She told a police officer she was in labor. The Louisville Metro Police Department lieutenant cited her for unlawful camping as the ambulance arrived. She had a baby later that day.

Body camera footage shows the moment an LMPD officer hands a woman in labor a citation for unlawful camping as she waits for an ambulance.

    • octopus_ink@lemmy.mlEnglish
      6·
      8 days ago

      Lt. Caleb Stewart

      Holy fuck after reading that article it’s clear Lt. Caleb Stewart has made it his personal mission to fuck with as many homeless people as he possibly can.

      Kicking folks when they are down - pretty on point for cops, but this guy seems to really get into it.

      I would like to personally tell Lt. Caleb Stewart of the LMPD to go fuck himself. I’m confident that they are searching for social media reaction, and my reaction to Lt. Caleb Stewart is that he’s an absolute piece of hot garbage who has clearly made a career out of finding folks who are already experiencing the worst part of their lives and then making those parts even worse.

      Stewart was enforcing a new state law that bans street camping — essentially, a person may not sleep, intend to sleep, or set up camp on undesignated public property like sidewalks or underneath overpasses. He has issued the majority of the citations for unlawful camping in Louisville.

      That part above, in the article, about how he has issued the most citations, links to ANOTHER article, which says this.

      Since a Kentucky law criminalizing “unlawful camping” went into effect in July, its enforcement in the commonwealth’s largest city has primarily fallen to one Louisville Metro Police lieutenant.

      At least 26 times between July 15 and Nov. 20, Lt. Caleb Stewart criminally charged people with violating the unlawful camping law for lying on blankets under overpasses, sleeping in tents on sidewalks and otherwise living on the streets.

      In that same timeframe, all other LMPD officers issued a combined total of 18 unlawful camping citations.

      In enforcing the camping ban — sometimes charging the same homeless individual on different occasions after they continue living on the street — Stewart is regularly dealing with the city’s most vulnerable residents.

      But Stewart, who leads LMPD’s Downtown Area Patrol, is also facing a 20-day suspension for not reporting a subordinate using a “choking technique” on a man with an apparent mental illness after he chugged a stolen drink in a Louisville hotel’s gift shop last year, The Courier Journal has learned.

      An eventual LMPD internal affairs investigation determined the subordinate’s actions constituted an unjustified use of deadly force.

      https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/crime/2024/12/18/lmpd-officer-appeals-suspension-tied-to-use-of-force-at-marriott/76733370007/

      Absolute Bastard.

      And from the first article, much as it pains me to find myself in agreement with a Republican (clearly this guy chose the wrong party, this is far too human a response):

      “It’s brutal and unnecessarily so,” Westerfield said. “If they need to cite her or if she’s done this and been unlawfully in a public place this way many times or multiple times, then that should condemn society’s failure to provide help for her before it should result in a criminal process against her.”

      He’s absolutely correct.