Louisiana Police Charge 2 Officers in Death of 6-Year-Old Boy
Louisiana State Police charged two law enforcement officers in the shooting death of a 6-year-old boy and the wounding of his father.
Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23, and Derrick Stafford, 32, were charged with second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder in the shooting in the city of Marksville on Tuesday, Col. Mike Edmonson said during a news conference late Friday. Jeremy Mardis was killed and his father, Christopher Few, was left in critical condition.
The shooting happened when the two city marshals allegedly opened fire on a vehicle following a pursuit, said Edmonson.
"That little boy was buckled in the front seat of that vehicle and that is how he died,” Edmonson said Friday.
Edmonson called body cam footage showing the shooting "the most disturbing thing I've seen." The video will likely not be released until the officers' trials, Louisiana State Police said Saturday.
Police also reviewed 911 calls and eyewitness interviews related to the shooting.
"Nothing is more important than this badge that we are wearing on our uniform," Edmonson said. "This badge has been tarnished by the following two individuals."
Police haven't said what prompted the shooting. Authorities said Few was unarmed, according to ABC affiliate WBRZ-TV.
The officers' first court appearances have not yet been scheduled, said Louisiana State Police.
Morris German, Few's 57-year-old stepfather, alleged the marshals indiscriminately fired at the vehicle while speaking to The Associated Press. He said the six-year-old boy was diagnosed with autism and called him a delightful child who "loved everything, everybody."
Mardis' funeral visitation was scheduled for Sunday and the funeral for Monday.
Obviously this is an horrific incident, but here's what I'm wondering:
Do you suppose that anybody's going to start yelling about race playing a role in this? Do you think they'll be any talk about looking into this as a "hate crime"? Will the Justice department open an investigation? Will Obama issue a statement? Do you think there will be any protest marches?
Yeah right...
On the contrary, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some of the professional race baiters started bitching that it was "racist" to charge these two with 2nd degree murder...
Finding horses and donkeys no matter how many or how often does not disprove the existence of zebras nor does it reduce their numbers or importance to the savanna.
This case does nothing to reduce the number of instances of brutal, violent, racist conduct by the police. Conduct which has been documented too often to be denied.
The two Louisiana cops who were charged in the fatal shooting of a 6-year-old autistic boy both have a history of violence and aggressive behavior — and they have each been accused of civil rights violations in the past, including rape and excessive use-of-force.
Officers Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23, and Derrick Stafford, 32, were booked on charges late Friday of second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder in the death of Jeremy Mardis and the wounding of his father, Chris Few, in the town of Marksville on Tuesday.
Local ABC affiliate KATC reports that the deputy marshals have both been slapped with civil lawsuits in recent years for various incidents that have unfolded while on patrol.
In 2011, Stafford was indicted by a grand jury on two counts of aggravated rape. The case was later resolved, but it is unclear what the outcome was, according to archives from Town Talk, a daily newspaper in nearby Alexandria.
Records also show that he allegedly threw a handcuffed woman into his squad car a month earlier and tased her without warning.
In 2013, Greenhouse and seven other cops, including Stafford, were accused of breaking up a fight on the Fourth of July by pepper spraying the entire crowd. A mother who was there with her three children later sued and the case is still pending, according to KATC.
While breaking up a fight between two girls on a school bus in 2012, Stafford allegedly pulled a 15-year-old girl’s arm behind her back and broke it. Her mother sued and the case is still pending.
The pair are also currently entrenched in a federal use-of-force lawsuit filed in July by Ascension Parish resident Ian Fridge, who claims he was assaulted by the officers as they stopped him for openly carrying a weapon at a venue where alcohol is served.
Fridge alleges that he was grabbed by a group of cops, including Greenhouse and Stafford, and told “you’re definitely not a local boy” before being tackled and nailed with a stun gun, according to the Baton Rouge newspaper, The Advocate.
The Louisiana State Police, which is leading the murder probe, refused to comment on any of the cases.
Greenhouse and Stafford were both said to be moonlighting for the local Ward 2 marshal’s office at the time of Tuesday’s shooting.
The pair claimed they ultimately stopped Few, 25, and blasted 18 rounds toward him and his son because they were pursuing a warrant, but such a document has yet to materialize.
Authorities said that Jeremy, a first-grader, was pumped with five bullets in the head and torso after being “caught in the line of fire.”
His dad, who was unarmed, was left critically wounded.
Police officials later said that body camera footage obtained from Greenhouse and Stafford is what led to their arrests.
