The family of a Connecticut man paralyzed after traveling in a police van is calling for federal civil rights charges against the officers who reportedly mistreated him.
Civil Rights attorney Ben Crump compared the case to that of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man who died of spinal cord injuries while in Baltimore police custody in 2015. In Gray’s case, police falsely reported that he broke his own neck. But Randy Cox’s moment of the causality was caught on video.
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Cox, 36, was being transported to the New Haven police station on June 19 after being arrested for having “a bottle of booze” and unlawful possession of a firearm. A handcuffed Cox was not fastened with a seat belt, and video footage shows the man fell off the van’s bench and banged his head on the back wall as the driver stopped abruptly.
The officers ignored Cox’s pleas for help and delayed medical treatment for the man. He was instead dragged out of the police van, forced into a wheelchair, lugged into a jail cell and shackled before receiving a medical assessment. Cox’s sister, LaToya Boomer, said the driver passed two hospitals on his way to the jail.
Cox broke his neck, and he is immobile from the chest down. He is currently living off breathing and feeding tubes. His family and attorney said the officers violated Cox’s constitutional rights.
“You ask yourself, was it cruel and unusual punishment to put him in the back of that police transportation van with no seat belt, knowing that if you’re speeding, if you slam on the brakes, that somebody is going to be seriously injured?” Crump said during a press conference ahead of meeting with the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday, July 8.
