Police must pay $2.6M

Started by woof, Apr 04, 2006, 06:46 PM

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woof

Good to see, one fathers success story. The one question that is left unaswered in this story is why was the child put in foster care? The mother claims that the father is a danger to the child, and then the police take the child away from both parents?


Quote
http://ancpr.com/blog/archives/296

Police must pay $2.6M
Jury: Girl wrongly taken from day care
DAVID SIDERS
Record Staff Writer
Published Tuesday, Apr 4, 2006

A federal jury returned a $2.6million verdict Friday against Stockton and two members of the Police Department, siding with a father and daughter who claimed police wrongfully took the girl from day care.

Crystal Keller was 4 years old and the subject of a custody dispute when police collected her from the home of her Orangevale day-care provider in 2002. Her mother lived in Stockton.

Police did not have a warrant or proof Crystal was in danger, Crystal and her father, Dennis Keller, claimed in a trial in U.S. District Court in Sacramento. The girl's seizure violated the family's civil rights, the Kellers claimed.


Stockton City Attorney

Ren Nosky said police believed that Crystal was in danger and that waiting for a warrant could endanger her even more. He said he would ask the City Council today for permission to appeal the verdict.

"This case is far from over," he said. "We're standing behind the officers."

Keller said Crystal cried for him the day police came for her.

"It was hard, because I didn'tknow what was going on," Crystal said Monday. "I was frightened. I was terrified."

Crystal spent two years in foster care before Keller won full custody in 2004, said the family's Oakland attorney, David Beauvais.

"It's like a bad chapter you can finally write off," said Keller, a 49-year-old mechanic who now lives with his daughter in Fair Oaks.

Police Sgt. Ken Praegitzer and Detective Kathryn Henderson, the two officials named in the lawsuit, could not be reached for comment. The chief's office referred calls seeking comment to the city attorney.

The jury awarded Crystal $500,000 in compensatory damages and $1million in punitive damages; it awarded her father $100,000 in compensatory damages and $1million in punitive damages.

Beauvais called the verdict a rebuke of a department that, without warrant, seized a child who was not in danger.

Nosky said police acted in the child's best interest and called the verdict inappropriate.

Contact reporter David Siders at (209) 943-8580 or [email protected]

Even a whole village can't replace dad, children need both parents.

BRIAN

Now if they could just hammer the mother for making a false accusation...
You may sleep soundly at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence upon those who seek to harm you.

JoeFin

This is just one of the many cases a proficient attorney decided to champion the rights of the father. Notice the child sat in foster care home for 2 years prior to her being returned to his custody. That was the cause of the excessive punitive damages award in my mind.

I can cite numerous cases told to me from the men who lived through them here in California of the exact same injustices described in this case as happening to them. It is No JOKE if you're a man with sole custody or primary custody due to Mom's improprieties, CPS has it out for you.

Sorry once again if I seem callous or off topic here. But the problem lies in the lack of checks and balances in the juvenile court system they operate under as explained to me by some of the men and my own attorney.

No oversight, no appeals, and a closed group of professionals who work within that system. In fact the only recourse is to summon a Grand Jury if you can prove criminal wrong doing by one of the officers of the court, and then the Grand Jury can only hand down a recommendation. Nothing can force the court to take action.

Actually it is the normal method of dispensing out justice to men. Excuse me, I thought I was living in a country that actually had equal protection clauses written into its constitution.
Resident Sh!! house attorney at large

Sir Percy

Quote
Nosky said police acted in the child's best interest


Crap.
vil, like misery, is Protean, and never greater than when committed in the name of 'right'. To commit evil when they are convinced they are doing 'good', is one of the greatest of pleasures known to a feminist.

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