Texas cop gets community service for destroying woman's eyeballs with pepper spray

[left-of-center2012]

Texas cop gets community service for destroying woman’s eyeballs with pepper spray because she ‘annoyed’ him

A former Texas police officer was sentenced to community service after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge related to the blinding of a woman he arrested for drunken driving. Enoch “Jeremy” Clark pleaded guilty this month to one count of assault by a public officer, and felony use-of-force charge was dismissed was dismissed as part of a plea agreement.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge John Molloy sentenced Clark on Monday to 1,440 hours of community service in the case. Prosecutors said Clark, a Beaumont police officer at the time, became “annoyed” when 32-year-old Monique Hernandez resisted his attempts to place her in handcuffs during a Feb. 21, 2012, arrest.

Clark fired a JPX pepper-spray gun about 10 inches from the woman’s face — which sliced her right eyeball in half, fractured her right orbital bone, and severed the optic nerve in her left eye — and prosecutors said Hernandez had done nothing to justify the gunpowder-powered device. Beaumont police train officers not to fire the pistol-shaped device, which has a muzzle velocity of 400 mph, less than 5 feet from a target.

Clark’s first trial, in 2014, ended with a hung jury after two jurors held out for acquittal, and a second trial was ended after six days in 2017 over an unspecified issue related to evidence shared between both the prosecution and the defense.

https://tinyurl.com/y8lgy2de

[uponit7771]

1. Because she "annoyed" him ?! They settled for 18.5 million in 2014 which the city & their insurance

... are paying for still.

At what point are these thug ass'd cops going to be held accountable.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Sure hope she goes for a super award through a civil suit against

both Enoch and the BPD.

[mitch96]

3. And what would happen if she sprayed HIM ?

An "eye for an eye"... ?? How much money is your eye sight worth??
m

[thucythucy]

4. I often wonder about "community service."

I gather sometimes that means picking up trash by the side of the highway, which in this case would certainly be more than justifiable.

But when it means, for instance, working at a shelter for homeless people or serving in a food pantry, I recoil at the thought of inflicting an asshole like this on people in need.

In such cases it seems to me to be just another instance of punishing those (and by that I mean the people who need services) who have already been punished by circumstance.