Rad Geek People's Daily

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Rapists in uniform

Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 16 years ago, in 2008, on the World Wide Web.

Trigger warning. The following videos of two local news stories may be triggering for experiences of sexual assault.

(Via J.H. Huebert @ LewRockwell.com Blog 2008-02-03 and Balloon Juice 2008-02-03.)

Hope Steffey, 47, of Salem, Ohio, is suing for compensation from a gang of men and women who raped her.

In October 2006, in Salem, Ohio, Steffey, 47, was assaulted by one of her cousins in a domestic dispute and knocked unconscious. The family called 911 for help; a sheriff’s deputy named Officer Richard T. Gurlea came out to the house to do some serving and protecting. He asked Hope Steffey for ID, and she mistakenly gave him the wrong driver’s license — one of her late sister’s old licenses, which she kept in her wallet as a memento after her sister died. The cop noticed that it was the wrong license, and, after he got the right one, he refused to give Steffey back her sister’s old license. When she became distraught and pleaded with him to give back the license, Officer Richard T. Gurlea, sanctimoniously instructed her to calm down, ran a criminal check on her real license (which came back completely clean), demanded to search her car, still refused to give her back her keepsake, and finally, public servant that he is, snapped back Shut up about your dead sister. Now treating Steffey, the victim of a violent crime who had called for his help and protection, as if she were herself a criminal, he escalated the confrontation, and, when Hope Steffey dared to point at the pocket where he was holding her keepsake and to shout at him about how important it was to her, Officer Richard T. Gurlea courageously defended himself by grabbing the assault victim he had been dispatched to help, slamming her face-down on the hood of his car, and shouting are you going to stop? Then he threw her down, pinned her to the ground, and handcuffed her. Then he arrested her for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, and took her to the Stark County jail. This is what happened after she was locked up in the jail:

While they were booking her, one of the guards asked her Have you thought about harming yourself? The purpose of this question is in order to give the jailers an opportunity to label you as crazy for legal purposes, which, in their minds, is reason enough to inflict on you absolutely any kind of cruelty, violence, or invasion of your privacy, and then, to crown all, to turn around and call your torture and humiliation a precaution taken For Your Own Safety. Bewildered and brutalized, Hope Steffey asked for clarification: Now or ever? In this case, apparently the jailers figured that that was close enough for government work, so what they did was get a gang of male and female guards to surround Hope Steffey and drag her to a cell, then have least two male officers pin her down and hold her arms (she was still handcuffed throughout the ordeal) while female officers stripped her naked and searched her over her screams of protest. After this sadistic sexual assault, they left her locked in her cell, totally naked, without even a blanket to cover herself. She eventually wrapped herself in toilet paper from her cell’s commode, in a desperate effort to keep herself warm and regain a little bit of privacy.

Hope Steffey has filed suit in federal court against the Gurlea, sheriff Tim Swanson, and fifteen unnamed jail guards. Here’s how the sheriff’s office has responded:

In a written response to the lawsuit, Swanson and his deputies deny wrongdoing and maintain the arresting deputy, Richard T. Gurlea Jr., and others at the jail are allowed to use reasonable force to make an arrest and protect prisoners in their custody.

The department does not deny that Steffey was stripped of her clothes and left naked in a cell for six hours.

The defense has asked a judge to dismiss the claims.

— Canton Repository (2008-02-02): Sheriff responds to strip-search video

Tim Swanson’s idea of reasonable force and protecting prisoners may be different from yours. If so, you can share your thoughts with him at his office phone number, (330) 430-3800.

There’s a lot more that I might say about this, if I were able to keep on typing. But honestly I can’t. I first learned about this case yesterday, but to write this post I watched the videos over again and I now am shaking so badly with anger and despair that I just can’t keep banging on with the usual stuff. If you want analysis, it’d be about what I said in Rapists on patrol, Law and Orders #6: Pigs at the trough, and Corrections officers; if you imagine this is Yet Another Isolated Incident, then compare it with the more or less identical treatment of Beryl Wilson, Michael Moran, and Ricardo Montalvo by the Kalamazoo City Police, or, Christ, just google around for a few minutes until you’re satisfied. But I’m not about to dignify the fucking pigs in Stark County, or their hordes of freelance sado-fascist police enablers — fouling any Internet or media outlet they can find with putrefying excuses like She gave him a fake ID! She went psycho! They did what they had to to carry out their policies! She’s just poisoning the well so she can shake them down in court! etc. — by pretending as if there were any need, or any room, for debating this. It’s obvious, and it’s caught on tape, and there is no possible excuse. Those who are willing to stand up, in the name of Law and Order and Official Procedures, for officially-sanctioned gang rape, have already done much more to reveal the absolute depravity of their position than anything I could ever say.

Further reading:

Update 2008-02-06: I made some minor revisions to one sentence for grammar and clarity.

