Cop convicted in double fatal crash due to texting-while-driving-125mph wants money for his injuries

A policeman kills two girls in a car crash. He was texting someone while driving 125mph. He gets paid leave. He pleads guilty. He's convicted. He gets probation. Then, he files for workers comp. Yay, America! (via Ryan Singel)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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neph13

uugh…It is almost as if he is pissing on the graves of those dead girls and their parents by doing this. If I were the parents, I would sue the hell out of him for every dime he gets from a settlement, and then a few million each for each child I lost.

But that is the fantasy land I live in
orwellian

Christ, what an asshole.
Teller

To get WC, he just had to prove that killing the sisters occurred while he was doing his job. Uneffingbelievable.
Anonymous

We need to do a SANTORUM on this guy

HEAR YE HEAR YE citizens of the INTERWEBS:
On this day, we shall all begin a MOVEMENT, through all means viral and otherwise to make it so that ANY PERSON guilty of texting and killing because of it is referred to as A MITCHELL.
Let the Google page ranking strategies begin. Distribute with extreme prejudice.
Ugly Canuck

This was a crime of negligence, not directed intent.
That does make a difference, to me, in assigning a level of moral blame.

That said, why don’t the victim’s survivors sue? Could it be that a settlement has already been made, by insurers? If so, maybe the insurers could sue…but then again, insurers only sue if it makes business sense to do so, and sometimes it just doesn’t.

The criminal justice system has already taken its shot at him.
And if there’s to be no civil suit, that’s that.
The worker’s comp laws have their own quirks: and it looks like this guy’s lawyer has found a path through that maze.
- bardfinn
  
  Police, as officer of the law and officers of the court, are held to a higher standard of behaviour than private citizens. He had been trained, trained, trained, trained, trained, trained, and trained some more that the activity of doing /ANYTHING/ other than driving while driving — much less anything other than driving while doing more than twice the legal speed limit on most of our nation’s interstate highway system — is hazardous, dangerous, reckless, and illegal. He is supposed to be held to the standard of being 100% aware that his actions would, reasonably, be foreseeable in resulting in the death or harm of others.
  
  The test is this: If a private citizen were doing 125 MPH while in the performance of their own job, and was texting, and as a result killed two people — would that person get paid leave? No. Would that person get probation? FUCK NO. Would that person get Worker’s Comp? NOT IN A MILLION YEARS.
  - Church
    
    “Police, as officer of the law and officers of the court, are held to a higher standard of behaviour than private citizens.”
    
    HAHAHAHAHA! *wipes tears*
    
    Yeah, I know what you mean, they SHOULD be. But IRL, not so much. Or at all. As in this case.
    
    It all starts at a lower level. They park and don’t pay the meters, even when they’re just getting lunch. They ride down one-way streets the wrong way for no reason, aside from it’s easier. Little things like that. Then they realize they’re above the law, nay, THEY ARE THE LAW.
    
    Then texting while doing triple digits seems perfectly reasonable. Because the law is completely arbitrary and they ain’t subject to it.
    
    Oh, sorry about your daughters. But now your tax dollars are going to pay for the injuries I suffered when they got in my way.
Anonymous

You don’t plead guilty then get convicted. You get sentenced. A no fault WC system is just that. You get paid if you are injured at work even if it’s your fault or your Employers fault. You can bet that the survivors of the girls will be filing a civil negligence suit for wrongful death.
shichae

I agree w/ #2, these type of things usually get swept under the rug. I am supremely confident that Justice will somehow visit this guy in one form or another one day. And when that day comes it will be swift and unflinching.
EH

Maybe he could be sued for attempting to profit from his crimes.
Anonymous

Yay America? More like yay America’s public sector and their sense of entitlement. Public sector workers from street cleaners to police officers have established themselves as a distinct class of citizens subject to different rules than the rest of us. They abuse their power and are about to bankrupt cities, counties, school districts, and states across the land.
Donald Petersen

I’m not quite so bent outta shape about the worker’s comp. I’m just rather taken aback by the idea that a fatal accident caused by texting and/or cellphone use while driving at 126 mph resulted in 30 months of probation.

Okay, the guy is responding to an accident. At twice the speed limit, in holiday traffic? While texting?

I’ve been passed many a time by state troopers and sheriffs haulin’ balls with lights ablaze on their way to god knows what misadventure… saving lives left and right, no doubt. But I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a cop driving in triple digits unless he (nope, never she) was actually involved in a high-speed pursuit.

I’d like more info on his court proceedings. I’d like to see why, exactly, he claims the accident wasn’t his fault. I’d like to see what evidence extenuated his incredibly reckless driving, and his irresponsible phone usage (which may not have been illegal in Illinois three years ago, but would land him a stiff $20 fine here in L.A. if he tried such shenanigans now, let me tell you). I’d like to know why he was suspended with pay… and why, once he pled guilty, the department didn’t see fit to clawback those two years of pay upon his resignation.
- IronEdithKidd
  
  “But I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a cop driving in triple digits unless he (nope, never she) was actually involved in a high-speed pursuit.”
  
  Huh? That’s funny, because where I live, I see it all the time. In fact, cops speed down my residential road (posted 25 mph – the sign’s in my yard) upwards of 100 mph for no apparent reason. No lights, no sirens, just speeding like the devil, blasting through stop signs, day and night. Mostly it’s the county mounties who do this. The City police do it less often, but it pisses me off to no end that it happens at all. There are a lot of little kids in my neighborhood, hell, there’s 8 on my block alone. They’re going to kill someone’s baby someday, I can’t stand the thought that it could be mine.
Anonymous

probation meaning he eventually gets his job back? does he get to keep his driver’s license too?
Anonymous

In the UK you get away with it if your a Lord

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/25/lord-ahmed-dangerous-driving

He was eventually released after a day or so.
Mitch

Beware of pig.
JC

Ridiculous.
Anonymous

In my (albeit somewhat limited) experience, military and para-military career paths tend to attract two types of people: those who truly wish to make a difference, and those who are drawn by the power they will hold. Unfortunately, the latter seem to predominate.

