A federal lawsuit accuses two Allentown police officers of ''outlandish and outrageous conduct'' in what it calls the unprovoked shooting of a man who tried to kill himself with a box cutter.
James H. Stewart, 24, died from two gunshots to his back after the officers tried to arrest him for failing to return to Northampton County Prison after a work-release assignment. He had been jailed for failing to make child support payments.
The suit, filed by attorney John P. Karoly Jr. on March 19, exactly two years after Stewart's death, alleges officer Jeremy Moll shot Stewart twice and that Moll's partner, Wesley Wilcox, yelled at him, ''What the f--- are you doing?''
Filed on behalf of Stewart's estate and his sister, Tonya Stewart, the suit accuses both officers of brutality and using excessive force. Besides Moll and Wilcox, it names former Chief Joseph Blackburn and the city as defendants, and seeks at least $300,000 in punitive and compensatory damages.
Allentown spokesman Joe McDermott said the city would issue no statement on the suit. ''It's litigation, so we can't comment on it,'' he said. ''Our solicitors and lawyers will look over it and proceed accordingly.''
Karoly, of South Whitehall Township, who has won multimillion-dollar settlements against Easton and Bethlehem in police brutality cases, could not be reached for comment.
Stewart, a handyman and father of three, had fallen behind on child support payments and in February 2005 was sent to Northampton County Prison, where he was placed in a work-release program. But he failed to return to the prison March 4, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Early on March 19, 2005, police received an anonymous tip that Stewart was at his sister's home at 510 Auburn St., Allentown.
According to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court:
Moll and Wilcox arrived minutes later and ''pushed their way'' into the home, where they found Stewart ''sitting harmlessly'' on his bed. The officers ordered him to stand, asked his name and checked his identifying tattoos. When they told Stewart to turn around, he took a box cutter from his belt and ''tried to stab himself.''
One of the officers wrestled the box cutter away and threw it to the floor.
As Stewart stood with his back to the officers and arms to his sides, Moll shot him. Stewart fell to his knees, and Moll shot him again in the back. Stewart dropped to the floor, where he lay dying in a pool of blood.
When Wilcox yelled at Moll, asking what he was doing, Moll replied, ''I don't know! I don't know!'' Tonya Stewart, who stood behind the officers, screamed, ''You killed my brother!''
Wilcox and Moll forced Tonya Stewart to the floor, beside her brother, where she was handcuffed. The officers also handcuffed James Stewart, who was moaning and ''bleeding profusely.''
Wilcox turned to Moll, according to the suit, and said, ''My God, what did you do?''
Stewart was taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest, where he died about 30 minutes later.
At the time of the incident, police said the city's communications center received a call at 2:39 a.m. from the Auburn Street home. The caller told police a wanted man was there and he might have a gun.
As two officers tried to arrest Stewart, according to the police account, he held up a box cutter and a struggle began. One of the officers fired at Stewart, hitting him twice in his upper back.
Besides excessive force and brutality by the officers, the lawsuit alleges wrongful death, unlawful seizure, false imprisonment, denial of medical care, civil conspiracy and assault and battery.
The suit also claims Tonya Stewart suffers from a variety of emotional ailments, including ''severe fright, horror and grief.''
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July 2, 2000
236 6th St.
Weyburn, Sask.
S4H 2N8
Prime Minister Jean Chretien
House of Commons
Parliament Hill
Ottawa, Ont.
Dear Mr. Prime Minister
RE: THE DEATH OF MY FATHER AS A RESULT OF CANADA'S BIASED AND ANTI-FAMILY COURT SYSTEM
I am the 14-year-old daughter of Darrin White, the father who recently took his life in British Columbia as a result of the frustration and hopelessness caused in dealing with Canada's family justice system. Although the justice system was not 100 percent the cause of his death, based on what I and members of my family have seen, it was the biggest factor. My father took his life mostly in part because of the injustices being perpetrated against him by what many Canadians say is a biased and morally corrupt Canadian family justice system. Our family justice system seems to allow good fathers to be destroyed while it allows vindictive and revengeful mothers to rule over the courts.
Prior to my father's death, he told me of the anguish he was going through trying to see his children. He told me of the abuse that his wife subjected him to. She did not want him to have a relationship even with me, his own daughter, because she was jealous. He told me of the frustration in dealing with the courts and the lawyers. He told me how the court did nothing except put further barriers to him seeing his children.
