On Independence Day, it’s fitting to check where we are as a nation when it comes to police state tactics.
Clip your seatbelt and let’s travel to Garden Grove.
In mid-October 2016, Abdelnaser Elmansoury, who’d done nothing wrong, found himself unnecessarily pummeled by unapologetic police.
Elmansoury drove to his business on Katella Avenue unaware that a new hire on her first day had arrived first and called 911 to report she was the victim of a crime.
Five Garden Grove cops showed up with guns drawn and asked Elmansoury if he’d been robbed. He said no and was ordered to stay in his office, which he did.
Minutes later, officers Adam Coughran and Jonathan Wainwright, a former Coors Beer salesman, barked contradictory commands at Elmansoury while pointing lethal weapons, including a shotgun, at him.
Even though an unarmed Elmansoury showed no resistance and hadn’t committed any crime, Coughran, who has been paid $174,000 annually by taxpayers, threw him to the floor and violently kneed him repeatedly in the face, according to federal court records inside the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana.
The new hire told the cops they didn’t know what they were doing before Elmansoury was transported to Garden Grove Medical Center, where he was treated for injuries to his right arm, neck and head.
Sincere apology?
Meaningful regret?
Insincere shoulder shrug?
Nope.
Rather than admit the screw up and do the right thing, shameless Garden Grove officials insist the cops deserve immunity for their conduct because they are law enforcement officers.
But, despite their protests, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter this month announced Elmansoury has established a legitimate case and moved the excessive force lawsuit forward to a June 2019 trial date.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.