Having considerably more experience in a worker’s comp system, this is a case I would love to have on my desk and get to sink my teeth into. I suspect I would find a justifiable way of denying the claim.
Anonymous

semiotix
follow Mark’s link. It speaks for itself
- semiotix
  
  Oh, I wasn’t asking about the link. I mean, I did click it, expecting a horror story of a cop getting away with a criminal act, and that’s what it is. Not nearly as horrific a crime as Mr. Frauenfelder certainly could have found a cop getting away with, but probably the handiest BB link.
  
  Although–that article talks about a cop being ordered by his police superiors to stay away from his victim before the crime was committed, and then being prosecuted by the DA’s office, but getting acquitted by a jury and then at some point getting booted out of police work. So actually I wouldn’t call it a great example of cop criminal impunity, but yeah, you bet great examples are out there of police officers committing horrible crimes and paying no price whatsoever. That’s a given.
  
  Anyway, Mr. Frauenfelder wrote, “Police officers are usually allowed to break any law they wish with impunity.” Having said it, was there anything in that he wanted to elaborate on? I thought there might be, so I asked. If not, well, okay then.
Baldhead

Once again I say that if you are found to cause a fatal car accident there is one punishment you should definitely get without question: Lifetime revocation of drivers’ licence. You failed the most important test of all. Of course in Canada, workeres compensation cases are investigated and if the claimant is found to have been doing something idiotic like texting when they should have been driving, they get nothing. Hopefully this will happen there. Also when filing for compensation did he also mail letters to his victims that said, “Fuck You.”? he may as well have.
knoxblox

“I wouldn’t have filed the case if I thought it was frivolous or didn’t have merit,” said Kerri O’Sullivan, of the St. Louis firm of Brown and Crouppen, who represents Mitchell. “People get hurt at work all the time. It’s our job as lawyers to help people with the difficult and complicated administrative process of worker’s compensation.”

Translation: “I’m gonna get a FAT paycheck this week.”
BookGuy

If this had been Law & Order, Sam Waterston would have gotten him 30 years in jail.

I am often sad when real life doesn’t match up with Law & Order.
Mark Frauenfelder

I’m surprised he was even arrested, let alone convicted. Police officers are usually allowed to break any law they wish with impunity.
- semiotix
  
  Police officers are usually allowed to break any law they wish with impunity.
  
  I sense you have more to say. Please, go on.
Church

This is why people hate cops.

“I wouldn’t have filed the case if I thought it was frivolous or didn’t have merit,” said Kerri O’Sullivan, of the St. Louis firm of Brown and Crouppen, who represents Mitchell. “People get hurt at work all the time. It’s our job as lawyers to help people with the difficult and complicated administrative process of worker’s compensation.”

This is why people hate lawyers.
- Anonymous
  
  Either arseholes have rights or no one does. The lawyer’s job is to run whatever they can get up the flagpole and see if the judge and/or jury salutes, it is not their job to render judgement themselves and deny due process. Nobody should ever have to worry that they might not find a lawyer to help them pursue a reasonable case, so we have to let the unreasonable ones at least get to a judge. If he or she then throws it out as lacking merit, all well and good.
- Anonymous
  
  You know, most lawyers hate cops too. I don’t blame a lawyer for doing her job, considering how many other lawyers will be lining up to take the case from her. I would rather blame the legislature for passing a law that doesn’t allow an employer to assert their employee’s recklessness as a defense to a workers compensation claim. As someone quoted in the linked article said, you can come into work high and drunk and kill 20 people – you may spend the rest of your life in jail, but you’ll still get tax-free benefits for any injuries sustained to yourself.
  - Ugly Canuck
    
    Anon #5: The purpose of worker’s comp legislation was in part to remove the necessity for workers to sue, via the Court system, to prove the injury happened on the job, etc: prior to their passage, employees had to sue their reluctant-to-pay-or-to-admit-liability employers to get comped.
    
    The “no-fault” nature of these benefits was – and is – a way to avoid litigating these claims case-by-case in the Courts.
    
    Your suggestion would throw it back into the Courts again…a backwards step.
Anonymous

How many times does someone have to say this: nothing will happen because he did nothing “wrong”.

The police do not exist to protect you or I from ANYTHING, and anything they do that appears that way is theatre. They exist to protect the elite, these girls were not in that class so he did nothing “wrong” and nothing will come of this. See a million other cases for the exact same outcome.
Anonymous

I think 4Chan could help relieve him of any benefits he receives, even if just to pay for 24-hour bodyguards, and backhoes to remove thousands of pounds of japanese schoolgirl tentacle porn from his lawn.

What do you think, 4Chan?
narrowstreetsLA

Let’s all give up on walking already. It’s just not worth fighting for anymore. Cars for all.

(feeling extremely bitter at the moment)
Anonymous

Surely the issue here is that he was convicted with an excessively lenient sentence? How is it fair or civilised to punish someone further by denying them healthcare? If his sentence was appropriate to the crime then it wouldn’t matter, as his debt to society would be paid.

Everyone deserves access to medical treatment, no matter what.
Antinous / Moderator

Dexter Morgan, white courtesy phone please.
Anonymous

No, this man goes to jail!
Art

Xeni, My God!

The injustices to the victims and their families is beyond description.