I did a Google search and I don't see that policecrimes.com ever had the story, but I did find this other story while searching.
www.unknownnews.net/030909cops.htmlSuit alleges deputies viciously beat man
30 citizens target Pierce County Deputies
Sept. 8, 2003 - A 62-year-old heart patient who says Pierce County deputies beat him after he left the hospital has filed a federal suit charging that the Key Peninsula detachment of deputies is a corrupt band of thugs whose criminal rampages are being covered up at the highest levels of county government.
In support of his campaign to get millions of dollars in damages as well as to clean up the Sheriff's Department, Andy Pedersen has enlisted the support of 29 citizens who have provided affidavits detailing their own allegations of horrifying experiences with the deputies.
The Pedersens and their neighbors go even further than the lawsuit. Although the lawsuit asserts that deputies routinely use excessive force and concoct arrests to cover their actions, it only alludes to other abuses.
Sheriff's Department spokesman Ed Troyer dismissed the Pedersens and their allies as the ideological descendants of anti-government pioneers who settled the Key Peninsula more than 100 years ago, turning the 17-mile finger of land into a stronghold that fostered anarchists and practitioners of free love.
They are, said Troyer, simply bent on sullying good men's names out of sheer contempt for authority.
Pedersen scoffs at the characterization, saying his family, who emigrated from Greenland in 1974, is a pillar of the community and deeply involved in civic affairs such as the fire department and the arts. No family member has ever had a run-in with the law before, he said.
Sheriff's Department attorney Craig Adams says the lawsuit by Pedersen and his son, Bjarne, makes a mockery of the judicial system. Internal affairs investigators with the Sheriff's Department reviewed Pedersen's accusations and dropped them as unfounded, Adams said.
The FBI, too, has investigated the matter and found it had no merit, he said.
But if the FBI dropped the matter, asked Pedersen, why is it that he and his son spent hours talking to FBI agents within the past two weeks?
Special Agent Ray Lauer declined to confirm or deny if the FBI is investigating.
Pedersen said he told the FBI agents about a beautiful summer day two years ago when he found himself with a crushing pain in his chest that radiated down his left arm.
Pedersen and his son say they were returning from Tacoma General Hospital where doctors diagnosed potentially serious heart problems in the elder Pedersen. They rounded a sharp curve, and a sheriff's vehicle swung wide into their lane, forcing them off the road. Bjarne parked the car, and his sick father stepped out and stood clutching a fence to try to catch his ragged breath.
What happened next, they say, was an unprovoked beating so vicious that Pedersen, a Danish national, says his mind flashed to the darkest images of his childhood.
"I thought I was back in Denmark being kicked to death by Nazi soldiers," he said.
Their lawsuit alleges that Deputies David Plummer and Thomas Davis beat and kicked Andy Pedersen, pulled a jacket over his head, stuck a can of pepper spray underneath and emptied it into his face. At times, he fell into unconsciousness — before they finally took him into custody and jailed him. All of it happened without reason, the Pedersens said.
Pedersen was arrested for resisting arrest, assaulting police officers and obstructing justice. He ultimately was found guilty of the obstruction charge. Bjarne also was charged with obstruction, but found not guilty.
Two days after the encounter, Pedersen returned to his local medical clinic, where a nurse and Pedersen's physician found scratches and bruises on his body.
His doctor, William Roes, wrote: "Facial contusion, consistent with the story of being pushed to the ground and hitting his head ... Abrasions to the back and the wrist, consistent with being handcuffed and possibly kicked."
Plummer and Davis have filed their own suit in Pierce County Superior Court, alleging that the Pedersens and an associate have maliciously defamed and libeled them. The deputies want unspecified damages and restraining orders against the men to stop them from "disseminating any untrue written or verbal publications."
Neither Plummer, Davis nor their attorney returned phone calls to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer seeking a comment. But, in their lawsuit, the deputies maintain that when Plummer stopped the Pedersens two years ago, both men were confrontational.
