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Blind, Disabled Woman Claims Police Brutality PORTLAND -- A legally blind and partially disabled woman is suing the Portland Police Bureau over claims of police brutality. Eunice Crowder says four officers roughed her up and threw her to the ground on June 9. The officers were called when she reportedly refused to allow city workers to clean up yard debris. The 71-year-old says she was hit with pepper spray and stung by a taser gun. Her prosthetic eye reportedly fell out during the incident. "If they are Portland's finest, it is a tragedy of what this city has become," a tearful Crowder told KOIN 6 News. The lawsuit, which will be filed on Tuesday, asks for $4 million in damages. Although KOIN made a public records request for the police report, the information has not yet been released. However, the bureau did confirm that there was an encounter with Crowder. Posted: Oct. 7, 2003 Even blind old ladies terrify the cops She was 71 years old. She was blind. She needed her 94-year-old mother to come to her rescue. And in the middle of the dogfight -- in which Eunice Crowder was pepper-sprayed, Tasered and knocked to the ground by Portland's courageous men in blue -- the poor woman's fake right eye popped out of its socket and was bouncing around in the dirt. How vicious and ugly can the Portland police get? Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner. This 2003 case is so blatant, the use of force so excessive, the threat of liability so intimidating that the city just approved a $145,000 settlement. But all those gung-ho fans of the cops can relax. Nothing has changed. Nothing will upset the status quo. The cops aren't apologizing. The cops aren't embarrassed. The cops haven't been disciplined. And the cops are still insisting, to the bitter end, that they "reasonably believed" this blind ol' bat was a threat to their safety and macho culture. Eunice Crowder, you see, didn't follow orders. Eunice was uncooperative. Worried a city employee was hauling away a family heirloom, a 90-year-old red toy wagon, she had the nerve to feel her way toward the trailer in which her yard debris was being tossed. Enter the police. Eunice, who is hard of hearing, ignored the calls of Officers Robert Miller and Eric Zajac to leave the trailer. When she tried, unsuccessfully, to bite the hands that were laid on her, she was knocked to the ground. When she kicked out at the cops, she was pepper-sprayed in the face with such force that her prosthetic marble eye was dislodged. As she lay on her stomach, she was Tased four times with Zajac's electric stun gun. And when Nellie Scott, Eunice's 94-year-old mother, tried to rinse out her daughter's eye with water from a two-quart Tupperware bowl, what does Miller do? According to Ernie Warren Jr., Eunice's lawyer, the cop pushed Nellie up against a fence and accused her of planning to use the water as a weapon. |
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