Police officers in Cooks County, Illinois, are facing charges that they stripped a car accident victim of her clothing and took naked photos of her dead body for their own enjoyment. Jessica Mejia was a passenger in a car being driven by her drunk boyfriend when he slammed their vehicle into a pole, killing the 20-year-old. According to her mother Christina, the police officers who showed up to the scene stripped Jessica of all her clothing and took inappropriate, non-crime related photos of her naked body.
“This was a young lady that just died and was treated with less dignity than a deer carcass you find on the side of the road,” said Don Perry, the Mejia family’s lawyer, to the Chicago Tribune.
The Cook’s County Sheriff’s Department is defending the officers, saying that the photos “were instrumental in securing a conviction against the person responsible for this tragic death. In no way were these photos intended to cause harm to the family.” Mejia’s boyfriend was convicted in the drunk driving death and is serving 56 months in prison, and now the officers involved in taking the photos are facing charges and set to stand trial starting this week.
“I feel violated,” Christina Mejia says of the way the cops treated her daughter’s lifeless body.
Every. Damn. Day. There is something in the news about the police behaving in deplorable ways towards the citizens they are supposed to protect. And these are just the stories we’re actually learning about. And you know what? Every time someone responds to an incident of police brutality with anything akin to “NOT ALL COPS,” it makes things worse by protecting the police’s hero mythology above the lives of every day citizens. When will it fucking end? [Chicago Tribune via Death and Taxes]
Original by: By: Amelia McDonell-Parry @xoamelia
