Angela Garbarino - Not Forgotten
March 21st, 2008Angela Garbarino
Not Forgotten
The original Angela Garbarino post on Blog About Nothing continues to be one of the top destinations for visitors to this website, so there’s clearly continued interest in this topic. I hope that continues – and I hope others remain as outraged about this case as I do.
The original post regarding the Angela Garbarino beating at the hands of a Shreveport police officer can be reviewed here…
There are a few updates in this case that have occurred over the past few weeks.
In the first sign of any justice for Angie Garbarino, Shreveport Police Chief Henry Whitehorn has fired the officer responsible for the beating, Wiley Willis, after an internal affairs investigation.
Sadly, the Chief decided against criminal charges, concluding he “could not determine whether it was a case of police brutality”. Instead, Willis was fired for not following Shreveport Police Department procedures.
On the bright side, it has been reported that the Caddo district attorney and the FBI are conducting separate investigations to determine if criminal charges should be filed.
Willis has appealed his termination to the civil service board. Originally scheduled for mid-March, the Shreveport fire and police civil service board announced that they rescheduled Wiley Willis’ hearing for 8:30 a.m. on May 14, 2008. The board is awaiting the outcome of the criminal investigations by the Caddo Parish district attorney’s office and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
It has now also been revealed that a surveillance camera in a room adjacent to the one where Angie Garbarino was injured during her booking recorded the sound of two loud collisions in the room.
Part of the federal and local investigations into this case deal with what happened in the room between the time officer Wiley Willis turned off the tape to take Garbarino to jail and the time he turned it back on to show her lying on her side in a pool of blood.
The camera in the adjoining room, where officers’ desks are located, showed nothing of what happened between the officer and Garbarino, but it did record the sound of two solid collisions coming through the wall.
Hopefully, further analysis of the audio from the second camera will shed additional light on why one minute Angie Garbarino was in sitting in a chair, and the next she was found lying almost lifeless in a pool of her own blood, with a broken nose and severe facial bruising.
The Shreveport Police Department have also announced they are planning to install additional cameras around the headquarters – cameras that record digital video directly to servers, and out of the control of local officers and employees. That won’t help Angie, but it is a step in the right direction.
More to come…
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:02 pm
thanks for the update. Please update as more info becomes available. What is the status of Angie’s DUI trial?
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Mari - The last I heard, Angie’s DUI trial was scheduled for March 20, 2008. Due to lack of any new info about this, I expect that there have been delays or other postponements.
Considering the state’s star witness has been fired from his job, it might be a complicated case for the prosecutors to pursue.
Then again, it is Louisiana - they can just arbitrarily make up the “facts” as they go along.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Then again, it is Louisiana - they can just arbitrarily make up the “facts” as they go along.
Yeah, I’ve heard this before!
June 11th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Here are links for two updates that have come out since this story broke. The first one is where after she’s wheeled out of that room, a police officer hands another one his camera phone and says, “Here, take a picture of me layin’ in the blood so I can freak my kids out.”
http://www.ktbs.com/news/Second-police-officer-joked-about-Garbarino’s-injuries-9685/
The second one is the video from the other room where you can hear the slams against the wall.
http://www.ktbs.com/news/Second-camera-records-sound-of-collisions-where-Garbarino,-officer-were-struggling-9794/