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  1. angryyoungwoman

    That video was terrifying. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to call the police again.

    I hope you keep us updated on this. I want to know how the case ends up for her.

  2. nath

    What the fuck do they think they’re doing?

    By the way Charles, it does occur to me that aside from the institutional problems of the police, the fact that they do deal with some real scumbags for much of the time may twist their behaviour further.

    However, even my friend and I in idly surfing the internet in the UK find many incidences of the police being called by parents for really minor reasons, and the fact that the police actually bother to turn up seems odd.

    In the US there seems to be an interacting problem between the police behaving like thugs and people’s willingness to call them out unnecessarily. This gives the cops even more excuses to find ways of beating people up, for their own good of course…

  3. Laura J.

    Who gives a shit whether or not this was done “by the book”? What fucking book could justify this treatment of a woman?

  4. Rad Geek

    angryyoungwoman,

    I’ve got a Google News tracker on the story. I’ll keep y’all posted on anything I find.

    nath,

    I’m sure that having to deal with genuine criminals as part of your profession will tend to give you more reasons to adopt an attitude of hardened aggressiveness. To the extent that’s true, it’s a universal danger of professionalized protection services, and a reason to be at least suspicious of, if not hostile to, any manifestation of them, no matter what the political context. There are certainly other, informal, less-confrontational, non-professional, etc. ways of getting the legitimate work of defending you and yours without them, and I suspect that in a free society we would have every reason to seek those other ways more often than we seek hired muscle or institutionalized jails.

    But, on the other hand, I think there’s more going on here than that. After all, cops also have to deal with innocent crime victims all the time, as part of their job, so I think the choice of the scumbags as your model for how to treat people in everyday interactions, rather than the innocents that your job is supposedly to protect, should tell you something about the way they are trained and encouraged to view the rest of the world (whom they now routinely refer to as civilians).

    Of course, one excuse that police-enablers are inevitably going to bring up is that miscategorizing the innocent victims isn’t likely to get you hurt or killed, whereas miscategorizing the genuine criminals can. (Cf. Jeremy’s post at Social Memory Complex on the behavioral traits that cop-trainers tell cops will get them killed.) But if that’s the argument that’s being made (and the context in which it is made merits some kind of reply other than the derisive snort that most of this stuff mainly deserves), then I think the thing to point out is (1) that the fact that hassling or brutalizing innocent victims has no real personal consequences for police officers is part and parcel of the problem here, and (2) the deliberate decision, by armed and trained professionals, to err in favor of shoving around, hurting, and torturing the very people whose safety they supposedly signed up to protect, just so that cops can better avoid taking on risks to their own safety, is absolutely despicable. If you are going to choose a line of work that involves taking on danger to protect others, and sanctimoniously lecture everyone about it, then that actually means taking on risks in order to make sure that nobody, not even you, is hurting or endangering innocent people. The belligerent macho flash that police-militarists routinely bring out to excuse or justify this kind of behavior is really nothing more than an expression of the most stinking cowardice.

    As for mutual reinforcement, I think I agree with you; and I’d take it a step further. The increasing police presence in even the smallest or most intimate day-to-day conflicts has a lot to do with an increasing cultural shift towards complete dependence on State-sponsored armed factions for every-day matters of self-defense and vindication of rights. The less that we, or trusted advocates known to us, are able take up the task of defending ourselves — which is something that’s happening for both legal and cultural reasons — the more we become directly dependent on professional cliques of armed strangers. And the more that we become dependent on them, the more contemptuous and overbearing they become. Although that applies to everybody, it will apply especially harshly to those who are marked out by the prevailing cultural and legal orders as especially deviant or criminal — e.g. poor people, black men, immigrants, teenagers, certain people labeled as crazy — and also to those who are marked out as especially helpless and therefore in need of the cops’ domineering protection — e.g. women, children, certain people labeled as crazy, etc. In any case, the more contemptuous and overbearing the professional Protectors become, the more they push for further legal restrictions and further cultural shifts that reinforce our dependence on them, on the assumption that we can’t be trusted to do it for ourselves. And around and around it goes, at least until we do something creative and forceful to break out of this political and cultural death-spiral.

    Laura,

    Official Department Procedures see all, know all, and justify all. They protect us and they guide us. They speak to us of times of peace and of times of war. They are like the spring rains and the noontime sun. Their mercy is like drops of milk on a parched tongue. Their wrath is like a great whirlwind and the roar of the thunder. They are written in letters of fire upon the heart of every good police officer. Not one sentence of them is false. Not one word is misplaced. Not one letter can be changed. Your lack of faith in The Book grieves the Official Department Procedures.