This case provides yet more proof of what I have long asserted...
Contrary to what some people would have you believe, we are not a nation awash in bad cops....
The primary problem is that the small minority of police officers who abuse their authority over and over and over again, are not being removed from their respective police forces.
you have to wonder how these cops thought they could get away with this while wearing body cameras.
Pure arrogance...
They had gotten away with so much for so long, they thought they were untouchable....
One of them in particular probably felt that way; he is the son of an assistant DA:
Marksville Deputy Marshal charged with murder is son of assistant DA
Norris Greenhouse Jr., one of the Marksville Ward 2 city deputy marshals charged Friday in the death of 6-year-old Jeremy David Mardis, is the son of Norris Greenhouse Sr., an Avoyelles Parish assistant district attorney.
It’s the reason District Attorney Charles Riddle III said that a motion to recuse the office would be filed soon.[And why wasn't the office recused in all the previous incidents? Oh yeah, no publicity...]
“The community needs to know this, that our district attorney’s office and the State Police and our local police department, did not direct … this investigation because of the relationship of one of the accused who was arrested tonight and one of our assistant district attorneys,” Riddle said Friday night.
I don't dispute that they're murdering bastards but I agree it does nothing to discount the institutional racism that is endemic in policing. The Freddy Gray case included a cop of color, that doesn't diminish the longstanding problem in Baltimore's PD, either. This issue has been addressed where cops of color have admitted treating suspects of color differently.
There are two huge problems with our police; institutional racism AND a culture where excessive use of force is normative.
I saw a recent article that identified over 6000 cops who had abused their power to commit sexual assaults on suspects while on the job; I've been meaning to post it and will do so as soon as I'm at my laptop.
I think we are far past a few bad apples, even if it's not the majority of cops. The power that police wield means that we as a society shouldn't tolerate even a few bad apples, much less corruption on the scale that currently exists. We need widespread police reform in this nation, ASAP.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
The biggest "institutional" problem I see is an institutionalized inability to get rid of bad cops...
It's a problem all over the country; there is either an unwillingness or an inability to get rid of cops that have wracked up numerous lawsuits, suspensions, etc., and instead allowing them to stay on the street with their badges and their guns...
There is no single action that could be taken that will reduce the amount of abuse of police power anywhere nearly as effectively as getting rid of that relatively small percentage that are piling up a vastly disproportionate number of complaints and disciplinary action.
There seems to be a lot of evidence to support my view:
Study Finds Majority of Police Abuse Cases Involve Same Small Group Of Officers
There is an interesting study out that a relatively small number of officers are responsible for over half of police abuse claims. We have seen similar results in studies of malpractice cases of doctors. Yet, this small group of officers not only tarnish the reputations of all officers but cost massive amounts of money. Marketplace reports that Chicago paid out more than half a billion dollars over 10 years in police misconduct cases. This is a city that is facing junk bond status and the threat of insolvency.
Law professor Craig Futterman, who runs the University of Chicago’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project, has done some interesting work in this area. His study of the Chicago Police Department found the same officers fueling these costs. It suggests that a better job of self-policing could result in substantial savings for police departments and more importantly greater protection for citizens.
UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz has found similar results. She notes however that most cities still resist keeping records that would help identify such officers and track patterns.[That's inexcusable.] This would seem to offer obvious areas of reform for departments. We have certainly seen anecdotally that officers involved in controversies often seem to have checkered histories of prior lawsuits or serious complaints. The problem is the political will to implement the academic findings.
5 percent of arresting NYPD officers make 40 percent of all resisting arrest charges
A shocking 72 percent of all resisting arrest charges are brought by only 15 percent of the NYPD. Resisting arrest is a charge that is often used to cover the use of excessive force by police. Why else would Darvell Elliot have wound up in a hospital bed after he had been handcuffed by Officer Donald Sadowy outside of Elliot's Brownsville home? In a case of mistaken identity (all black men look the same to some police officers) the police stopped him because a black man had stolen an iPod and cellphone in the area. He claims that once they handcuffed him, they tripped him and beat him. The picture his lawyer provided WNYC appears to back up his complaint.
The NYPD has used computer software for years to track crime in its jurisdiction. But apparently it hasn't taken advantage of data to deal with abusive cops. According to WNYC, one officer, Donald Sadowy, has been sued for excessive force 10 times in just over two years.
The biggest "institutional" problem I see is an institutionalized inability to get rid of bad cops...
