White Collective Power/White Supremacy = When a white police officer body slams an unarmed Latino Woman on her face and his fellow officers, the police chief, internal affairs, the union, jurors support, defend, and finance that white police officer’s “right” to brutalize her. [MORE] Would a non-white cop get an acquittal & promotion after assaulting a white woman?
From [HERE] A white city police officer cleared of body-slamming a 44-year-old Latino woman to the ground in an incident captured on videotape nearly six years ago was promoted to sergeant Thursday.
Wayne Simoes (in photo 2nd on left), a 13-year veteran of the Yonkers Police Department, was elevated in a City Hall ceremony by Police Commissioner Charles Gardner and Mayor Michael Spano. His new job pays $96,174.
In March 2007, Irma Marquez’ niece was hit with a bottle at La Fonda restaurant in Yonkers, New York. EMTs were called, and Marquez, a middle-aged home health aide, was also trying to tend to her niece, bending over her while the EMTs were working. An officer took Marquez gently by the arm and backed her up, and she accidentally stepped on the foot of another officer. At that point Yonkers police officer Wayne Simoes approached and shoved Marquez’ shoulder. Marquez apparently objected to being shoved, and Simoes grabbed her by the waist, lifted her in the air and slammed her face-first into the ceramic tile floor before handcuffing her. Police then arrested her. The whole incident was captured on security video.
Marquez was knocked unconscious. She suffered a broken jaw, concussion, two black eyes and facial lacerations and extensive bruising and had to be hospitalized for four days.
White City prosecutors sided with Simoes, deciding to paper the case and charged her with obstruction of governmental administration and disorderly conduct. After a jury acquitted her this May, she filed an $11.3 million dollar lawsuit against the police department. [MORE]
A jury of eight men and four women deliberated for a little more than five hours and acquitted him of violating her civil rights. "We watched the video and we watched the frame-by-frame," Jhonna Van Dunk, jury foreperson said, "and we could not determine that he intended to hurt her."
Apparently white people can see a video of a cop body slamming a non-white woman to the ground and still give the cop the benefit of the doubt. [MORE]
Simoes also credited his fellow officers with standing by him after the Marquez incident.
“The guys were behind me,” Simoes said. “The guys know what type of person I am. I am not how I was being depicted in the news. … It was unfair.”
Yonkers Detective Keith Olson, president of the Yonkers Police Benevolent Association, said “How could you deny him (the promotion)? It stinks for him that it is going to be controversial. The feds took him to trial and he was acquitted.”
Simoes, Gardner said, was second on the sergeant’s promotion list.
“After a careful review, I believe it appropriate that he be promoted and being given an opportunity to move on with his life,” Gardner said.