly released surveillance video footage was sent out by Garner’s attorney, Sarah Schielke, in a press release April 26, 2020.
‘Ready for the pop? Hear that pop?’
unnecessary use of force by this law ENFORCEMENT officer.
All I'm saying is that we still have strong secret stigmas against "mental" health disorders, serious personality disorders, and mind disease, inappropriate care boundaries that by other names would seem to be "love" outside the four walls of reality, and that many have made control through manipulation that doesn't come from authentic concern, empathy, or compassion a common practice--mostly to children and to the elderly. We do a lot of blaming the frustrations of those elderly survivors in the progression of disease who once faced so many traumas of loss or activities that make them once again invincible safe children who just want to go home but who will speak to their relatives and others with that untouchable independent spunk, the one that says, "I'm fine dear; I don't need any help yet. You know, no news is good news...silence. Not an excuse for the cop, but think if this shoplifting person had also taken the car keys instead of a walk and remembered driving the Dodge-em at the amusement park...where would the cop have taken aim? Yes, I'm also quite aware that did not happen in this situation as well as the likely reason it would not have - still, an unacceptable use of force!!!
I also realize there are many elderly at home without daily social communications from family and/or friends. Maybe their dis-ease chases everyone away? My state mandates familial financial assistance that is rarely enforced for good reason; it's rarely wanted by either of the parties--I'm a senior that is as frantic as the kids about costs - activities of daily living are now financially rougher - we had a good plan I think but others had theirs. What was lost over the mainly GOP years of "nothing personal; just business," meeting the costs when one marries an "only adult child"...haha, 
,now he's just an adult child orphan (51st anniversary coming up in late fall) but we no longer own a home, we make one of a rental, inflexible bad role models on both family sides; meeting the exponential costs of higher education, and the ridiculous need for retirement savings. I work everyday to dispel bitterness and find, at last, a little hope...that we'll be able to leave behind disrespect, frustration, ego, and hate!
Haven't run into taking away the car keys yet...just wait a bit. Caveat: I sure hope YEMV!
The tendencies are probably there in all of us, to some extent.
But training that is legitimatized by a society determined to maintain white privilege by ANY MEANS brings the brutal and sadistic tendencies out. And constant exposure to other's with like attitudes in an environment that condones and encourages brutality continually reinforces the mind washing.
This is by intent. US society has encouraged and legitimized this systemic and violent behavior - and most people support it because the meme is continually pushed through the MSM that aggressive police are 'good' for society.
White Folk have demonized 40% of our population (soon to be 51% in around 15 years) for 400 years; and put the brutal enforcers of that demonization on pedestals and showered them with respect and flowers.
Instead, the innocent oppressed have been demonized by society.
And most POC have to a large extent bought into this enshrinement of police blue as 'respectable' over the past few centuries, since they 'protect' the 'law abiding' from the violence that the exact same systemic racism has caused in their impoverished communities.
Only the righteous rebellious like Dr. King, Malcolm X, Rep Lewis, Bob Marley, BLM, Stacey Abrams, and others of like countenance have continued to fight against this misplaced trust in authority, god bless their hearts and souls.
