Horrifying Video Shows Cop Torturing Restrained Woman With Mace Until She Falls Unconscious

Free Thought Project – by Claire Bernish

Dayton, OH — “I thought I might die,” said Amber Swink of her harrowing experience being pepper-sprayed while in a seven-point restraint chair in the Montgomery County Jail in Dayton, Ohio, on November 15, 2015.

Video footage of the torturous incident shows Swink so tightly restrained in the chair, she is hardly able to move her head; but that didn’t stop Sgt. Judith L. Sealey from entering the isolation cell and unleashing pepper-spray in the 25-year-old’s face — at near point-blank range — for seemingly no reason but sadistic pleasure.  

Swink acknowledged to the Washington Post she had, indeed, been drinking heavily at home that evening when police arrested her, and was still somewhat intoxicated when cameras recorded what happened. But she doesn’t understand what brought on the senseless attack.

“It felt like somebody just crushed up fresh peppers and made me use them as face cream,” Swink told the Post“It took my breath away. You’re fighting for air. I remember my mouth was filling with a thick slobber, like foaming up — and that was also blocking my airway.”

As the Post described, “In the four-minute clip captured by a camera in the isolation cell, Swink can be seen struggling and coughing; she appears to pass out after her face is covered with a bright orange substance.”

Officers had already coated her face with the thick, orange substance once — and despite being a bit drunk, Swink recalls the jailers laughing outside the sterile isolation cell immediately before Sgt. Sealey’s inexplicable act.

In fact, it takes quite some time for officers to even attend to Swink — and when someone finally enters the cell to douse her eyes with a cruelly sparing amount of water, the air is so thick with pepper spray, he’s forced to vacate the room more than once.

Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer agreed in September that — even though he had yet to view the surveillance footage — pepper-spraying a restrained individual violated departmental policy.

But Plummer characterized Swink’s experience as an “isolated incident.”

“Thirty percent of my jail is people suffering from mental illnesses,” the sheriff told the Post by phone, unintentionally highlighting one of the most critical issues surrounding America’s prison- and police-industrial complex. “There are a lot of situations that the police officers should not be dealing with, but everybody wants to blame the police.”

Police — including officers working in jails and prisons — in the overwhelming majority of departments across the United States do not receive proper or sufficient training to manage encounters with people suffering a wide variety of mental illnesses; and the resulting lack of understanding means those individuals are often subjected to excessive force.

Swink has filed an excessive force lawsuit in U.S. District Court accusing the sheriff’s department of acting in a manner “that amounted to torture,” and alleging law enforcement attempted to hide wrongdoing by destroying evidence.

“We will definitely oppose the lawsuit,” Plummer asserted unsurprisingly. This isn’t that egregiouswhere she’s walked away with any serious injuries. The officer she spit on should sue her.”

Describing being subjected to torture as ‘not that egregious’ simply because the victim did not sustain permanent injury shows a chilling level of callous cruelty and lack of comprehension Sealey’s actions constituted misconduct.

As the Post pointed out, a National Institute of Justice memo says pepper spray has been used by law enforcement in the U.S. since the 1980s “as a use of force option to subdue and control dangerous, combative, or violent subjects in the field. OC [oleoresin capsicum], with its ability to temporarily incapacitate subjects, has been credited with decreasing injuries among officers and arrestees by reducing the need for more severe force options.”

Swink — with arms, legs, and body restrictively strapped to a restraint chair — obviously posed no threat to jailhouse officers, however, and video proves the motivation to spray her must have been akin to unadulterated sadism.

“You cannot find any training manual that will tell you it is allowable to pepper-spray somebody who is restrained,” Kamran Loghman, a U.S. Naval Academy professor who helped develop pepper spray for law enforcement use, told the Post. “It is used to avoid confrontation or injury, so you don’t escalate to higher levels of confrontation. Pepper spray, therefore, should not be used if the subject is expressing verbal disagreement or anger.”

Ironically, if police deployed pepper spray more often in confrontations with the public — rather than immediately pulling the trigger of a gun — needless deaths could be reduced dramatically.

However, in the incident involving Swink, video proves an absolute lack of cause to deploy pepper spray, despite — as Plummer, Swink, and her attorney agree — her belligerent behavior prior to landing in the restraint chair.

Swink had yelled, banged on a window, kicked at an officer, and generally caused a disturbance after being brought to the Montgomery County Jail — for which officers justifiably used pepper spray the first time, and then strapped her to the restraint chair in the isolation cell.

“Shortly thereafter,” the lawsuit states, “Defendant Sealey went into Plaintiff Amber Swink’s cell with another can of OC spray and intentionally and maliciously sprayed Plaintiff Amber Swink’s face and body with the OC spray until she became unconscious and suffered permanent, serious, and debilitating injuries.”

Plummer told the Post Sealey had been disciplined for the misconduct — meaning she had received a write-up that would remain in her file for six months. Nothing more.

“We don’t tolerate once you’re secured using pepper-spray on you because the threat is neutralized,” the sheriff explained. “That’s the mistake that Sgt. Sealey made.”

Sealey has, in fact, since been promoted to Captain.

Attorney Douglas Brannon, representing Swink, asserted Sealey should have been criminally charged and immediately fired.