    One of the things I didn’t discuss about this story is that the gang-rape-search did in fact violate the black-letter text of the sheriff’s department internal policies on strip-searches (in that male guards were present during the strip-search). That will, I hope, help Hope Steffey’s case in court. But I don’t think it’s very important in any other context. If the policies said something different, they couldn’t possibly make this one bit less of an atrocity, and even if the pigs had followed their own policies to the letter — i.e. by treating Hope Steffey exactly the same way, but with an all-female gang pinning her down for the strip-search — that would hardly have made it O.K.

  5. erich

    FYI.. I came across the video of the action in the cell at another web site. By googling her name, I came across your site. That’s just to tell you how I saw the video…It is now GONE from You Tube. SOMEONE got to them and had them remove both vids… Too many folks seeing their gestapo tactics and it’s getting a bit warm???

  6. Peter Bj?@c3;b8;rn Perls?@c3;b8;

    I wonder when people will be so fed up with the state, its politicians and their “protectors” – the police – that they will actually retaliate against them. This story is a drop in the bucket of the totality of state abuse and agression against its citizens.

    So far there’s plenty of both reason and justification for violent and bloody retaliation against the power establishment.

    WHat I find ironic, though, is that a lot of the Republicans who often talk about having arms for the sake of defending yourselfes and your society against usurpers in power have not done zilch to actually make use of those arms, considering the circumstances.

    They just sing along and ignore whats going on today…

  7. Rad Geek

    Erich,

    Thanks for the heads up about the videos being yanked from YouTube. I don’t know why that happened, but in any case Part 1 and Part 2 are now back online at a different URI. (The good news is that the take-down and put-back-up process has deep-sixed several ridiculous comments from the perpetually block-headed police-enablers.) I’ve updated the references in the post so that they will point to the working videos.

    To be on the safe side, I’ve downloaded the FLV source files for the two video clips and will host them directly from this website if the videos are again taken down from YouTube.

  8. ian

    I think the videos were taken down from youtube at the request of the TV station. They were making a big deal about it being an exclusive to their station and I guess they want it kept that way. I watched the videos at their website. So at least so far the cops have not been able to snuff out the videos. A question: why did the cops make a video at all? Wouldn’t just make more sense (not that I think cops have any) to just rip her clothes off and not tape it?

  9. Discussed at radgeek.com

    Rad Geek People’s Daily 2008-02-26 – Cops are here to protect you. (#2):

    […] epistolator William McClelland, of Lake Township, responded to Bonnie Yagiela’s letter on the police’s beating and gang-rape of Hope Steffey, in which Yagiela stated that I was disgusted and appalled but not surprised. The behavior they […]

· March 2008 ·

  1. Discussed at radgeek.com

    Rad Geek People’s Daily 2008-03-07 – Rapists in uniform #2: four more women come forward:

    […] I mentioned about a month ago, Hope Steffey is suing the sheriff and a gang of male and female cops and prison guards, because a year and a half ago, after she was assaulted and knocked unconscious by her cousin in a […]

  2. Stark Countys Miscarriage of Justice

    The video was revealing of what (sadly) aften goes on in Stark County Jail. I am working on a suit to be filed whicj will show yet another instance of abuse of power from the same jail. The similarities are unreal. 14 months ago, my son experienced their undue belittling and harrassment. White Collar Criminals. It seems to me that since we pay them to “serve & protect”, they should pay double the penalty when busted. After all, they gain higher standards of respect, power, trust, etc., with the oath the take, badge they wear and pay we supply. When they abuse their power and authority – they should be held to higher standards as well!

    Although this type of treatment was given to my SON (not being a female inmate), it was still use of force, abuse of power and denial of his civil rights. He asked to file a complaint against the arresting officers, asked for medical care (all injuries coming from the officers) and he asked to use the phone. What he got was stripped without warning or a request to remove his clothes and left in a cell (naked) until the next day. They say he acted “highly aggravated” and that’s why they stripped him of his clothing and dignity. Although they eventually charged him with “Assault on a Peace Officer”, they know as well as I do, that what he did was INSULT the officers! He insulted them with foul language and his repeated demand to exercise his civil rights !

    The only thing those S.C. deputies “served & protected” that day was their ego’s and each other’s career. The tight lips and blind eyes of the incident will come back to haunt them. In my sons arrest, a trilogy was born. Due to his demeanor, they decided to lie full speed ahead and charge him heavily. For now, they got away with it, but the truth will be shown.

    I have a lot of respect and good wishes for Mrs. Steffey. I’m sure it was a hard decision to make to allow others to see her pain. We, ourselves, were forced with a decision of using funds for a criminal attorney vs. a civil attorney. Unfortuneatly, we don’t have an “Attorney Fund” collecting interest in the bank – just waiting to be needed, so the choice of which direction to go was easily made. First things first! In my son’s “Use of Force” video, you can clearly see them removing his clothes (while a female taped) and all of a sudden he is hit from behind while his arms are out (like Christ on the cross). They claim it was necessary to do, because he wasn’t holding his leg properly to make it easy for the deputies to get his one pant leg off! In another video, you can clearly see the officer punch him 3-4-5-6 times.

