Colorado Cop Who Left Woman Handcuffed In Car Parked On Train Tracks On Leave.

How is this not attempt­ed mur­der? If any­one else but a cop com­mit­ted this egre­gious abuse of pow­er result­ing in the poten­tial vio­lent death of anoth­er per­son and result­ing in seri­ous injury, would they not be in custody?
Once an offi­cer detains a per­son and places them in hand­cuffs, the deten­tion switch­es to safe custody.
It is incon­ceiv­able that an offi­cer would cuff a per­son, place that per­son in a squad car, lock the door and leave the per­son on active train tracks regard­less of the train schedule.
It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble to me under what cir­cum­stances an offi­cer or a police depart­ment would seek to jus­ti­fy this kind of gross negligence.
But this is not to be seen as a one-off inci­dent as cops believe they are gods. They ini­ti­ate traf­fic stops at the most dan­ger­ous places, often­times plac­ing the lives of the cap­tive motorists at seri­ous peril.
And God for­bid that the per­son being pulled over acti­vates their haz­ard lights and attempts to dri­ve to a safer place to stop; that dri­ver risks being mur­dered on the side of the road by these hyped-up maniacs.
They ini­ti­ate traf­fic stops block­ing pri­vate dri­ve­ways, entrances, and exits to busi­ness estab­lish­ments and oth­er premis­es and acts like they have an absolute right to do as they please.
The actions of the cops in this inci­dent will not change any­thing because if a court finds neg­li­gent behav­ior, they will not be pay­ing a cent, the cit­i­zens will foot the bill, and though this is crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, they will not be held accountable.
(mb)

»»»>

A young Colorado woman detained by police was seri­ous­ly injured after get­ting hit by a freight train as she sat in the back of a patrol car. The cop, who parked his car on the train tracks, has been placed on paid leave as offi­cials inves­ti­gate the accident.
On Friday, Sept. 16, Yareni Rios-Gonzalez was tak­en into cus­tody by an offi­cer from the Platteville Police Department on sus­pi­cion of felony men­ac­ing, pos­si­bly an act of road rage in Fort Lupton, Colorado, involv­ing a gun. Once he detained her, he placed the young woman in the back of his cruiser.

The cop left the 20-year-old in his squad car, which was parked on the train track cross­ing near U.S. 85 and County Road 38, north of Platteville, near Denver, to join Fort Lupton offi­cers to search the woman’s vehi­cle that she parked a few feet away from the tracks, NBC News reports.

While the police offi­cer and two oth­er cops from the Fort Lupton Police depart­ment searched Rios-Gonzalez’s truck, a train trav­el­ing north­bound struck the patrol car with the sus­pect in it, leav­ing the Greely, Colorado, res­i­dent in seri­ous condition.

A video of the inci­dent has been released. It shows one offi­cer shout­ing at anoth­er, “move your car” before the oth­er cop looks at the car, turns to look at the train, and then walks off the tracks just before the loco­mo­tive smash­es into the police cruiser.

The woman sus­tained nine bro­ken ribs, a frac­tured ster­num, a bro­ken arm, and many oth­er injuries to her head, back, and legs. Though her injuries are severe, a report on Sunday, Sept. 18, said she was expect­ed to live.

The young woman has now secured an attor­ney, who said his client was “fran­ti­cal­ly” try­ing to escape the vehicle.

“She was fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to get out,” per­son­al injury lawyer Paul Wilkinson told 9NEWS in an inter­view. “Of course, the doors were locked.” 

He con­tin­ued, “She’s def­i­nite­ly upset about what hap­pened. She doesn’t under­stand why she was left in the car. She was yelling to get their atten­tion and could see the train coming.”

Law and Crime reports that Platteville Police Chief Carl Dwyer did not reveal the officer’s name or any addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion regard­ing the col­li­sion, but shared he was placed on paid leave.

“The Town of Platteville con­tin­ues to work coop­er­a­tive­ly with CBI and CSP dur­ing their inves­ti­ga­tion regard­ing this inci­dent,” he shared with FOX 31.

911 calls help piece togeth­er what lead to Rios-Gonzalez being placed in the patrol.

The per­son who ini­ti­at­ed the call claimed a woman in a sil­ver Toyota Tundra truck “pulled a gun” on the caller dur­ing a tail­gat­ing event.

Three agen­cies (FLPD, Weld County’s Sheriff Officer, and PPD) were look­ing for the sil­ver truck, with the lat­ter locat­ing a vehi­cle that fit the descrip­tion first.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said in a state­ment, “The dri­ver of the vehi­cle pulled to a stop just past the rail­road tracks, with the patrol offi­cer behind the car on the tracks.”

It fur­ther read, “Two Ft. Lupton offi­cers arrived on the scene and the team con­duct­ed a high-risk traf­fic stop and detained a lone female occu­pant (age 20, Greeley) plac­ing her in the back of the Platteville patrol car detained on sus­pi­cion of felony menacing.”

“While the offi­cers cleared the sus­pect vehi­cle as part of the inves­ti­ga­tion, a train trav­el­ing north­bound struck the PPD patrol car,” it continued.

The CBI also stat­ed the offi­cers per­formed life-sav­ing mea­sures on Rios-Gonzales after the crash, before she was tak­en to the hospital.

Chatter cap­tured on the radio record­ing, secured by KUSA, sug­gests the offi­cers on the scene held Rios-Gonzalez “at gun­point.” But that was not revealed in the CBI’s report.

The radio chat­ter also cap­tures the fran­tic moments after the accident.

One offi­cer from Ft. Lupton says, “Dispatch, Lupton 346: patrol car was just hit by a train.”

“Dispatch, Lupton 346: get med­ical emer­gent [sic],” the cop con­tin­ued. “The sus­pect was in the vehi­cle that was hit by the train.”

“Copy,” the dis­patch­er replied.

The offi­cer whose car was struck said, “Just advis­ing … we can’t get the doors open on the unit, and the female pas­sen­ger is inside my unit.”

A bifur­cat­ed approach will be tak­en dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tions of this incident.

The CBI has launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into Rios-Gonzalez. The Fort Lupton Police Department is inves­ti­gat­ing the ini­tial 911 call that prompt­ed the search for the truck. Lastly, the Colorado State Patrol is look­ing into the “seri­ous-injury traf­fic acci­dent” caused by the train ram­ming into the car.

Ed Obayashi, a California sher­if­f’s deputy who spe­cial­izes as a police tac­tics expert, said he could not “fath­om” why the offi­cer would park his patrol vehi­cle on the tracks and believed the neg­li­gence opened the depart­ment up to a civ­il lawsuit.

“I can’t fath­om why he would leave his vehi­cle on the tracks with the sub­ject inside. Why didn’t you move the vehi­cle off the tracks? That’s going to be the biggest ques­tion,” he said.

“Those who are in your cus­tody,” the expert con­tin­ued. “You’ve detained them or they’re in the back of your patrol car, you have a duty of care towards that sub­ject,” the expert posit­ed. “In oth­er words, since you have assumed con­trol, phys­i­cal con­trol, over them and their move­ments, you are by def­i­n­i­tion respon­si­ble to pro­tect them in any sit­u­a­tion.”

.