NEWS

Lawsuit: Woman choked, groped by Wiggins officers

The Sun Herald
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A woman claims Wiggins, Miss. police assaulted her in racially motivated violations of her civil rights in the Stone County jail.

Daphine Doreene Alford can be heard screaming on surveillance video reviewed by the Sun Herald. Alford is suing Wiggins, its mayor, police chief and two police officers who allegedly arrested her without cause Jan. 24, 2013, and assaulted her physically and emotionally.

Mobile users go here to view video: http://bit.ly/1PFcUA4

Alford is black. The two officers named in the lawsuit are white.

The lawsuit, filed Jan. 20 in U.S. District Court, claims Alford was intentionally tripped and body slammed face-first on the jail’s entrance walkway causing a concussion and breaking her teeth.

Alford alleges she was choked, and was touched inappropriately as one of the officers pinned her down and helped strip off her clothes in view of other male officers. She claims she was pepper-sprayed and later had to use toilet water to rinse her burning eyes, nose and mouth.

In one video, she was nude when she was taken out of her cell for an unspecified reason, then put back in her cell.

A female corrections officer tried to intervene during the strip search, Alford's attorney, James Halliday said.

Halliday said, after Alford was pepper-sprayed, officers were laughing, joking and concocting false felony charges that accused her of assaulting them.

The incident began when two officers approached Alford for being drunk and disorderly. The officers frisked her, saying they were looking for paraphernalia, the lawsuit said. The officers touched her inappropriately and said she had paraphernalia, the suit said.

Alford was jailed for 33 days, according to Halliday. A Stone County sheriff's investigator intervened, and she was taken before a justice court judge and was released from jail. The felony charges filed by the officers have not been prosecuted.

Halliday said one of the officers, Randy Vinson, was fired, and the other officer, Douglas McBride, was allowed to resign. Halliday said the city's police chief has told him Vinson was fired over a policy violation involving procedures that say officers can’t strip-search detainees of the opposite sex.

The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount in compensatory and punitive damages for false arrest, excessive force and improper incarceration.

Summonses have been issued to the defendants, but it wasn't clear Monday if they have been served.

Minority leaders in the community have complained to officials that police have abused black residents and the disabled, but officials have not listened, Halliday said.

The city recently settled a federal lawsuit with Jack Smith Jr., a disabled man who accused Wiggins police of assaulting him in incidents recorded by surveillance cameras in city court and by a mobile phone. That case was also handled by Halliday.