    It’s time to stop the madness. The “system” makes an example of the citizens all the time. It’s time a judge is bold enough to make one out of the law men/women that abuse their authority! If we can send a man to the moon and return his safely to earth,… we sure as hell can put a man or woman on the ground and take them SAFELY to jail!

· May 2008 ·

  1. Discussed at radgeek.com

    Rad Geek People’s Daily 2008-05-05 – Texas psychoprisons:

    […] the official response to past prison abuse scandals (cf. GT 2008-02-21: Mississippi Corrections, GT 2008-02-05: Rapists in uniform, GT 2007-10-28: Corrections officers, etc.) should be outraged, but not at all surprised, by the […]

  2. Discussed at radgeek.com

    Rad Geek People’s Daily 2008-05-10 – Cops are here to protect you. (#3):

    […] if a cop arrests an assault victim for interfering with the Investigation of her own assault, and then forces…, we are informed that these gang rapists were Just Following Orders. Cops are also elaborately […]

  3. Discussed at radgeek.com

    Rad Geek People’s Daily 2008-05-10 – Rapists in uniform #3: a sixth woman comes forward:

    […] office in the past four months. Like four other women, she came forward after learning about Hope Steffey’s gang-rape search at the hands of male and female deputies, and her lawsuit agai…. Elizabeth is afraid for her own safety and the safety of her family, so she has chosen not to use […]

· June 2008 ·

· November 2008 ·

— 2009 —

  1. Discussed at radgeek.com

    Rad Geek People’s Daily 2009-01-31 – Rapists in uniform #5: on invasions of privacy:

    […] northern Ohio, a woman named Hope Steffey is suing the Stark County sheriff’s office and several of the deputies and prison…. Here’s […]

  2. amber

    police suck just because they have a gun and a badge dont mean a thing. they need to get the same punishment as a murder dose. the cop that did that to her needs to be put in jail.fucking pigs just dont know when to stop

  3. John

    This is the BCI report that Agent Christy S. Palmer sent to John D. Ferrero, Prosecuting Attorney Stark County Ohio. Dated April 16, 2008 BCI Case #: SI-76-08-14-0147

    This is part of page 3

    http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/Zemo999/?action=view&current=BCI-Report.jpg

    Sheriff Swanson has ALWAYS maintained that Steffey was ASKED & REFUSED to remove her cloths. But here’s the BCI’s OWN REPORT that PROVES this is a LIE! And then they try to explain away their first lie with another lie, about why it was done this way without asking Steffey to do it voluntarily.

    They are trying to say that Steffey was resisting enough that EIGHT people couldn’t take the chance of ASKING her to remove her cloths, or EVEN TELL HER WHAT WAS GOING ON!!! What a crock!!

    I did NOT see any resisting in the video, I saw eight cops parading her to the cell, with her in cuffs.

    In fact EVERY video I have seen she is in cuffs! And the ONLY times I have seen her react to the cops is after they have assaulted her or in the process of stripping her naked.

    But apparently catching the sheriff’s dept in a lie isn’t a big deal to our “independent” BCI investigator, Christy Palmer, who seems ready to accept ANY excuse the sheriff’s dept wants to use.

    The report also goes on to say that they lowered Steffey in a slow controlled manner to the floor. Except that Steffey says she was thrown to the floor. She also told her husband in a phone call that she thought the cops had broken her nose. And she was treated by the nurse for the injury. And in page 4 of this report Christy Palmer even states that Steffey reported that her nose was making “crunching noises”.

    So I guess this is proof of a second LIE! (Or third)

    And still Christy Palmer, the “independent investigator” doesn’t think twice about accepting the word of the cops over the VICTIMS in spite of proof. BTW, Christy also references a video that she says “proves that she was lowered in a slow controlled manner to the floor”. As far as I know, THIS would have to be on the ‘non-existent’ beginning of the strip video. On May 5th when I asked about the “missing” video, I was told it would soon be released. Now here again it looks as though it’s referenced…even though they NOW claim it does not exist. Interesting. (I have filed a request for this video.)

    This isn’t so much an investigation report as it is a smear campaign against Hope Steffey.

    The cops can polish this turd as much as want, this STILL STINKS!

    BTW I don’t know why they bothered to black out the names of Nurse Coren Lennon and the jail psychologist Thomas Anuszkiewicz, aren’t they PROUD of the work they do?

  4. John

    Stark Countys Miscarriage of Justice, Steffey’s lawyers have a billboard up with their number, I hope you have contacted them. Even if you are already in a case, it will provide more evidence for theirs.

    BTW this isn’t the only info I have, its just the tip of the iceburg.