Despite Plummer's requests, Andy Pedersen refused to return to his car and later pushed and took a "half swing" at him, forcing the deputy to use pepper spray. When Bjarne Pedersen then got out of the car to confront Plummer, the deputy says he pulled his gun for his own safety, then called for backup.
Now, authorities say, the Pedersens are carrying out a vendetta against the deputies — and they're enlisting others with their own beefs against law enforcement.
The Pedersens' lawsuit, which names as defendants the deputies, their sergeant, Sheriff Paul Pastor and County Executive John Ladenburg, among others, alleges federal violations of their civil rights, tampering of documents, mail fraud and other claims based primarily on their contention of a cover-up.
Pastor did not respond to requests for an interview. Ladenburg could not be reached for a comment.
The Pedersens have gathered affidavits in an attempt to bolster assertions that deputies are abusing their authority by harassing and assaulting law-abiding citizens.
The P-I talked recently with several residents who provided affidavits. Each confirmed that the documents are accurate and are their sworn statements. They include:
• A 48-year-old disabled woman, Veronica-Dee Hickman, who says Plummer came to her home and screamed in her face because her disability access van was parked in a place he did not like. She says Plummer shouted: "I am God, I can do anything I want."
• A former Key Peninsula tavern worker, Marie McKean, who says Plummer pulled her over 22 times from January to March 2000, and sometimes parked in her driveway at night and watched her home. McKean said she moved to Port Angeles, in part to get away from Plummer, who she said never cited her for an infraction or crime.
• A 58-year-old architectural designer, Sheri Simpson, who says she saw deputies parked near the Pedersens' farm on several occasions, watching their activities over months shortly after the Pedersens' arrests in August 2001.
In addition, a 73-year-old attorney not among those providing affidavits to the Pedersens told the P-I that last month deputies knocked him unconscious without warning or cause.
Wayne Knight, who lives down the road from the Pedersens, said his son had been fleeing deputies who were there to arrest him for a drug-related probation violation when police shot him.
He was wounded but is now in jail.
After his son was taken away, the elderly attorney told deputies he wanted to shut off the motor to a truck his son had been driving. Knight said that when he reached into the cab, a deputy yelled 'You can't do that; it's evidence,' and clubbed Knight on the head.
Knight says that when he finishes fighting charges of resisting arrest and obstruction against him, he will probably sue the Pierce County Sheriff's Department.
Troyer did not respond to requests for information about that incident.
The Pedersens say the day after Andy got out of jail, they tried to contact Sheriff Paul Pastor to complain, but received no return call.
A later e-mail from Pastor contends he did not learn of the incident until seeing a letter critical of his deputies in a weekly newspaper almost two months later.
By then, the Pedersens already had contacted an attorney, who filed a notice of intent to sue the county Sept. 12. Eight days later, the Pedersens say they each received criminal subpoenas.
Andy Pedersen says he received a second subpoena a week later that was dated Sept. 10, which included an additional charge of resisting arrest.
Over the next several months, the Pedersens say deputies repeatedly tried to intimidate them, sometimes following them as they left their home, parking near their farm and watching them with binoculars.
But the deputies supervisor, Sgt. Ross Herberholz, said: "Everything that the Pedersens and these citizens have alleged has been investigated and found unsubstantiated."
He added that the Pedersens' supporting affidavits were actively solicited from local citizens by posting handbills at local businesses. The Pedersens even tried to get a woman to sign her name to an affidavit they'd written, he said.
"We'll have our day in court," Herberholz said.
Troyer, the department spokesman, added that the supporting affidavits may be the work of disgruntled citizens with their own beefs against cops.
"That area on Key Peninsula has a long history of anti-government sentiment," Troyer said. "It was a free love society. Some of them even tried to outlaw law enforcement."
Plummer and Davis are veteran officers whose personnel files show they've had no complaints sustained against them, Troyer added.
Both continue to patrol the Key Peninsula.
