An American policeman violently abused a seventy-year-old woman with dementia, so he received his punishment

A former policeman in the US state of Colorado was sentenced to five years in prison for violently arresting a seventy-year-old woman who suffers from cognitive disorders, which caused her fractures and injuries in various parts of her body.

In June 2020, 73-year-old Karen Garner went to a store in Loveland, western United States, to buy some goods worth $ 14, but she forgot to pay due to her dementia, which prompted the store to call the police, although they recovered the goods. .

On the side of the road, police officer Austin Hope grabbed the septuagenarian woman as she walked home. Because she refused to obey his orders, which she did not seem to understand, the policeman threw her to the ground to handcuff her with shells and put her hands behind her back.

The lost victim was telling the policeman, “I’m on my way home.”

The scenes of this violent arrest, captured by a camera attached to the policeman’s uniform, were greatly affected at the time, especially after pictures from a surveillance camera taken at the police station shortly after, showed Austin Hope and his colleagues laughing after reviewing the scenes.

During his trial, the officer, who left his post after the incident, pleaded guilty to this assault, and finally apologized to Garner’s family, describing what he had done as “really shameful,” according to the Denver Post newspaper.

“This case is not based on fault,” said Judge Michele Berengar of Larimer County Court, but rather “a young policeman who abused his position of power to exercise force without showing the slightest sense of humanity, and who has demonstrated a disturbing criminal personality.”

The internal investigations that were initially conducted into the incident did not find any fault with Austin Hope’s behavior.

But last year, the city of Loveland made a consensual agreement to pay $3 million in damages to the Garner family, who filed a civil lawsuit in the case.