    I also have evidence that the Sheriff’s Dept kept info from the BCI investigator. I had suspected it, but have now gotten documentation to back it up.

    The FBI is also investigating this case. Lets hope they do a better job than the BCI has done.

  5. Tinai

    yes, the video is terrifying. I had to watch it a few times before I could realize what I was seeing, and then go back and read the facts that I could find without all the horrified emotional spin that people have put on it.

    THIS IS what happens when you go to jail. Everyone who has been to jail knows it, and so it is very horrifying for people to see it who have never been there. Believe me, no one likes spreading their cheeks for orifice examinations during strip searches, and having those rubber gloves invading you looking for drugs and weapons, because those places are where people hide them. For that reason, strip searches are necessary and legal and happen for each and every person going to jail.

    No one likes being forcibly stripped of their clothing when under suicide watch, but that too, is legal and necessary so that emotionally distraught and acting out people like Hope don’t hang themselves with an article of clothing.. as has sadly happened so many times.

    These things are necessary also because if you treated white women like Steffey differently than black males, then it would be intolerably racist. Just because she’s white, doesn’t mean she can have privilege..she got to go the same route as everyone else when she goes to jail for fighting with cops.

    Yes her sister’s driver’s license must be taken since its not legal to have it in your possession and it is not a keepsake it is property of the state. Hope got mad. Hope became belligerent, irrational and combative with the cops.

    Black brothers and sisters, what happens when you fight with the cops? Precisely what you see on these videos.

    Do not fight a cop. You are going down, you will be overpowered and taken to jail and you will go through this what you see here.

    The point that Steffey could have kept this ALL from happening to her? By saying: ‘Im sorry sir, yes, I know I can’t keep that license, since its state property. I have all my sisters’ other belongings to remember her by, of course. No, I won’t fight with you, Im a law-abiding citizen, I dont fight with police. No, I’m not suicidal and never have been. I’ll go with you quietly, I won’t resist. And yes, I’ll speak rationally to you about my niece, no more ho-assed mouth from me.’

    Personal responsibility for one’s action. It works.

  6. JOR

    “Personal responsibility for one’s action. It works.”

    Would you apply that standard to any pig who gets shot on, say, a drug bust? Hey, they chose to do something dangerous, and got a predictable result, right? Next time they should just stay home and stay out of other people’s business, right?

    Right?

  7. Gabriel

    Yes her sister’s driver’s license must be taken since its not legal to have it in your possession and it is not a keepsake it is property of the state.

    You sure use the word “legal” a lot. Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right.

  8. John

    Tinai I don’t know WHERE you get the idea this happens to EVERYONE that goes to jail!?!?

    This is a misdemeanor charge, she should have been booked & released right away.

    As for personal responsibility, doesn’t that apply to the cops as well?!?

    I posted, WITH PROOF, that the sheriff LIED. I guess you must have missed that.

    And stupid remarks like strip searches are necessary…well even Stark County jail had on their website that they haven’t found a weapon in YEARS with a strip search. (Like since metal detectors were installed??) BTW they have since removed that page, since I posted about it.

    Remember this was the CRIME VICTIM, and not the first that had filed suit against Stark County for the same abuses. So how many victims would we need for people to see that there’s a problem???

    Heres a news article that mentions Stark County Jail:

    http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090511/NEWS16/905110319

    In 2007, the last year data was available, the Lucas County Corrections Center housed 26,597 adult inmates and experienced five serious suicide attempts, one inmate escape, 12 inmate-on-inmate assaults, and six inmate-on-staff assaults.

    That same year, the numbers were much lower in the Montgomery County jail in Dayton, where 38,750 inmates were housed and there were no suicide attempts or assaults.

    Much higher numbers were reported from the Stark County jail in Canton, where 11,761 inmates were housed and where there were 14 serious suicide attempts and 89 inmate-on-inmate assaults.

    Montgomery County jail handles THREE TIMES the inmates of Stark County, but they have NO incidents.

    So you have to believe that Montgomery County jail gets no !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;trouble making’ inmates, or you have the KNOW that Stark County & others have some serious staff problems.

    Yeah I think its time for Stark County to take “personal responsibility” for their actions!!!

— 2010 —

  1. John

    UPDATE The latest news:

    Deputies drop suit vs. WKYC over Hope Steffey report

    Just as I have said all along this would NEVER get to a trial. There is just no way for the cops to justify what was done to Steffey.

    http://www.cantonrep.com/news/crime/x1631834888/Lawsuit-against-WKYC-dropped

  2. John

    I was always puzzled by the news saying that there was “confusion” when the cops arrived.

    I’m thinking what “confusion”?? They have everyone there saying that Steffey was the victim, even the arresting cop is saying it on video.