It's exactly this issue that made me start to change my mind about unionized public employees. I still have a lot of sympathy for most private sector unions, and even some sympathy for teachers' unions, but I think that at present policemen's unions are doing way more harm than good.
People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
— God@The Tweet of God
On a checkerboard of sessions on everything from electronic surveillance to speed enforcement, police chiefs who gathered for an annual meeting in 2007 saw a discussion on sex offenses by officers added to the agenda. More than 70 chiefs packed into a room, and when asked if they had dealt with an officer accused of sexual misdeeds, nearly every attendee raised a hand. A task force was formed and federal dollars were pumped into training.
Eight years later, a simple question — how many law enforcement officers are accused of sexual misconduct — has no definitive answer. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, which collects police data from around the country, doesn't track officer arrests, and states aren't required to collect or share that information.
To measure the problem, the AP obtained records from 41 states on police decertification, an administrative process in which an officer's law enforcement license is revoked. Cases from 2009 through 2014 were then reviewed to determine whether they stemmed from misconduct meeting the Department of Justice standard for sexual assault — sexual contact that happens without consent, including intercourse, sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling and attempted rape.
Nine states and the District of Columbia said they either did not decertify officers for misconduct or declined to provide information.
Of those that did release records, the AP determined that some 550 officers were decertified for sexual assault, including rape and sodomy, sexual shakedowns in which citizens were extorted into performing favors to avoid arrest, or gratuitous pat-downs. Some 440 officers lost their badges for other sex offenses, such as possessing child pornography, or for sexual misconduct that included being a peeping Tom, sexting juveniles or having on-duty intercourse.
The law enforcement officials in these records included state and local police, sheriff's deputies, prison guards and school resource officers; no federal officers were included because the records reviewed came from state police standards commissions. About one-third of the officers decertified were accused of incidents involving juveniles. Because of gaps in the information provided by the states, it was impossible to discern any other distinct patterns, other than a propensity for officers to use the power of their badge to prey on the vulnerable. Some but not all of the decertified officers faced criminal charges; some offenders were able to avoid prosecution by agreeing to surrender their certifications.
Victims included unsuspecting motorists, schoolchildren ordered to raise their shirts in a supposed search for drugs, police interns taken advantage of, women with legal troubles who succumbed to performing sex acts for promised help, and prison inmates forced to have sex with guards.
The AP's findings, coupled with other research and interviews with experts, suggest that sexual misconduct is among the most prevalent type of complaint against law officers. Phil Stinson, a researcher at Bowling Green State University, analyzed news articles between 2005 and 2011 and found 6,724 arrests involving more than 5,500 officers. Sex-related cases were the third-most common, behind violence and profit-motivated crimes. Cato Institute reports released in 2009 and 2010 found sex misconduct the No. 2 complaint against officers, behind excessive force.
eta: I misstated before; it's 6000+ arrests, not 6000+ cops.
Last edited by BoSoxGal on Tue Nov 10, 2015 2:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
Joe Guy wrote:... On a serious note, you have to wonder how these cops thought they could get away with this while wearing body cameras.
... that most cops are never the sharpest tool in the shed -- they just think they are. In any given scenario it's "might makes right" and "safety in numbers." And when they fuck up they depend on the code of silence to protect and serve themselves.
Cop culture -- the more things change, the more they stay the same.
“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among us, a greater sincerity.”
rubato wrote:Finding horses and donkeys no matter how many or how often does not disprove the existence of zebras nor does it reduce their numbers or importance to the savanna.
This case does nothing to reduce the number of instances of brutal, violent, racist conduct by the police. Conduct which has been documented too often to be denied.
yrs,
rubato
You don’t think that it is possible that these two black marshals were motivated racial bias? Do you know what the function marshals are in Louisiana? They serve warrants. If there was no warrant out for the arrest of the father, how can the death of the boy be justified? Perhaps the father had a Rebel sticker on his truck; that would have make the killing justified. Do you see this as just a legal lynching of two black police officers.
Think that Marksville is not too far from Jena.
Soon, I’ll post my farewell message. The end is starting to get close. There are many misconceptions about me, and before I go, to live with my ancestors on the steppes, I want to set the record straight.
I would not be surprise if allegations of racism were made against Colonel Michael D. Edmonson for his investigation of this incident.
He is a good old boy from Alexandra Louisiana so he must be a racist. Don’t you agree? However, I have been impressed by him in the past. He appears to be highly dedicated and is very concerned with the honor of Louisiana police especially the state police.
