Miami Beach pays gay man $75,000 to settle false-arrest case

[MrScorpio]

Miami Beach pays gay man $75,000 to settle false-arrest case; also orders cops not to harass same-sex couples

BY STEVE ROTHAUS and DAVID SMILEY, [e-mail]


The city of Miami Beach on Monday paid a $75,000 settlement to a gay tourist who said he was roughed up, insulted and falsely arrested by two police officers near Flamingo Park in 2009.

“The city paid it. We got the check,” said civil-rights attorney Ray Taseff of Coral Gables, who represented victim Harold Strickland in a federal lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Florida.

“The most important thing to me since that night has been that someone had to be held responsible for what was happening in the city that used to be my home,” Strickland said in a statement.

Last week, the city of Miami Beach announced it was firing officers Frankly Forte and Eliut Hazzi, who had been under investigation by police Internal Affairs and prosecutors since The Miami Herald reported in February 2010 on the incident. Both officers had been hired in 2007.



Read more: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2011/08/miami-beach-pays-gay-man-75000-to-settle-false-arrest-case-also-orders-cops-not-to-harass-same-sex-couples.html#ixzz1U1ue7lou

[Logical]

1. Wow, cops very seldom get fired forvthis stuff! Great news! n-t

[jaxx]

2. Very good news!

And the cops lost their jobs. Maybe this will stop others from harassing people.

[idiotgardener]

3. "Hate mongrels"?!?!

The state of the language and journalism is beyond repair.

More to the point, I wonder if there has ever been a study done on whether incidents/lawsuits like this lead to real changes in police departments or if they just go back to the same old ways. I'd like to think they lead to change but there seems to be a steady supply of similar stories.

[lapfog_1]

4. Maybe they meant "hate mongols"

which would be an obscure reference to the fictional Faber College "Mongols"

[xchrom]

5. Recommend