See other Miscellaneous Articles
Title: Skater charged with assault on officer
Source:
The Dallas Morning News
URL Source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcon ... 31706dnmetskater.304e63a6.html
Published: Mar 16, 2006
Author: ROBERT THARP
Post Date: 2006-03-18 02:02:18 by Starwind
Keywords: charged, assault, officer
Views: 3845
Comments: 228
Witnesses denied she was aggressor; internal investigation continuing 09:38 PM CST on Thursday, March 16, 2006 By ROBERT THARP / The Dallas Morning News A Dallas Roller Derby skater was indicted Thursday on a felony charge of assaulting a Dallas police officer stemming from a January incident in which she and several witnesses say the officer was the aggressor and used excessive force. Reports related to the indictment charge that Michelle Metzinger, 25, was belligerent and fought with Officer Ceaphus Gordon after the officer asked to see her identification because, he said, she had been roller skating recklessly through traffic on Elm Street in Deep Ellum. Michelle Metzinger According to Officer Gordon's report, Ms. Metzinger tried to gouge his eye with her fingers when he tried to handcuff and arrest her on a charge of public intoxication. The officer then tried to force Ms. Metzinger to the sidewalk using a "straight arm bar take down," but instead, she "rolled from the police car to the ground," his report says. Ms. Metzinger continued scratching and kicking the officer on the ground, the report says. Officer Gordon described his injuries as three 1/8th-inch scratches near his right eye and scratches and bruises on his chin. He described Ms. Metzinger's injury as a "small laceration that required a stitch," although his report indicates that she spent five hours at Parkland Memorial Hospital before she was taken to jail. Kevin Clancy, Ms. Metzinger's attorney, said he was disappointed that he was not allowed to present evidence to the grand jury that would have offered a different account of what happened. Eight witnesses to the arrest have filed affidavits saying that Ms. Metzinger was not intoxicated and that she did not resist the officer. The witnesses state that after Ms. Metzinger was forced to the ground, Officer Gordon put his knee on her back or neck while he was handcuffing her, which is not described in the officer's reports. "I think it's a travesty that this poor girl was charged with this," Mr. Clancy said. "I really do think that the grand jury did not look at the evidence." A separate investigation into the incident by Dallas police internal affairs is ongoing. Mr. Clancy said Dallas police have so far not interviewed any of the witnesses. Officer Gordon has had 27 complaints filed against him in his 14-year career, most of which were ruled "unfounded" or "inconclusive." Of those inconclusive complaints, at least two involved allegations of excessive force. E-mail rtharp@dallasnews.com
Poster Comment: ------ see also: (Dallas) Police Deny Excessive Force In Bloody Arrest (black cop, white girl) 
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 138.
#48. To: Starwind, christine, zipporah, bluegrass (#0)
No woman with thighs as delicious and juicy as hers should ever be slammed to the ground unless one intends to make love to her. When I saw the pix (OMG) I was immediately sympathetic to this poor girl!
Now why am I not surprised HOUNDDAWG .. ;) Maybe that's what the officer was trying to do... just wrestle her to the ground? ;P
i was thinking of re-doing the enhanced photos to show more details of Michelle holding the leaflets and Ceaphus Gordon's knee on her neck and back - should i post them here or on the first forum? ruthie
ruthie XXXXXX oops - the reply just crossed over with my re-post (i thought the first one failed because my internet crashed - sorry!) - i'll work on them 2nite ruthie
ok, here's the enhanced images again. i added the EXIF date & time at the top
and notes that i thought might be relevant. the photos were enhanced using
irfanview and psp7. the last picture comes from http://www.helpmichelle.org and had no EXIF
data. i don't know if there are any other pictures available that can be tied in
with these. even the first picture is interesting - Michelle standing with
both hands on the car, looking in the direction of a witness across the road.
she is using her right skate to steady herself and seems in a relaxed state. we
can't see her left hand because of the wing mirror but i suspect it is holding
her ACD promotional leaflets (more on these later). Also on the front of the
police car is what looks like a folder or document holder - presumably belonging
to the police. The passenger's car door is fully open. in this shot, we do not
see any police. the time is 00:30:59...
