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I'm a white guy so I don't have any trouble with law enforcement officers. I've never been arrested.
We got justice for kids we thought had been bullied at the hands of police," Fowler said, noting that the payouts to the children in many ways were structured to allow them access to the money incrementally rather than give them a lump-sum windfall. "It gives the kids money when they need it" for college and other expenses.The lawsuit, filed in July of last year, accused Bowers and the other deputy of lashing out without provocation at the Southern Thirty Adolescent Center that houses youths ages 11 to 18, often children with behavioral issues.
It claims that Bowers and Lawler went to the center on July 4, 2008, in response to a report that three teenagers were acting unruly. But the young people suing the deputies were not those disruptive children, the lawsuit said.
Bowers allegedly pushed one boy toward his bed and repeatedly shocked him with a stun gun. Bowers then held down a second boy, stunned him several times and threatened to sodomize him, ultimately causing the child to soil himself, the lawsuit claimed.
A third child complied with the deputies' demands that he sit on a couch, but Lawler handcuffed him before Bowers zapped him repeatedly, the lawsuit said.
The fourth child, a girl, pleaded with the deputies to stop but Lawler handcuffed her. Bowers lifted her off the ground, pressed her against a wall and choked her, the lawsuit alleged.
"Do you want to live or die (expletive)?" the lawsuit claimed Bowers asked the girl before she was thrown into a closet, vomiting.
Calling the deputies' actions "extreme, outrageous and unjustified," the lawsuit did not release the names or ages of the three boys shot with the stun gun. The fourth child was a foster child who did not live at the center, according to the lawsuit.
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