“I can’t fathom that the sheriff would even consider keeping this employee in light of the fact that her conduct was intentional, deliberate and abusive and directed towards an individual that was completely unable to protect herself,” he told the Post.

Now, Dayton Police are investigating to decide whether or not criminal charges should be filed against Sealey, who was placed on paid administrative leave last week for the duration of that investigation. On Wednesday, Plummer said,“[Sealey] is not exempt from criminal prosecution, she is not exempt from termination. She is going to be treated like everybody else.”

Swink, who suffered with asthma as a child, said the unnecessary use of pepper spray has brought back some of those breathing difficulties.

“My whole life, I looked up to law enforcement,” Swink told the Post“They would come into our schools and talked to us and they were supposed to be some of the best people you could trust and call on.

“But now I wonder if there’s really anybody watching out for me and my family.”

Free Thought Project

21 thoughts on “Horrifying Video Shows Cop Torturing Restrained Woman With Mace Until She Falls Unconscious

  1. Another day, another cop caught being a sadistic bastard by video cameras.

    This isn’t an attempt to expose police brutality. It’s a warning to Americans that you better fall in line or you’re next. We see these videos because they WANT us to.

    “….“In the four-minute clip captured by a camera in the isolation cell…”

    Don’t you think they could have suppressed that if they wanted to?

    1. I think your right
      They want us to see it
      And what more they really want , is we the people to react to it as violently as possible
      So they have an excuse for ML

      Another create the problem
      Be pushed for a solution
      And than , bring on the jackbooted solution
      Everything we don’t need
      But is going to come anyways

      Buckle up

  2. A write-up that stays on file for six months? What the hell is the point? Promoted to captain?!? That victim should track down that gestapo thug bitch and return the favor.

    “My whole life, I looked up to law enforcement,” Swink told the Post. “They would come into our schools and talked to us and they were supposed to be some of the best people you could trust and call on.

    Welcome to the real world! You just learned a powerful life lesson, but that is just the very tip of the iceberg.

  3. So, when people just start shooting first (like the pigs do)
    We will be vindicated , right?

    I can’t wait to hear the justifications and the crying that will come when the worm turns

  4. This is not only a violation of her natural rights under our Bill of Rights, it is a violation under international law of human rights. The fact that this goes on every day in this country out in front of the world attests to the fact that the United States has become the most diabolical and evil empire to ever exist.
    This is what we see. Imagine what we don’t in places like the torture facility in Chicago.
    Makes things clear. Are you going to let them get you in that chair? And if they do this to someone you love, are you going to be able to go on with this mother f#@ker breathing the same air as you?
    When I say it’s way past time, this is what I mean.

    1. I completely understand , and am enraged everyday , and at every story like this

      way past time to effect change “by normal procedures”

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  6. Face of the nation. What we’ve become. Worse than some of the most ruthless regimes the history books warned us about. Growing worse every day.

    This was a most difficult vid to watch. And weather they wanted us to see it or not, it took two years to surface, at least for me it did.

    And Sheriff Plummer saying: “We will definitely oppose the lawsuit. This isn’t that egregious where she’s walked away with any serious injuries. The officer she spit on should sue her.”

    No “serious injuries?!!” Prove it, you POS!! I’m sure there were both physical and psychological damages.

    So many powerful and true comments at this post. Glad to be among the locked and loaded.

    .

    1. “Face of the nation. What we’ve become.”

      galen, from my understanding it’s what this country has always been from the beginning, it’s just that now it’s out in the open via the Internet. Even before the Internet though we had folks screaming it from the roof tops. Remember the fellow JD informed us about? Can’t remember his name at the moment.
      He went around giving conferences on his topic of expertise.

      1. Ahh, but Katie, there were authentic moments of great decency, many combating evil and degeneracy at every turn. It was the meme of who we were aspiring to be. So even in the midst of the deceptions, we had something to look up to. Now, only in The Trench can we find such decency and a commitment to it. The mass meme is debauchery. I was just noticing how it plays on my life. The damn vid brought up so much outrage. Thanks, Katie. I’ll calm down soon. Maybe.

        .

  7. “The damn vid brought up so much outrage.”

    galen, I know what you mean about the outrage at this.
    I find the position the adversaries have put me/all of us in is a strange one.
    Meaning, do we walk away from the horrific and debauched, but very true news that we come to this site for daily or do we not look at it, so as if it did not exist? Knowing about it, yet not being able to stop it at this point on a grand scale is infuriating. It’s one on one at this point in the war, every man his private army against tyranny.

    “many combating evil and degeneracy at every turn. It was the meme of who we were aspiring to be.”
    galen, I believe most of the people were and still are this way even today. Those in positions of hi-jacked authority are the scum bags.

    Bread making is a great outrage reliever but it must NOT be no knead bread. It’s the gentle touch mixed with ferocity that helps assist in the releasing of the outrage. I read somewhere bread making is a good stress reliever. 🙂

  8. “But Plummer characterized Swink’s experience as an “isolated incident.”

    Only in the sense that it was ‘isolated’ to YOUR particular pig sty, at that particular time.

    “Police — including officers working in jails and prisons — in the overwhelming majority of departments across the United States do not receive proper or sufficient training…”

    Meaning they weren’t sent to Israhell?

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