Michael Edmonson
Colonel Michael D. Edmonson, originally of Alexandria, has served as the Training Command Inspector for the Louisiana State Police since 2007, managing the State Police Training Academy which provides basic training for State Police cadets and continuing training for troopers. He also currently manages the Joint Emergency Services Training Center, a state of the art 1,500-acre, $42 million law enforcement and first responder training facility where local, state and federal agencies train with private industry partners; and he serves as the LSU Football Team and Head Coach’s Security and Escort.
Edmonson previously served as the Commander of the Capitol Detail and Physical Security from 2004 to 2006, managing two DPS command sections that encompassed overall police duties for the Capitol Park and a 200-bed Department of Corrections inmate facility that provides workforce to the department. From 2001 to 2004, Edmonson served as the Commander of Technical Support Service, supervising the statewide criminal history repository, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, the Louisiana Law Enforcement Network, the Sex Offender Registry, the Concealed Handguns Unit and the Traffic Records Unit. Before that, Edmonson served as the Director of Public Affairs for the State Police from 1997 to 2001.
He has also formerly served as the Director of Fleet Operations and Communications, the Deputy Regional Commander and Executive Officer for the Transportation and Environmental Safety Section of the State Police, as an officer and commander in the Public Affairs Unit, and as a patrolman for the State Police beginning in 1984.
Edmonson has more than 27 years of total experience in law enforcement, and more than 20 years of management experience in criminal justice administration. He has also served as the LSU Football Team and Head Coach’s Security and Escort for the past 26 years. Edmonson has a bachelor’s of criminal justice from LSU and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy.
Soon, I’ll post my farewell message. The end is starting to get close. There are many misconceptions about me, and before I go, to live with my ancestors on the steppes, I want to set the record straight.
Louisiana cops that shot 6-year old: A pattern of excessive force?
Latest News
The two deputy marshals have had a string of charges filed against them in the central Louisiana justice system.
By Kelsey Warner, Staff November 11, 2015
Save for later
The officers charged with the shooting death of a 6-year-old boy diagnosed with autism in central Louisiana have been defendants in several lawsuits for excessive use of force or standing by in an assault case.
At a time when the nation is closely scrutinizing claims of excessive force by law-enforcement officers, Louisiana officers Derrick Stafford and Norris Greenhouse Jr. are being held on $1 million bond on charges of second-degree murder of Jeremy Mardis and attempted second-degree murder of his father, Chris Few.
The bond hearing on Monday was the latest in a long string of encounters with the central Louisiana justice system for the two deputy marshals. Stafford was sued by a woman in 2012, who claimed that he shocked her with a stun gun while the woman was in handcuffs. Another 2012 lawsuit alleged Stafford broke a girl's arm while breaking up a fight on a school bus.
Recommended: Can you pass the written police officer exam?
Both Stafford and Greenhouse are being sued by a man who says the officers used excessive force when arresting him at a festival last year. An additional lawsuit claims Greenhouse and Stafford "stood idly by and did nothing" when a fellow officer "assaulted" a teenager at a Fourth of July celebration in 2013, the Associated Press reports.
Last year a Louisiana jury awarded $50,000 to a man who accused Stafford of arresting him in retaliation for filing a complaint against the officer.
One 2011 indictment charged Stafford with the rape of a 15-year-old in 2004, when he was 21, and the rape of another individual in 2011. Those charges were later dismissed, though court documents do not indicate why.
Anthony Radosti, vice president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission in New Orleans, told the AP that use of force complaints should be a "red flag" for a police department to examine if an officer needs to be disciplined or possibly provided further training.
"Even smaller departments should have an early-warning system," said Mr. Radosti, a retired New Orleans police officer.
Stafford is a full-time lieutenant with the Marksville Police Department, and Greenhouse is currently a full-time city marshal. Initial reports of last Friday's shooting stated the marshals were attempting to serve Mr. Few with a warrant when he drove onto a dead-end road and then reversed his car toward the two marshals.
Col. Mike Edmonson, head of the Louisiana State Police, has since tempered that account, saying there was no evidence of a warrant or any gun found at the scene.
Few was shot and remains hospitalized, and the encounter killed his son Jeremy. Few's lawyer, Mark Jeansonne, told the AP on Monday that footage from a police body camera showed that Few was holding both of his hands up and did not appear to be a threat when the officers opened fire, directing at least 18 bullets at the vehicle.
Following the bond hearing, the officers were moved from the jail in Marksville to a lockup facility in Alexandria in central Louisiana.