(click to enlarge)
(Click to enlarge)
the time is 1 minute 24 seconds later. the police car door is shut. the driver
can only see Officer Gordon's head. note the cycle is not parked at the front of
the car - there may have been no police witnesses to what happened during the
last 1 minute & 24 seconds... michelle is holding the ACD leaflets in her
left hand which is above her head. Officer Gordon is using both hands to cuff
her right hand. his right foot is outstretched for balance. his left knee is
pressed against Michelle's left cheek and her neck, twisting her head to the
right and forcing it against the ground. there are at least 4 witnesses - the
photographer, the 2 men on the road, the man holding the red flag.
this picture was found on the http://www.helpmichelle.org site.
there was no EXIF data so i don't know which camera it came from. it gives a
different angle to the last one and shows the driver of the police car using a
radio and looking through the passenger door window. however, the height of the
door sill prevents the driver from seeing what is happening on the ground. we
can clearly see Michelle's left fingers clutching on to the ACD leaflets,
protecting them from harm. Officer Gordon is only using his left hand to hold
Michelle's right wrist. his right hand is by his right hip. we can clearly see
his left knee and shin are pressing down on Michelle at the position of her head
and neck. in neither this frame (which may be a few seconds before the last one)
nor the previous frame does he appear to be anything but in complete control -
he does not appear to be recovering his balance or disentangling himself from a
fall.
(Click to enlarge)
31 seconds later... Michelle has lost hold of her ACD leaflets which are
strewn on the ground. Officer Gordon has turned her over face down and is
kneeling with his right knee on her back. he is holding the cuffs in his right
hand, and his left hand is pressing her down at the position of her neck. we can
see in this shot that the bulk of his weight is taken by the right knee and left
hand. there is no blood evident in this picture, it is possible that this is the
point when her chin was cut on the ground.
(Click to enlarge)
the later pictures show a distressed Michelle, bleeding profusely from her
wound, a policeman wearing a cycle helmet who is not apparently present at the
time of the "assault", and various witnesses incuding Michelle's fellow skater.
i can post the enhanced versions if people want but the last 4 are the most
important imho. ruthie
To shrink the photos but make them fully enlargable with a click, could one of you edit ruthie's post #62 and replace her img html as follows, but replace the [ with < and ] with > so the html works:
That's a clever idea, Star. I didn't even think of that kind of approach. I did it to the image in #59.
Thank you Neil. One minor glitch, the aspect ratio is wrong, in post #59 the parameters should be width=600 height=615. It looks like they were entered wrong. Also, looks like in post #60 they should be width=600 height=445
I've got the images on this thread adjusted. Auto adjusting the image sizes is problematic because the images are never seen by the web server. They originate from the original web source and get xferred directly to the users browser, so the server never has a change to find out how big images are. Maybe there's a way around that, though but it's not simple. But I could put some kind of a tool on the posting page that would aid it letting users set the image dimensions if they feel it's called for. I don't know of any HTML code that simply sets a maximum size for an image, which would be quite handy. It's either let it be the natural size of the image or force it to some specific size. I'm open to ideas.
Well, not quite yet. The 1st two photo's and the last photo are now perfect. But the photo in post #61 is still incorrect. It still has two typo's in it. 1) above the photo is a spurious & #034; width=>< /a> which needs to be cut out. 2) the width & height values are in quotes and simply needs to be replaced with
Got it. Not sure how I messed that up. One possible way to deal with big graphics is to put an image form on the post comment/article page. If an image is too big, you could type/paste the url into a tiny form and click a button, and it would show a popup box that would display the HTML to paste into the comment/article to reduce the image size, perhaps in the form you (Star) came up with where you can click to see the full size image. Default dimensions could be displayed and readily changed by the poster. It would still require some care by posters to do it right, and might be confusing to the less adept, but it would at least offer a solution. Using percentages instead of absolute pixel counts can be handy, but when applied to many graphics can cause it to lose sharpness. It's possible that javascript could measure an image size (I'm not sure what js can do) and aid in the posting process, but I hesitate to use js since it may not run the same on macs, linux or PC's. Maybe things are a bit more uniform js than they used to be, but there used to be compatibility headaches in trying to use js with many different browsers and Operating systems.
i'm still seeing the text outside of the right and left lines.
How's it now? Fixed? Starwind, there was a separate problem with your post #94 having nothing to do with the wide images. I saw on the full sized "Brushed" look that there was some L/R scrolling, and it was apparently tied to the contents of the "pre" tag in your post 94. A few of the lines had a goodly number of trailing spaces which the browser made room for. I also took out one of the two pair of blockquote tags as it seems the bolded text inside the "pre" tags was forcing extra width. Might be tied to the style sheet of the 100% brushed look, but just fyi. (Not a common enough problem to worry about perhaps... all considered).
fixed, no l/r scroll
wow - you guys have really tidied up! thank you for sorting out the pics so well :) no news re Michelle at present but if i spot anything i'll post it...
wow, ruthie, i just checked your "my space." you're in scotland and you're expecting your first child in july? best wishes!