Now, I too, am being blocked by my step mother from making contact with my own brothers and sisters who live with my father's second wife. I am up against the same barrier that my father faced when he tried to contact his own children before his death. It is very upsetting to be denied access to members of your own family. Keeping children from seeing their parent and other family members is child abuse. It is criminal and it should not be tolerated. Yet, it seems our justice system seems all too tolerant of mothers who do this everyday. While parents are forced to go to courts just to see their children, the lawyers get rich of the misery of the children and families who lives they destroy in family court. Maybe if our courts showed some backbone and stood up against these mothers who are abusing their children that maybe the problem would begin to correct itself.
As a young Canadian I can only say that I am utterly ashamed to see how the country I call Canada treats fathers in its courts. It is a disgrace! I know my father was a good man and a good father. He did not deserve to be pushed over the edge as he was. He did not deserve to be kept from seeing his children. He obviously reached a point where he could see that justice was beyond his reach and for reasons that only God will know, decided that taking his life was the only way to end his suffering.
From what I have learned about the family justice system in this country, Canada is not the home of the proud and the free. In my view, Canada has become a safe haven for corrupt lawyers and biased judges who think nothing about the lives of the children and parents they destroy every day in our family courts.
I have learned that Canada's Justice Minister, Anne McLellan, has been stalling legislation about shared parenting which is intended to prevent the kind of tragedy that has been forced upon my family. I understand that a special committee recommended that the justice department should promote a concept called shared parenting. If shared parenting had been in place before my father took his life and if our system of justice guaranteed the rights of children to see their parents, I have no doubt in my mind that my loving father would be alive today. All he wanted was to see his children, but it seems that our justice system would not give him that.
For this, the Justice Minister should resign. Maybe someone with children and with some knowledge of the problems facing families in our courts today would make a better Minister. What kind of justice can families expect from a Ministry headed by a person without children and in addition, a lawyer? Without children, how can the Justice Minister even begin to understand what it is like to love children and to appreciate the importance that parents play in the lives of their children.
It's time for this country to start waking up to what's going on in our family courts and its time that something get done about it.
Although I am only 14 years of age, I too will join the ranks of those who are fighting this evil system of justice. This is not the kind of Canada I or other Canadians want to see. This country's justice system has robbed me of one of the most precious gifts in my life, my father. I will not let his death be in vain.
Things need to change for it seems that all fathers in family courts are being put through this same thing. We need to change things now. Too many kids are going without a father because of the injustice in our family courts. Too many kids are being hurt. I may be 14, but I know what is right and wrong. There are good and bad mothers and fathers but it seems that most fathers are considered bad by our family court system and this is wrong. Please don't let my Dad's death be in vain. Children have the right to the love of BOTH of their parents, both moms and dads. The ONLY reason why a child should not be able to see a parent is when there is PROVEN abuse, not allegations.
I would very much like to hear what your perspective as a Member of Parliament is on this problem. I would like you to tell me what you intend to do to fix this problem. One thing you can do for me is to ask that the Minister of Justice resign. As the Minister of Justice, she should be held accountable for the dismal failure of our family justice system and its destruction of children and their families.
In memory of my loving father,
/Signed/
Ashlee A.D. Barnett-White
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According to the Ohio WKYC News story System Overload: Father pays child support, still jailed (5/15/07), Derrick Adams is a "deadbeat dad" who has been arrested multiple times, even though he is making his child support payments. At first he was making $3,750 and the state was taking over half of it in child support. Then he took a 40% pay cut at his job, and is now paying two-thirds of his income in child support.
Derrick Adams is a deadbeat dad. Or so says the State of Ohio.
Deputies arrested him not once, but twice, even though the father of three boys is making child support payments.
At the time of his divorce, Derrick's monthly child support payment was $2,000.
But last year, Derrick hit hard times, taking a forty percent pay cut at his job with a Cleveland bank.
At Derrick's new pay level, the state could only garnish $1,500 a month.
Leaving him just $750 to live on.
Derrick says, because he couldn't pay the full amount he was labeled a deadbeat, thrown in jail and his drivers license was suspended. "It's been tough but I've been trying to work through it. Of course when they take your license away from you, it's hard to work when most of your time is in the car traveling from customer to customer."
But Cleveland juvenile judge, Joseph Russo says the system is doing "the best it can." Russo sets child support payments everyday, and says parents like Derrick do have rights.