In addition to the footage captured on the officers' body cameras, investigators are looking at forensic evidence and 911 calls.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report
Soon, I’ll post my farewell message. The end is starting to get close. There are many misconceptions about me, and before I go, to live with my ancestors on the steppes, I want to set the record straight.
More "bad apples" lying and their brothers in blue swearing to it.
"While in custody he (Lambert) was agitated and ran from the officers. Ambulance workers say police later claimed he fought them at a time when videos show he was actually unconscious. Police dispute that account and deny allegations of excessive force." http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/driven-hospi ... ce-custody
"Should I tase him again, Andy, he's still moving?"
“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among us, a greater sincerity.”
Inside small-town Louisiana feud that led to a 6-year-old boy’s police killing

The Washington Post
William Wan6 hrs ago
Family members and friends gather for the funeral of six year old Jeremy Mardis Monday, Nov. 9, 2015, at Beaumont Cemetery in Beaumont, Miss. Mardis was killed during a police pursuit in Marksville, La. that left…For years, people in the tiny Louisiana town of Marksville watched the feud between their mayor and local judge like some kind of daytime soap opera, with varying degrees of frustration and bemusement.
Then came the Nov. 3 shooting that killed a 6-year-old boy. Suddenly, the petty small-town bickering began looking more tragically sinister.
Why in the world, residents ask, were deputy marshals — whose main job is serving court papers for the judge — out there chasing cars and shooting up suspects? How did one of the deputies — who had been charged twice for aggravated rape and racked up a string of lawsuits for excessive force — even get hired? And how did a speck of a town like Marksville wind up with a shadow police force on its streets?
“It’s pretty clear to me that if this feud didn’t exist, those marshals wouldn’t have been there that day,” said one former city official and resident of more than three decades who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing a gag order in the case.
“We’ve watched the both of them fight for years. . . . But I don’t think anyone imagined something so petty would lead to something so tragic.”
Jeremy Mardis was the youngest person shot and killed by law officers so far this year, according to a Washington Post database tracking such shootings. Amid a national debate over police use of deadly force, the killing of an autistic 6-year-old sent shock waves nationwide.
Louisiana State Police said they’re still trying to figure out why deputies were chasing an SUV driven by Jeremy’s father, Chris Few. Few was not armed and was not the subject of any arrest warrant.
When the chase ended, the two deputies — Derrick Stafford, 32, and Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23 — fired at least 18 bullets into Few’s SUV, police said. Five shots hit Jeremy, a first-grader strapped into the front seat beside his father. Few was critically injured; his attorney told reporters he was recently released from the hospital.
Two police officers who work for the mayor arrived during the shooting; one of them was wearing a body camera. The footage “is one of the most disturbing videos I’ve ever seen,” said State Police Col. Mike Edmonson.
“It troubled me as a police officer and as a father. There’s no reason that boy deserved to die like that,” Edmonson said. Few’s attorney told reporters the video shows the father with his hands in the air as the deputies open fire.
Stafford and Greenhouse have been arrested and charged with second-degree murder. A judge overseeing the case has issued a gag order, prohibiting those involved and potential witnesses from talking to reporters.
Since then, information about the case and Marksville more generally has slowed to a trickle, with folks in town refusing to talk openly about almost anything. In private interviews, however, many blamed the long-running feud for Jeremy’s death. It may not have directly caused the shooting, they say, but it created the bizarre circumstances that made it possible.
With a population of 5,500 and a median income of $26,700, Marksville is small, rural and relatively poor. Like most towns in Louisiana, it has a local marshal, an elected position with no police training or experience required.
The marshal’s job is to serve court papers: subpoenas, warrants, notices of nonpayment. For years in Marksville, the marshal has been a local bus driver, Floyd Voinche Sr., who carried out his duties with one full-time employee and one part-timer, according to a statewide marshals directory.
But sometime in the past two months, that changed.
Mayor John Lemoine told reporters that Voinche’s office bought two used police cruisers, hired several part-time deputies and started patrolling the streets and issuing tickets like regular city police. In a September letter to Louisiana’s attorney general, Lemoine asked whether the marshal’s sudden expansion of duties was legal.
Voinche has refused to explain his actions, issuing a terse statement citing a Louisiana law that empowers deputy marshals “in making arrests and preserving the peace.”
“The statute gives us the same authority as a sheriff,” said Joey Alcede, a marshal in Lake Charles and an official with the state marshal association. Having marshals take on the duties of city police is highly unusual, however, Alcede said.