    Heck even the cop testifies that he went to his car to document Steffey’s injuries. And the cops are on tape talking about Steffey’s cousin getting arrested the month before for another domestic battery charge, and even her brother mentions that she had another assault charge just the month before when he calls 911 & the cops on his OWN SISTER!

    Plus Gurlea has everyone looking for Steffey’s missing hair, and Gurlea is on tape talking to Steffey as if he knows she is the victim, telling her that he will still investigate her assault even though he is arresting her. Plus he also names her as the victim in his radio traffic! So WHY are the papers saying there was “confusion”, there is none in the evidence!?!? It didn’t make any sense.

    Then Richard T. Gurlea Jr testified under oath that the investigation was never finished, because Steffey was !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;unable to contribute to the investigation’.

    HUH?? You mean ANY victim that is knocked unconscious or killed will never have their case solved!?!?! Because Steffey had gone back to the sheriff’s dept 4 days later to file abuse complaints & the assault. So are they trying to say she was STILL unable to “contribute to the investigation'”?? This makes no sense at all!

    Then the cops got only TWO written witness statements, despite the fact that there were several people there. Again it doesn’t make any sense, especially since the only two statements were from the alleged assailant & her brother, and NO OTHER witnesses.

    Then I found the last piece of the puzzle that would make sense of all this…the cops tried to FRAME Steffey for the assault that she had reported!!

    The arresting cop, Richard T. Gurlea Jr., testified at Steffey’s trial that the ‘investigation’ into the assault was never finished.

    REALLY?!!? Then how do you explain the assault charges against Steffey in the incident report they filled out???

    http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/Zemo999/Incident-Report-Assault.jpg

    NO news source has EVER reported that Steffey was actually arrested for assault too. But this incident report clearly shows the cops were trying their best to get her charged with the assault too.

  3. John

    Here’s a news article that mentions Stark County Jail:

    http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090511/NEWS16/905110319

    In 2007, the last year data was available, the Lucas County Corrections Center housed 26,597 adult inmates and experienced five serious suicide attempts, one inmate escape, 12 inmate-on-inmate assaults, and six inmate-on-staff assaults.

    That same year, the numbers were much lower in the Montgomery County jail in Dayton, where 38,750 inmates were housed and there were no suicide attempts or assaults.

    Much higher numbers were reported from the Stark County jail in Canton, where 11,761 inmates were housed and where there were 14 serious suicide attempts and 89 inmate-on-inmate assaults.

    Montgomery County jail handles THREE TIMES the inmates of Stark County, but they have NO incidents.

    So you have to believe that Montgomery County jail gets no !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;trouble making’ inmates, or you have to KNOW that Stark County & others have some serious staff problems.

  4. John

    Links to Steffey Torture

    Even blurred out you can still see the cop putting a submission hold on Steffey. Even ultimate fighters give up quickly when they are pinned in a submission hold, but then his opponent lets him go, unlike the cops that have Hope Steffey. Yeah a guy twice Steffey’s size can’t JUST restrain her, he has his arm jammed up under her arm, while she’s in cuffs torturing her into submission. Even after they remove the cuffs, the guy TWICE her size has her arm twisted up behind her. Not satisfied with JUST restraining her, he tortures her into submission. EIGHT people there and they still resort to this BS! I just have to wonder where their SWAT team is!??!

    http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/Zemo999/SteffeyTortured.jpg

    http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/Zemo999/SteffeyTortured2.jpg

    http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/Zemo999/SteffeyTortured3.jpg

    http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/Zemo999/SteffeyTortured4.jpg

    http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/Zemo999/SteffeyTortured5.jpg

    http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/Zemo999/SteffeyTortured6.jpg

    The main woman that was there when Hope Steffey was assaulted, I wonder how Andrea Mays sleeps at night??

    http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/Zemo999/SteffeyAssaliant.jpg

  5. Rad Geek

    John,

    … how do you explain the assault charges against Steffey in the incident report they filled out???

    http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/Zemo999/Incident-Report-Assault.jpg

    NO news source has EVER reported that Steffey was actually arrested for assault too. But this incident report clearly shows the cops were trying their best to get her charged with the assault too.

    John,

    I could be mistaken, but my interpretation of the incident report is that Deppity Gurlea probably accused Hope Steffey of assaulting him in the process of resisting arrest.

    It is extremely common for berzerk cops to tack on resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer charges to any arrest they make, as the idea is that any physical resistance whatsoever against an arrest — where physical resistance can just mean struggling to get up when the pig slams you down — constitutes an assault on the person of the police officer effecting the arrest. It’s typically used as a way of piling on charges in order to justify locking someone in jail overnight on a beef which otherwise would have remained a civil matter, and since cops routinely get convictions for resisting arrest even after the charges for which the person was being arrested are immediately dropped, cops pretty frequently use it as a legal excuse for busting up anyone who looks at them the wrong way or questions what they are doing.

