According to a recent civil rights complaint filed in the Southern District of Texas, a disabled man’s drive to the corner shop with his legally blind nephew swiftly devolved into a horrific instance of police abuse.
Last Wednesday, Terrence Holland, 47, sued six officers from the Houston Police Department: John C. Fisher, Antonio Jose Otero, Aaron Parr, Lucia Gracia, R. Hernandez, and Julian M. Montemayor. They allegedly fabricated charges, assaulted, dragged, and tasered him many times in a minute while he was defenseless and wailing in agony, according to the petition.
All six—including Hernandez, Montemayor, and Fisher—were charged with concealing the violence by fabricating their accounts of the events, while Otero, Parr, and Gracia are accused of engaging in excessive use of force.
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City Attorney Arturo Michel informed the Landing that although his agency had not yet been asked to represent the police, they would examine the issue and make a decision regarding representation as soon as they got the petition.
When contacted by phone, Otero refused to comment on the lawsuit. Attempts to get in touch with the other cops were not immediately answered.
According to the lawsuit, Holland, who has a number of physical, mental, and cognitive impairments, claimed that after being pulled over a block from his Houston home in late December 2019, he was subjected to a pile-on by several police officers, causing him significant physical and psychological harm.
According to the complaint filed on Wednesday, he stated in the suit that he sought to raise awareness of the widespread police violence against Black and disabled persons in particular. According to court filings, Holland, who is Black, has difficulty swallowing food, is unable to stand for extended periods of time, and needs home health care assistance for basic tasks.
Through his attorney, Shirley LaVarco, Holland told the Landing that anyone else could experience this. This is what I survived to say. They were attacking me like that that day, and I could have died.
Following nearly two years of several court reschedulings due to the coronavirus pandemic, the charge against Holland was dismissed at court.
A representative for HPD referred inquiries to the city legal office and declined to comment on the case.
An errand gone wrong
The petition states that on December 19, 2019, at approximately 11 p.m., Holland left his house to drive his blind nephew to the corner store when he was stopped by HPD officer Otero. He contacted his ex-girlfriend, who came outside to record the incident out of concern for his safety.
At first, Otero told Holland he was under arrest, says the filing, and explained that he had been pulled over for a license or registration issue. The complaint claims that when Holland informed the police he was unarmed, the officer touched him down.
However, the lawsuit claims that Otero became irate and eventually radioed in for more units after Holland requested a supervisor. When backup police officers Lucia Gracia and Aaron Parr arrived, they discovered Holland reiterating his request for a supervisor while standing composedly with his hands raised to show that he was not a threat.
According to the lawsuit, Otero did not seek cover or take any other action that would indicate he was afraid for his safety or the safety of others.
At that point, according to the lawsuit, Parr and Gracia allegedly started kicking and punching him, dragging him to the ground without warning, and using drive-stun mode—where a taser is used in direct contact with a person rather than firing probes from a distance—Parr fired his taser at Holland for the first time without warning.
According to the lawsuit, this was against HPD policy, which forbids using a taser on someone who is not resisting or who is merely displaying passive resistance, as was the case with Mr. Holland.
The document claims that Otero assisted the defendants in continuously punching, kicking, and hitting Mr. Holland with their hands, fists, elbows, and knees before dragging him across a neighbor’s grass and tasing him once again.
According to HPD policy, when an officer decides to use force, they must carefully consider the specific facts and circumstances of each case, such as the seriousness of the crime, whether the suspect immediately endangers the officer’s or others’ safety, and whether the suspect is actively resisting arrest or trying to flee in order to avoid being arrested.
According to the lawsuit, Holland’s girlfriend sobbed as the officers kept tasing him while he writhed and cried out in agony.
You’re attempting to murder him! The lawsuit claims that Lisa Reyes yelled at officers as they intermittently applied the electric device on Holland for almost one minute following the initial shock.
Reyes shouted that Holland was incapacitated and pleaded with the officers to stop, according to the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, two additional HPD officers, R. Hernandez and Julian Montemayor, showed up at the scene but did nothing to stop it. Instead, Hernandez asked Reyes to cease recording and then arrested her. Holland’s nephew was also taken into custody by Montemayor in a police car.
Holland was ultimately taken into custody and charged with assault on a police officer rather than a license or registration violation. According to the lawsuit, Otero acknowledged that he purposefully and repeatedly slapped his elbow into Mr. Holland’s head and face, scraping his own elbow on his teeth.
The whole story
The Houston Landing was informed by Douglas Griffith, head of the Houston Police Officers Union, that he is eager to learn the truth.
Every time a taser is deployed, it is subjected to multiple levels of scrutiny, Griffith noted in a text message. After five years, the majority of agencies remove body camera footage. However, we don’t.
However, Holland’s legal team believes that the lawsuit’s allegations are a part of a larger trend at HPD.
“The experience of Mr. Holland is not an exception,” LaVarco wrote in a statement. For Black and Brown drivers, the Houston Police Department routinely turns routine traffic encounters into traumatic and life-altering events. We demand that Mr. Holland receive justice and that discriminatory traffic stops stop.
Despite making up roughly 23% of Houston’s population, a 2022 examination of HPD statistics revealed that Black drivers were responsible for approximately 42% of stops. Black Houstonians are 29 times more likely than white drivers to be subjected to force during a traffic check, according to a Texas Civil Rights Project analysis.
Griffith noted that following the incident, which occurred five years ago, no complaint had been filed with HPD.
A person can file a complaint with the HPD directly if they think they have been the victim of wrongdoing by an HPD officer. For people who might not feel safe approaching the police directly, Holland instead used an alternative hotline to get in touch with his final attorneys.
It took Mr. Holland some time to find someone who could represent him and get beyond procedural obstacles since he was severely traumatized and has multiple disabilities, LaVarco told the Landing.
Holland filed a pro se lawsuit against the Houston Police Department in 2022, but the action was dropped due to a two-year statute of limitations and the fact that he had sued the incorrect party. According to LaVarco, Holland’s disability gives him the right to an extension in his federal lawsuit, she told the Landing.
Holland asserted that the event led to social avoidance and hypervigilance in order to prevent the onset of symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder following an event that produced psychological trauma and severe emotional suffering.
According to the lawsuit, there were additional physical injuries, including a severely bruised and injured rib cage, a split lip, and torn stitches in Mr. Holland’s ear.
Holland wants people to benefit from his tale.
He remarked, “I want everyone to keep going.”
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