"If a father does lose their job, they may have a basis to halt, or suspend, or decrease their child support."
But Derrick and other parents who've contacted Channel 3 say their pleas are often brushed aside by a system concerned more with consistency than compassion.
"It should be fair. If there was some kind of income equalization I think that would be the fairest way. But taking the kids out of the equation from the beginning of the divorce proceedings is probably the right way to go."
Derrick has since had his license reinstated and continues to pay as much as he can, but falls behind every month.
He hopes to get another hearing soon to plead his case and to stop being labeled a deadbeat.
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he Chicago Sun-Times article "State's deadbeat dads owe $3 billion" (4/8/07) powerfully depicts the economic struggles some custodial mothers face after divorce. Unfortunately, the article's simplistic portrayal of divorced moms as long-suffering saints and divorced dads as deadbeats misses a great deal about the realities of divorce and child support in Illinois.
The article draws from and refers readers to Illinois Child Support Enforcement's "deadbeats" page. This "deadbeats" page provides a wide array of details about the 130 Illinois fathers and mothers who have child support arrearages of $5,000 or more. However, the state chose to omit one very important piece of information—the alleged deadbeats' occupations. Had the state listed these, it would be very apparent that most of the parents listed are not "deadbeats," but are instead low-income men and women who were unable to meet the rigid and unrealistic demands of the child support system.
Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement data shows that two-thirds of those behind on child support nationwide earn poverty level wages; less than four percent of the national child support debt is owed by those earning $40,000 or more a year. According to the largest federally-funded study of divorced dads ever conducted, unemployment, not willful neglect, is the largest cause of failure to pay child support.
The Sun-Times informs us that "deadbeat parents owe $3 billion in Illinois and $100 billion nationwide." Yet most of this consists of artificially-inflated arrearages created because the system is mulishly impervious to the economic realities working people face, such as layoffs, wage cuts, unemployment, and work-related injuries. According to the Urban Institute, less than one in 20 non-custodial parents who suffers a substantial drop in income is able to get courts to reduce the support obligation. In such cases, the amounts owed mount quickly, as do interest (9% in Illinois) and penalties.
It is true, as the article demonstrates that the drop in living standards which custodial mothers sometimes experience after divorce can be drastic. However, research shows that divorced dads' living standard drops as much or more. What both sides in the divorce wars often fail to recognize is that the income that once supported one household cannot support two at the same level, regardless of how much fathers pay.
The Sun-Times tells us that "divorce lawyers joke that high-earning husbands come down with 'AIDS' after a divorce—'Acquired Income Deficiency Syndrome.'" Yet if one tries thinking of divorced fathers as people instead of as villains, it's not hard to see why some dads earn less money after a divorce.
Divorce is a psychologically shattering event for fathers, usually more so than for mothers. Fathers—not mothers—are often cut off from their children. Many suffer from depression. A divorced father is ten times more likely to commit suicide than a divorced mother, and three times more likely to commit suicide than a married father.
The vast majority of divorces are initiated by women, not by men. Research shows that most of these do not involve a serious transgression by the men, such as violence or adultery, but instead because the women feel unappreciated or emotionally unfulfilled. From a man's perspective, this often means that his wife: ended the marriage against his will; took his children out of his everyday life; and harmed his kids by breaking up the stable, two-parent home they once enjoyed. Then she demanded that he dramatically lower his standard of living in order to finance her decision. It's not hard to see why men who once worked hard to support their families may be too disheartened to make the same sacrifices under these new conditions.
One also wonders about the Sun-Times' priorities. Mark Saban is one of the dads singled out for criticism, yet the article informs us that Saban visits his kids regularly, has paid some child support, and puts forth a plausible case that after his business failed he lost the ability to pay the support that was demanded of him. Only one who views a father as an ATM machine and nothing more could agree with the Sun-Times' listing of Saban as the "Second Worst dad in Illinois"?
Mothers often violate fathers' already meager visitation rights, and sometimes alienate their children from them. Some mothers move far away in order to frustrate fathers' contact with their children, while others make spurious accusations of abuse. Fathers are sometimes financially ruined by divorce--legal bills are huge, and they are often compelled by courts to pay their ex-wives' legal costs, too.
Given the myriad injustices and problems
fathers face when dealing with the family law
system, it isn't surprising that there are
divorced fathers who don't pay their child
support. What's surprising is that so many do.
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