We've been reading about this story for a few days now, but we were waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Yes, this story is so shocking, we assumed it was fake, exaggerated, or rife with accidental factual errors or some combination of the three. Unfortunately, though, the Galveston Police Department has not released a plausible denial, so we have to assume that, to a large extent, this is a true story...
Here's what we (think we) know:
1) A 12-year-old African American female is playing in front yard in Galveston, Texas two years ago. Out of nowhere, a van pulls up and three men jump out, call her a prostitute and grab her. When she screams "Daddy, Daddy," they clamp her mouth shut and beat her on the mouth and face. Her father responds to her cries (hero!) and starts beating up the men (not heroes.)
2) The men (if one can call these pieces of shit that) turn out to be police officers. All kosher so far, right? Whoops-- it turns out they were plainclothes cops, didn't identify themselves as police (big no-no, as any boy in blue will tell you), and were supposed to be responding to a report of three Caucasian prostitutes in a different part of the neighborhood. What excuse did these officers provide for seizing on the pre-teen black girl? She was wearing "short shorts." (We'll refrain from making a crack about how all preteen girls would be prostitutes under these guidelines since, well, preteen girls are surely acting more and more like prostitutes these days, anyway...)
3) The girl, who is an honor student, was released and subsequently arrested while in school, where she is an honor student. She was charged with "assaulting a public servant"-- which itself is almost a sick joke, since every word of that charge is a boldfaced lie.
4) No one heard about the case for two years because, quite justifiably, the girl and her family were afraid to tell anyone. An intrepid reporter spotted the ongoing case on a court docket and blew the lid off the whole thing. Of course, the mainstream media are ignoring the story-- probably because the family is poor, black, from Texas, and probably unwilling to cooperate with the obnoxious press. We can't say we blame them, although we hope that this gets major publicity and that all three police officers lose their jobs...
...if this is a factual story, of course.
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