Can you imagine a world without heavily armed goons with no accountability? Without the men and women in uniform we wouldn’t have no-knock drug raids leaving trails of dead family pets in their wake. And we all know that the police are a critical component of most city’s attempt to “fix” their homeless problem by making the lives of homeless people so miserable they migrate elsewhere. Proving once again that police are not held accountable and you can beat the charges but you can’t beat the ride a homeless man got to enjoy a night in jail because he had the audacity to charge his phone in a park electrical outlet:
SARASOTA – A homeless man spent the night in jail Sunday after police arrested him for charging his cellphone in a public picnic shelter at Gillespie Park.
Darren Kersey, 28, was charged with theft of utilities after Sarasota Police Sgt. Anthony Frangioni spotted him charging his phone at about 9:20 p.m. Sunday. Unable to come up with the $500 bail for the misdemeanor, Kersey had no choice but to stay in jail.
In his arrest report, Frangioni wrote that he told Kersey that the “theft of city utilities will not be tolerated during this bad economy.” Frangioni also told Kersey that he should charge his phone at local shelters, according to the report.
But Monday morning Circuit Judge Charles Williams threw the case out, saying Frangioni lacked the legal justification to make the arrest.
Some would point to the fact that the charges were dismissed as an example of the system working. But the system still allowed a police officer to kidnap a man and hold him in a cage without any consequences. That is a major issue with our “justice” system. The officer, in my seldom humble opinion, should be fired immediately at the very least and realistically charged with kidnapping and unlawful detainment or whatever crimes you and I would be charged with for this kind of behavior.
But he won’t because he wears a magical liability shield and the person he wronged was homeless and therefore somebody hated by the state.