Department of Public Safety Commissioner Edward Camacho and 10 other DPS officers are being sued in federal court for alleged negligence of duty and failure to protect a person with disability under their custody.<\/p>\n
Steven Parks, through legal counsel David Banes, filed a civil suit against Camacho and his staff yesterday, and is asking for at least $100,000 in compensation, plus punitive damages and attorneys fees.<\/p>\n
Parks asked for a jury trial. He also petitioned the court to issue an injunction directing the defendants to implement procedures to ensure proper training in the future treatment of individuals with disabilities.<\/p>\n
Banes said that his client, who is suffering from post-traumatic stress order, was arrested following an altercation in which he allegedly slashed and punctured a vehicle at Payless store in Garapan on Nov. 24, 2003.<\/p>\n
In the process of the arrest and during custody, the plaintiff said that Camacho and the officers \u201cknew or recklessly disregarded the fact that he [Parks] is emotionally disabled.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plaintiff said the arresting officers failed to search for a concealed weapon from Parks and failed to read him his rights during the arrest.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Department of Correction officers allegedly also failed to do a body search on the suspect.<\/p>\n
The plaintiff said that Parks turned out to have a box-cutter razor knife in his front carrier-belt pouch, which he used to slash himself while under policy custody.<\/p>\n
The plaintiff said Park did it when he began to experience severe stress at the detention cell.<\/p>\n
Park is said to have a history of hurting himself.<\/p>\n
In the last 13 years, the plaintiff said that Park had cut himself so badly that he required the intervention of DPS.<\/p>\n
The plaintiff said that Camacho\u2019s group failure to follow proper police procedures was a deliberate indifference to Park\u2019s safety and health and was discriminatory.<\/p>\n
Banes noted that the police are required to protect defendants from harm, including self-inflicted harm.<\/p>\n
Park has reportedly been released and no formal charges were ever brought against him.<\/p>\n
The plaintiff also noted that after waiting for five months after his arrest, no officers have been reprimanded.<\/p>\n
Such failure, according to Banes, \u201cis outrageous, shocks the conscience, and is unconscionable, entitling plaintiff for punitive damages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Department of Public Safety Commissioner Edward Camacho and 10 other DPS officers are being sued in federal court for alleged negligence of duty and failure to protect a person with disability under their custody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}