Oh wow! I'll never forget the first time we were pregnant! I got to rub mommy down every day with Mother's Friend, and the baby got so used to me talking, singing and laughing while oiling mommy's skin that after his birth we were best friends as soon as things quieted down and he figured out who was who! And, he went everywhere with me for the next 15 years until he learned about girls. And with our second, mommy and daughter both just kicked back and really enjoyed the attention! I think it's quite likely that my little girl was the happiest baby that ever spent over nine months in her mommy.
awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! that's so cute! oh and here's another thread talking about Michelle... http://damageplan.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2898&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 love ruthie
hey ruthie!! How are you?? Thanks for the link!.. Interesting how there was ONLY one person who was attacking Michele on this.. I still wonder what his connection was in her case?
i'm fine thanks - feeling fat, frumpy and frustrated (lol) but getting there. i'm not sure you can read too much into the one person thingy - it might have been to get people voting? anyway, it isn't really important...what's more important is demolishing any prosecution of Michelle and it would be VERY interesting to see how Officer Ceaphus Gordon and his colleagues coped under detailed cross-examination when we have the photos and the time duration to give accurate details. who, for example, is he going to get to corroborate his version? in fact, where was he at the time the first image was taken? which side of Michelle was he when she supposedly "attacked" him? his partner was apparently in the car...with the door shut and unable to see what his fine colleague was doing to the woman on the ground. the police cyclist parked his bicycle at the front of the police car AFTER Michelle was cuffed and sitting crying on the ground, so he seems to have arrived after the event. the famous "Richard" has shown his bias in the previous threads and these can be held up against him as a credible, impartial witness (if indeed he exists or was even there). then there is the disciplinary record of Ceaphus Gordon - it would be really REALLY interesting to get more details on his background aired in a court. is his departmental record in the public domain? who released the details of his disciplinary file - the police??? or has he got police colleagues who are so disgusted that they want him disgraced and removed from duty?
then there is the disciplinary record of Ceaphus Gordon - it would be really REALLY interesting to get more details on his background aired in a court. is his departmental record in the public domain? who released the details of his disciplinary file - the police??? or has he got police colleagues who are so disgusted that they want him disgraced and removed from duty? Been there sweetie more than once!! Hormonal and uncomfortable but at the end a sweet little one. Some of my best times were when my children were just babes in arms.. (getting tad sentimental here! ) Agreed.. I'd like to know as well.. it would be most interesting. I still wonder what interest "Richard" who showed here in defense of the officer in fact had? The why is what makes me curious.. In my personal opinion I doubt seriously that in fact he was a witness.. BTW ruthie how did all this come to your interest? Considering you're far far from Deep Elam?
well...i used to skate and i was interested in how roller derby was coming back into fashion so i did a search and ended up with the pictures of Michelle. then i suppose its just that i detest violence towards women and it didn't matter she was the other side of the world - she's a sister in trouble and my heart went out to her. sounds a bit corny and not very clever but that's all i can think to say ...and yes, my hormones ARE a bit weird so maybe its a premature case of "feral mother syndrome" - you threaten MY baby, i threaten YOUR manhood! grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... just kidding, guys - honest ;)
then i suppose its just that i detest violence towards women and
it didn't matter she was the other side of the world - she's a sister in trouble
and my heart went out to her. sounds a bit corny and not very clever but
that's all i can think to say ...and yes, my hormones ARE a bit weird so
maybe its a premature case of "feral mother syndrome" - you threaten MY baby, i
threaten YOUR manhood! grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... just kidding, guys - honest ;)
OH okay.. thanks for the explanation I just wondered..
And I agree.. there was no reason for what happened IMO.. maybe he had issues
with women in general and other issues as well..??? Oh gawd the hormones!!
I'd cry if I ran out of cereal I'd think how can anyone cry this much over such
silly things? ;P I just so enjoyed those years ruthie.. but looking back I
wished them away .. I WISH he would sleep through the night I WISH he would
start walking .. I WISH he would go to school.. before you know it .. they're
gone.. (again very sentimental today sorry!)
Do you mean that you're a woman? OMG I feel so stupid!
#139. To: HOUNDDAWG, *Muff Thumper News* (#138)
umm, well i spotted that AGES ago lol - and it proves you are definitely NOT a woman, HOUNDDAWG ;) love ruthie and for those who missed the original broadcast...
click on Zipporah's screen name to see her picture on her homepage.