    • John

      Rad Geek Quote “I could be mistaken, but my interpretation of the incident report is that Deppity Gurlea probably accused Hope Steffey of assaulting him in the process of “resisting arrest.”

      You didn’t click on the link to see the incident report?? Its lists Steffey’s cousin Leann Preston as the “victim”, and states her “injuries” are a broken finger nail on her right index finger. Not the cop.

      As I posted before, it was all a frame up.

      I have some of the lies I have caught these people in…

      Lies of Stark County

      Sheriff maintains that Steffey is drunk.

      But witnesses say she is not that drunk & the BCI investigation finds that the next shift at the jail also says that they can detect NO smell or effects of alcohol.

      Arresting Officer Richard T. Gurlea Jr testifies under oath that investigation was never finished. (So no case where victim is unconscious or killed is ever solved?)

      Incident report proves that his claim that it was never finished is a lie. Crime VICTIM is framed for the assault she reported

      Sheriff Swanson was reported to have said Steffey refused to remover her clothes.

      The State investigation by the BCI clearly shows this to be a lie.

      Also maintains that she was told that her clothes were to be removed.

      But BCI report can find no one that said that, and as apparent by the strip video, this also is a lie.

      Sheriff Swanson says there were not enough women there.

      Video CLEARLY shows that this is a lie.

      Swanson claims that jail psychologist Thomas Anuszkiewicz put Steffey on suicide watch.

      But no evidence backs up this claim, and the evidence that is there shows ONLY Coren Lennon put Steffey on suicide watch. So we have Swanson caught in another lie.

      Agent Christy S. Palmer states in her report QUOTE “Again, as recorded by jail video and/or audio, the jail staff instead chose to bring the prisoner in a slow, controlled decent to the floor.”

      Paul Scarsella of Special Prosecutions Ohio Attorney General now says this video dosen’t exist, even though I was also told by the sheriff’s dept that this video would be released.

      States that Steffey is TOO suicidal for a suit DESIGNED for the purpose or even a paper covering.

      NO ONE has been able to answer HOW that is possible. Looks like yet MORE lies.

      And these are just the ones that I have caught so far, I can imagine there’s more.

— 2011 —

  1. john454

    Been a while for this case, but I have found out even more.

    UPDATE: I have been wondering WHY all these other agencies have covered for the sheriff\\\’s dept. Why did they overlook all the evidence of abuse?

    The BCI investigation\\\’s evidence includes Sheriff Swanson ENCOURAGING officers to use their videos for \\\”training purposes\\\”. http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/Zemo999/Tapes.jpg

    I called the sheriff\\\’s office and asked if videos like the Hope Steffey video had been used for \\\”training\\\” . I said you can\\\’t use them right…with the privacy laws!??!

    They said that they DO use them for training, but that they \\\’didn\\\’t think\\\’ Steffey\\\’s video had been used.

    \\\”REALLY?\\\”, I said, so then send me a copy of the signout sheet.

    They said they would not release a copy, then after I kept asking they claimed that there was no signout sheet.

    Right, first they won\\\’t release them, then they don\\\’t exist….just like a lot of video that came up \\\”missing\\\” in this case. I have to wonder how many agencies that looked into the abuses get copies of these tapes?? What other incentive would they have to keep the abuses quiet?

  2. john454

    Ok want some more stuff that NEVER made it to the news about this case?

    Sheriff Swanson always tried to sell this story as Steffey being drunk & abusive.

    But witnesses at the scene TESTIFIED that she is not that drunk, now you might try to write that off as Steffey’s relation, but there is one problem with that theory. The BCI investigation ALSO finds that the next shift at the jail also says that they can detect NO effects or even smell of alcohol on Steffey. (This would have been an hour & 1/2 after they stripped her.)

    Want another piece that NEVER made it to the news? Swanson plays seconds of a audio tape where he claims Steffey admits to being suicidal, when you can tell she actually being SARCASTIC, NOT SUICIDAL! (And even then Steffey in her deposition does NOT confirm that this is even her.) Plus he fails to mention that the BCI investigation found that she DENIED being suicidal THREE TIMES!

    Want yet ANOTHER piece that NEVER made it to any NEWS source?

    Swanson claims that jail psychologist Thomas Anuszkiewicz put Steffey on suicide watch. (But from the look of all the evidence, even if he had, it would have been after she was already assaulted.)

    But I called the sheriff’s dept they say they have NO evidence that backs up this claim, and the evidence that is there shows ONLY Caren Lennon put Steffey on suicide watch. So we have Swanson caught in ANOTHER LIE!