According to several current and former city officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of violating the gag order, Marksville’s marshal began issuing traffic tickets to generate money for the city court. The court’s funding has been the focus of a furious battle between the mayor and City Judge Angelo Piazza III since last year.
“No one really took it seriously, until recently. It was like watching two bullies fighting,” said one resident who has known both men for decades.
Piazza, 57, has reigned over the Marksville city court for more than two decades. A Civil War buff known for hauling authentic cannons to reenactments, Piazza sued the city in 1997 over funding. When Lemoine, 63, a mechanic and auto parts shop owner, was elected mayor in 2010, he announced plans to tighten up Marksville’s budget, and war fully bloomed.
“Lemoine put a microscope on City Court,” Piazza told the local paper, the Avoyelles Journal, last year. Piazza said the scrutiny added new costs and bureaucracy, even as Marksville police started issuing fewer tickets, dramatically reducing his court’s income.
Then this summer, Lemoine sharply cut the court’s budget — including the judge’s salary. Piazza filed suit. Piazza declined to comment for this story. Lemoine and Voinche did not return repeated calls for comment.
The feud polarized the town’s law enforcement community. “You have officers siding with the judge and marshal, and others with the mayor,” said one longtime elected official.
At one point, the mayor was arrested after an argument with police. One of the arresting officers was Stafford, and afterward the mayor tried to get a civil service oversight board to investigate him.
Both Stafford and Greenhouse were moonlighting as deputy marshals when they opened fire on Nov. 3. Stafford was a Marksville police officer; Greenhouse is a reserve Marksville officer and deputy marshal in neighboring Alexandria. It is unclear when or how they joined Marksville’s newly expanded marshal service. Many have questioned Stafford’s hiring in particular.
“This is a guy I think a lot of us would have trouble hiring,” said a law enforcement chief in a neighboring jurisdiction.
Stafford has been charged twice with aggravated rape in nearby Rapides Parish. According to the indictment, one 15-year-old victim said Stafford committed rape on the victim’s birthday in 2004. In a separate incident, a second victim said Stafford committed rape in 2011.
In 2012, the charges were inexplicably dropped. In court documents, the attorney listed as representing Stafford is Piazza, the same judge he now works under as a marshal deputy.
Monique Metoyer, who prosecuted the rape case, declined to explain why the charges were dropped. But she confirmed that Marksville’s judge served as Stafford’s lawyer.
Stafford has also been accused in civil court of using excessive force; at least five lawsuits are currently pending against him. The accusations include throwing an already handcuffed woman into a back seat and using a stun gun on her, breaking the arm of a 15-year-old girl, and arresting a man in retribution for filing a formal complaint against Stafford for yelling at his family.
Greenhouse has been accused alongside Stafford in two excessive force cases. And in an example of the messy overlap common in small town government, Greenhouse’s father works for the local district attorney, who had to recuse himself from prosecuting Stafford and Greenhouse in the shooting.
Greenhouse also appears to have a personal connection to Few and his girlfriend, Megan Dixon. Dixon told the local Advocate newspaper that she went to high school with Greenhouse and that he had recently messaged her on Facebook and stopped by the house where she lived with Few.
“I told Chris, and Chris confronted him about it and told him, ‘Next time you come to my house, I’m going to hurt you,’ ” Dixon said.
With the gag order in place, it is unclear when authorities will release additional information about the shooting, including the body camera footage. No trial date has been set. Equally unclear is what happens to the newly expanded marshal service.
Meanwhile, the family of Jeremy Mardis held a private funeral for the first-grader last week in his hometown of Hattiesburg, Miss. Under a chilly gray sky, the family placed his small coffin inside a hearse and headed to nearby Beaumont cemetery to bury him.
Soon, I’ll post my farewell message. The end is starting to get close. There are many misconceptions about me, and before I go, to live with my ancestors on the steppes, I want to set the record straight.
On a serious note, you have to wonder how these cops thought they could get away with this while wearing body cameras.
Well, that last update at least seems to answer Joe's question... Apparently the one cop who was wearing a body camera was NOT one of the two deputies involved in the shooting:
When the chase ended, the two deputies — Derrick Stafford, 32, and Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23 — fired at least 18 bullets into Few’s SUV, police said. Five shots hit Jeremy, a first-grader strapped into the front seat beside his father. Few was critically injured; his attorney told reporters he was recently released from the hospital.
Two police officers who work for the mayor arrived during the shooting; one of them was wearing a body camera. The footage “is one of the most disturbing videos I’ve ever seen,” said State Police Col. Mike Edmonson.
People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
— God@The Tweet of God
