Please note that, because of the nature of the topic of this post, no anonymous comments will be posted. I will not participate in the furtherance of the injury done to this man and his family by letting persons publish comments on this blog for which they are not willing to take responsibility. I am more than happy to publish your comment with a way for me to verify that you are the author--and I will keep your name confidential. But this post is based on confidential witness statements who are willing to own their statements. As it should be in a case like this. Some "pills" are hard to swallow. And, no one has come forward with verifiable information that this doctor was NOT hospitalized, and I have the statistics to show how disparately criminal this 200 person population has become under Cornwall PD's protection and service. Just compare the Cornwall PD's policing results of MGB with any other group of our size and demographics--99% white, at an average age of 48years, and with a phenomenally higher education rate and annual income than both the state and the nation. I am more than happy to print your comments, but I not allow the blog to be used to victimize this man any further--so, if you want to disagree with this representation of how he was treated or of Troxell's conduct, you will have to at least confirm authorship of your comment.During the Art Show this year, those wonderful professionals that our council hired to protect and serve our community almost killed a man--a decent, law-abiding, medical professional who was suffering from a medical event that often has rapid and fatal consequences.
This 62 year old doctor started suffering from heat stroke while visiting the Art Show, and as he tried to get into his air-conditioned car that his wife was picking him up in, our temp parking staff accosted him. Now, this isn't surprising, as parking staffers here have often done similar stuff to other visitors and residents of Mt.Gretna. You see, parking staff here in Mt. Gretna have behaved so poorly as to have garnered a number of complaints and to have earned themselves notoriety for inflamming a situation rather than for serving the public and diffusing a situation. Once again, on that day, they had their "how powerful am I" suits on and refused to offer the man retreat from the sun or medical assistance. Instead, they ran to Cornwall's finest and accused this 62 year old man of misconduct and insisted that he be arrested.
Cornwall's finest that day was David Troxell, who happens to also be the officer with a reputation for inflating petty stuff, traumatic medical events, and even the most minor accidental conduct into criminal charges, especially when he can make a criminal out of older professionals with impeccable conduct records that happen to be in a quiet--and safe, little "village" that his department has $25K a year services contract with (with a 6% automatic annual fee increase). He also happens to be the same officer who failed to operate his vehicle in a safe manner and to maintain control of it, thereby smashing his cruiser into another vehicle. Funny how no reckless endangerment, misconduct, or traffic charges were filed against him, even though he caused real--measurable, incontrovertable--injury to another person's property. Guess they figured his conduct and its results were too minor to be considered criminal. Guess this also means that Cornwall PD has figured out a great way to ensure their contract with MGB--make out as many criminal activities as you can here, make it look like we really are a bunch of hooligans with penchants for criminal misconduct and require the police-state offered by Cornwall PD.
However, inflating charges and turning Mt. Gretna into a 200 person village of well-educated, charitable, working class professionals and retirees into criminals seems to be a Cornwall PD modus operandi that I will demonstrate in a later post. Now, back to our story.
Troxell, dressed a lot like the parking staff, with their big patches and white shirts, came upon the dentist, threw him in handcuffs and baked him even more in the back of his unventilated, un-airconditioned cruiser--again, with the sun glaring down. Of course, when the man started really feeling the effects of heat stroke and started banging on the windows for help-anybody's help, Troxell admits that the man appeared agitated. But instead of diffusing the situation and rendering medical aid, he used that excuse to haul his @ss away and book the man for any charge he could come up with--like misconduct.
However, you can only deny reality for so long, even if you are licensed to carry a loaded weapon and to immediately crush another person's liberties. By the time Troxell got this man to Lebanon to be booked, his core body temp was so high and his electrolytes so twacked that he lost control of his muscles and couldn't move. It wasn't until the gravity of the situation was so in his face and undeniable that Troxell apparently acknowledged that there was something drastically wrong here and that he might hurt this man even further if he tried to wrench his cramped and stiff body from the narrow confines of the back of his cruiser. And that's when the ambulance was called.
Yet, to add to his "I am here to protect and serve" approach, Troxell managed to pull the guy from the car anyway, laying him on the black, baking pavement to wait for the ambulance to arrive. The wife, who followed Troxell with the family car, must have truly been petrified by these genius moves. Needless to say, the guy spent hours in the hospital emergency room getting cooled off and rehydrated so that Troxell could then throw him back into the cruiser, take him back to central booking and take his mug shots. Meanwhile, with her husband on the verge of death, Troxell refused to let the guy's wife see her husband, and even threatened to keep him in jail overnight. I guess Troxell figured that if he agitated the guy and his wife enough, they might break down and do something that he could inflate into even more charges.
So any way, this incident presents what we in the legal world call risk--risk of litigation as the question of who is liable for this man's injuries is resolved. And, the risk seems pretty high here. Why do I think its a big risk? Well, because all the facts of this situation lend themselves to this man having a police misconduct lawsuit that he has a good chance of winning:
--the injuries are pretty provable, so there won't be much to litigate in that respect;
--Troxell had taken this man into custody, so he was responsible for his well-being;
--both Troxell and the parking staff have a history or reputation for inflamming non-criminal conduct in the performance of their duties; and, most importantly to MG
--Mt. Gretna officials had prior notice of the parking staff's bad behavior and apparently did nothing to protect its citizens and guests from it. They also hired--and supervised, the police and the parking staff.
Oh, there are other relevant facts. But just know that regardless of whether the doctor wins his case or not,
it will be costly to defend. And, it will be a defense that Mt. Gretna will be forced to put on, as I suppose my audience is sophisticated enough to know, because when this kind of action is filed, the municipality will also be a named defendant.
It may even cost Mt. Gretna in terms of bad publicity for the Art Show and Mt. Gretna.
Granted, this won't be on our municipal leaders' agenda until a year or so from now, given all the procedural formalities that are required. But, when notice of a police misconduct case is served upon them, it will take up a lot of space, so to speak.
By the way, to check out just how serious heat stroke is, go to http://www.medicinenet.com/heat_stroke/article.htmThere, you will also learn that a symptom of heat stroke is agitation. Go figure.The information for this post was gleaned from reviewing various public records and from interviewing witnesses. Out of respect for the doctor's privacy, I will not provide a copy of the records on this blog, even though they are public documents.
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