Bizarre, Criminal law, Society

Video: Deaf Man Allegedly Tackled and Choked By Security Personnel As Friend Tries to Intervene

This video (that recently appeared on YouTube) purportedly shows security guards who tackle and put a man in a choke hold after an alarm goes off at a store. However, his friend reportedly tried to show that they were both deaf and that his friend has a receipt. The only account is on YouTube and I am looking for any further information, including the statement from the store.

The poster states:

This is what I know, The two guys who are deaf were in the Clothing store XXI and apparently they were shopping, Staff must have seen them do something to suspect them of stealing, but that doesn’t have any support or facts. . .
There was [sic] who looked to be the manager of XXI that said to turn off the camera because they didn’t want to get exposed for harassing and dealing with a situation that turned sour.

If this account is accurate, the store could face some serious liability in a civil lawsuit from battery to negligence to false imprisonment to possible violations of federal law.

If anyone has any additional corroboration of this story, please send it along.

17 thoughts on “Video: Deaf Man Allegedly Tackled and Choked By Security Personnel As Friend Tries to Intervene”

  1. Woosty’s still a Cat

    You’re right of course. I was being a smart ass. In fact I would say that suing the cops is itself also a way of protecting yourself and society in genereal from bad cop behavior. But only after the fact.

  2. maybe the next deaf person they jump on will have a black belt

    karma’s a bitch

  3. “Heh. I used the word “litigious” and I’m not even a lawyer.”
    ========================================
    I think most cell phone pics and movies are being taken by people or those around them to protect themselves from this kind of brutality. And I don’t understand why that is labeled litigious rather than labelling the gorillas tackling the shoppers as assaultive? ‘Cause this really sets a tone for the upcoming spin…

    I mean, if we’re gonna be all pounce first and sort it out later an all…..

  4. An update to the story says that the man has been charged with robbery and shoplifting (again and always now-days, loading on charges) and is being held on $55K bail.

    His friend seemed pretty insistent about showing the receipts for their purchases, Hispanic name, public embarrassment for the company, possible tort in the matter; is this arrest and charge the corollary to a ‘resisting’ charge whenever the police caught manhandling a citizen? I’d sure like to see a decent story heavy on the facts about this incident.

    http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-deaf-shoppers-tackled,0,6097535.story

  5. Yissil:

    “Heh. I used the word “litigious” and I’m not even a lawyer.”

    ***************

    You’ve unwittingly validated de Tocqueville’s prescient 19th Century observation yet again:

    The influence of legal habits extends beyond the precise limits I have pointed out. Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question. Hence all parties are obliged to borrow, in their daily controversies, the ideas, and even the language, peculiar to judicial proceedings As most public men are or have been legal practitioners, they introduce the customs and technicalities of their profession into the management of public affairs. The jury extends this habit to all classes. The language of the law thus becomes, in some measure, a vulgar tongue; the spirit of the law, which is produced in the schools and courts of justice, gradually penetrates beyond their walls into the bosom of society, where it descends to the lowest classes, so that at last the whole people contract the habits and the tastes of the judicial magistrate. The lawyers of the United States form a party which is but little feared and scarcely perceived, which has no badge peculiar to itself, which adapts itself with great flexibility to the exigencies of the time and accommodates itself without resistance to all the movements of the social body. But this party extends over the whole community and penetrates into all the classes which compose it; it acts upon the country imperceptibly, but finally fashions it to suit its own purposes.

    (Democracy in America, Bk 1, Ch. XVI)

  6. AY,

    But now litigious survivors have cell phones with cameras and YouTube.

    Heh. I used the word “litigious” and I’m not even a lawyer.

  7. I have a very good friend who is almost completely deaf … she wears huge hearing aids, hidden by her hair. I attend a lot of meetings with her and we have an agreement based on her request. Because she doesn’t hear well she often mistakes something someone has said and starts talking … it sounds like nonsense to everybody because it has nothing to do with what was being discussed. When that begins, and I can usually tell within seconds, I give her a sign and she shuts up immediately. I then write her a note and she is saved from embarrassment.

    I gotta tell you it broke my heart to watch this video … especially as the friend kept moving around and gesturing with his hands in a placating manner … the way he would bend down trying to communicate with the guard who had his friend in a choke hold was heart breaking.

  9. LA police are forbidden from using choke holds. I guess it doesn’t apply to security guards.

  14. Actually, if you look at the way he is holding his hands and looking around as he moves away from his seat it does look like he was doing a very bad job of trying to catch the ball. Maybe he got a bad rap on this one.

    I found just yesterday my old, team signed baseball from forever ago. A man my dad worked with caught a foul ball at a Cardinals game. He sat by the dugout for just abut every home game so he was on a bantering basis with the players. He asked if they would sign it and just about everybody in the dugout did including Ozzi Smith. This man had a dozen signed balls so and he would just give them away and he gave that one to my dad. My dad gave it to me I was like 30, but I appreciated the gesture)and told me to hold on to that ball because “THIS YEAR they’re going to win the Pennant” He said that every year but that year they won the World Series. It was a long time coming too 8)

    I packed it away with my stuff and just found it in a box as I was cleaning out my ‘what the h*ll is in here’ collection of boxes. It’s not dated, yellowed, fading, worth nothing as a collectable but it sure brought back some memories.

    It wasn’t summer in St. Louis until you heard Harry Carey calling the game…

  15. Ay just read your comment on the corrections page. Got a song for ya. Message in the lyrics.

  17. Totally off topic except maybe in the outrage department, but here’s the YouTube video of the chivalrous boyfriend bailing out on a screaming foul ball even as his girlfriend gets hit. Not exactly Sir Walter Raleigh-esque.

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