OMG I feel so stupid! You mean me Dawgie?? OH I'm definitely a woman like chrissy said check my homepage.. yep I'm a girl LOL!!!
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#54. To: HOUNDDAWG (#48)
No woman with thighs as delicious and juicy as hers should ever be slammed to the ground unless one intends to make love to her. When I saw the pix (OMG) I was immediately sympathetic to this poor girl!
#57. To: All (#54)
XXXXXX
#58. To: All (#57)
i was thinking of re-doing the enhanced photos to show more details of Michelle holding the leaflets and Ceaphus Gordon's knee on her neck and back - should i post them here or on the first forum?
XXXXXX
#59. To: All (#58)
#60. To: All (#59)
#61. To: All (#60)
#62. To: All (#61)
XXXXXX
#102. To: christine, Zipporah, ruthie (#62)
(click to enlarge)
[p]
[a href="http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8748/3kbvkpia2an.jpg"]
[img src="http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8748/3kbvkpia2an.jpg"
width=450 height=575]
[/a]
[p]
(click to enlarge)
#108. To: Starwind, Zipporah, Christine (#102)
(click to enlarge) [p] [a href="http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8748/3kbvkpia2an.jpg"] [img src="http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8748/3kbvkpia2an.jpg" width=450 height=575] [/a] [p] (click to enlarge)
#109. To: Neil McIver, Zipporah, Christine (#108)
That's a clever idea, Star. I didn't even think of that kind of approach. I did it to the image in #59.
#113. To: Starwind, Zipporah, christine, ruthie (#109)
#117. To: Neil McIver, Zipporah (#113)
I've got the images on this thread adjusted.
height=& #034;575& #034; width=& #034;450& #034;
width=750 height=565
(exactly as shown without quotes)
#118. To: Starwind, Zipporah, christine (#117)
#120. To: Neil McIver (#118)
#121. To: christine, Starwind (#120)
#122. To: Neil McIver (#121)
#123. To: Dakmar, *Muff Thumper News* (#122)
#125. To: ruthie (#123)
#128. To: christine, ruthie (#125)
wow, ruthie, i just checked your "my space." you're in scotland and you're expecting your first child in july? best wishes!
#129. To: HOUNDDAWG, *Muff Thumper News* (#128)
And with our second, mommy and daughter both just kicked back and really enjoyed the attention! I think it's quite likely that my little girl was the happiest baby that ever spent over nine months in her mommy.
XXXXXX
#130. To: ruthie (#129)
#132. To: Zipporah, *Muff Thumper News* (#130)
hey ruthie!! How are you??
#133. To: ruthie (#132)
i'm fine thanks - feeling fat, frumpy and frustrated (lol) but getting there. i'm not sure you can read too much into the one person thingy - it might have been to get people voting? anyway, it isn't really important...what's more important is demolishing any prosecution of Michelle and it would be VERY interesting to see how Officer Ceaphus Gordon and his colleagues coped under detailed cross-examination when we have the photos and the time duration to give accurate details. who, for example, is he going to get to corroborate his version? in fact, where was he at the time the first image was taken? which side of Michelle was he when she supposedly "attacked" him? his partner was apparently in the car...with the door shut and unable to see what his fine colleague was doing to the woman on the ground. the police cyclist parked his bicycle at the front of the police car AFTER Michelle was cuffed and sitting crying on the ground, so he seems to have arrived after the event. the famous "Richard" has shown his bias in the previous threads and these can be held up against him as a credible, impartial witness (if indeed he exists or was even there).
#134. To: Zipporah, *Muff Thumper News* (#133)
BTW ruthie how did all this come to your interest? Considering you're far far from Deep Elam?
#135. To: ruthie (#134)
well...i used to skate and i was interested in how roller derby
was coming back into fashion so i did a search and ended up with the pictures of
Michelle.
#138. To: Zipporah, ruthie, christine (#135)
Oh gawd the hormones!! I'd cry if I ran out of cereal I'd think how can anyone cry this much over such silly things? ;P I just so enjoyed those years ruthie.. but looking back I wished them away .. I WISH he would sleep through the night I WISH he would start walking .. I WISH he would go to school.. before you know it .. they're gone.. (again very sentimental today sorry!)
Replies to Comment # 138. Do you mean that you're a woman?
XXXXXX
#142. To: HOUNDDAWG (#138)
#145. To: HOUNDDAWG (#138)
Do you mean that you're a woman?
End Trace Mode for Comment # 138.