    How about one more for the road? Ok the “missing” beginning of the strip video, so is it REALLY missing? I called the sheriff’s dept May 5th 2008 and asked if the sheriff was ever going to release this video. They didn’t ask WHAT video, they knew exactly which one I was referring to, and they said it would be released during discovery. A week and a half later they deny that it existed! But the story doesn’t end there, because the BCI investigation report MENTIONS THIS EXACT SAME PIECE OF VIDEO! So I called Paul Scarsella (614-644-0729) of Special Prosecutions Ohio Attorney General’s office and ask for this video. Now Paul says this video doesn’t exist, and that the description that Agent Christy S. Palmer made in her report was her “interpretation”. HUH??? Agent Christy S. Palmer has an “interpretation” for NON-EXISTENT video?!?!?!? AMAZING!

  3. john454

    When I contacted the investigators I asked a few questions to see just how through this investigation was.

    I asked of any of the other 5 women had been interviewed to show a pattern of abuse at the jail? ANS: NO

    Did you examine the camera that magically fixes itself, or see if it had ever failed before or after this case. ANS: NO

    Did you polygraph anyone to verify the TRUTH of their statements? ANS: NO

    Did you go over all the jail policies concerning a “suicide prevention”? ANS: NO

    Do you have ANY evidence that a doctor put Steffey on suicide watch? ANS: NO

    How can someone be TOO suicidal for a suit DESIGNED for the purpose? ANS: None, no answer at all…NO ONE I have ever contacted could answer this question, including Swanson Wow they really dug for the TRUTH in this case huh? (This also is SARCASM, since I know none of the Stark County cops know the difference.)

    BTW there is also MORE video “missing” from this case. The video that the sheriff turned into the state only starts out when Steffey is in the jail, there was no video of her when she is actually brought into the building. If you remember right the arresting deputy said that he would remove the cuffs, but she is never shown without them. So I am guessing, (since they never turned in the video), that the video would have also showed her being abused by the staff.

    I tried calling around to ask WHY people covered this abuse up, but most of the time they tried to defend their actions. Until they realized that I knew as much as I did about the case, then they just got angry & defensive. I just wish EVERYONE knew & had the experiences I have had with these scum, but all I can do is post what I have found. Hopefully it will be enough…

— 2012 —

  1. Discussed at attackthesystem.com

    Cops are here to help you: Tacoma, Washington police Officer Ryan Koskovich and Officer Michael Young taser, handcuff and imprison a deaf assault victim for not obeying commands that she could not hear « Attack the System:

    […] later, AP 2005-03-22: Autistic Teenager is Beaten by Deputies After Being Mistaken for a Prowler, GT 2008-02-05: Rapists in uniform, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, ad […]

— 2014 —

  1. JusticeForThoseWhoDoNotMatter

    I don’t understand how American Soldiers are frowned upon and some incarcerated for doing the exact same thing to prisoners of war, that these officers are doing to Hope Steffey.

    Is the American government and police officers saying, prisoners of war have more rights in America, then American females?

    And which psychologist’s actually deemed the actions of these officers treatment of Hope Staffey as ok because without no evidence she’s a suicide risk?

    I mean, who in a professional manner actually believes that, a person who they suspect is suicidal deserves to have their civil rights ignored; so men can help strip a female naked, laugh and giggle while walking back and forth to sneak peaks at her naked body that’s on display in a jail cell for 6 hours?

    Why were the female officers sent away, while the male officers stayed?

    If she was a prisoner of war, the American outcry to the inhuman treatment of a woman would spread through out the world.

    Oh and just to make sure her suicidal thoughts are snuffed out, they parade her around the police station naked except for some type of vest that only covers her breasts.

    So, the US government and police of America, DO NOT consider placing her in a chair or a bed that have those safety straps for arms and legs (you know the ones hospitals use) with her clothes on, as an acceptable way to prevent, those the police (who are not doctors, are even qualified to determine if someone is suicidal), deem suicidal as logical. Stripping her naked while men hold her down is acceptable???? Having those men laugh and giggle while she’s on display for 6 hours is deemed the correct way to handle someone they feel is suicidal?

    The big question is, why is it only petite females that end up at the Stark County police station who are deemed suicidal?

    And how in the hell, is stripping a 14 year old and 15 year old females of their clothing ever ok in a police station?? That’s beyond disgusting!!!

    So, a female that calls a police for help, does not physically assault the responding police officer but is arrested because he feels her words were disrespectful to him?

    Although, as American we have the right to freedom of speech, but it is still ok in the eyes of Justice to assault, arrest, and torment an American on American soil for daring to invoke their freedom of speech?

    I guess the government would have cared about what happened to Hope, if she was a Muslim. Other than that, nothing that happened to Hope in the governments eyes was injustice.

    In law enforcement, they can’t use mace or a taser on someone without first having it used on them. The same rule should apply for what was done to Hope. If they are allowed to strip human beings of their dignity, and left naked for hours, theirs should be stripped away too so they understand exactly how it feels to be treated as Hope was treated. It’s only fair!

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