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Wrongfully Charged
Kyle Ostergaard shared this post via CopBlock.org’s submit page
Date of Interaction: June 22, 2012
Police Employees Involved: Aaron Lewis, Justin Reba
On Tuesday June 22, 2010 around 6:30 PM, two Alternative Sentencing (probation) officers, Aaron Lewis and Justin Reba, came to my house to arrest me for failure to complete my substance abuse counseling for that month, which I still had another week and a half to complete. I was never even told that I was supposed to do substance abuse counseling, so I had no idea, especially since the reason I was on probation had nothing to do with alcohol or drugs.
I was on probation for ‘Resisting Arrest’ the very first time that I ever went to jail, December 9, 2008, ten days before I turned 24. I had been arguing with the cop that arrested me about impounding my car just because I had a warrant for my arrest, over a speeding ticket that I did community service to pay off. Apparently something happened, so I didn’t get credit for the last three hours that I had to do. He impounded my car because I had a warrant and I was sitting in it when he pulled up, even though it was in front of my house where I always parked it, and I wasn’t even driving. After I was brought into the jail, I wouldn’t let the cop slam my face against the wall, so he called for back up to help restrain me! Three cops came in the room to help him, and for some reason, they were trying to wrestle me to the ground. After none of the four of them brought me to the ground, one of them tased me in the leg and it still didn’t bring me down. I wasn’t even doing anything wrong, but they charged me with ‘Resisting Arrest,’ anyway.
Aaron Lewis put me in handcuffs while Justin Reba searched my room and went through everything in my dresser drawers. As Lewis was escorting me towards the front door, holding the handcuff chain, I asked him if I could at least put my shoes on before we left. He told me no, because I wouldn’t need them where I was going. Then I told him that I would need them when I got out, but he just ignored me. I was agitated at first, because I had to walk through dirt, wet grass and possibly have to step on broken glass in my socks. My screen door was closed and both cops were behind me, so I pushed it open with my foot, and the wind slammed it against the side of my house.
After we stepped outside, Lewis started screaming at me, saying, “Now, you listen here…” While he was shaking me with the handcuffs, I interrupted him by saying, “Shut the f*** up!” I said it really calmly because he had no reason to be screaming at me, and I didn’t want to hear it. He stopped for a second, then forced me over off the sidewalk onto the dirt. Then he pushed me up against the brown picket fence in my front yard, made me lean over it, and held me there until Justin Reba came up behind me. Next thing I knew, Reba placed a taser just below the back of my neck, and I was being tased while Lewis was forcing me to lean over my fence. The taser didn’t even phase me, but if it had, I would have gone down with the points in the pickets going into my throat. While I was standing there being tased, I was trying to figure out what I did to make them tase me. When I didn’t go down, Lewis pulled me back a few steps, and I walked back with him, then he forced me to the ground and got on top of me and held me there for about a minute. The taser never left my back or shut off while any of this was happening, until I asked Reba to stop tasing me. Lewis then got up, pulling me up with him, and told me that he was charging me with ‘Battery On An Officer.’ After I asked him what I did, he told me that I twisted his arm!
They put me in the back of their undercover Ford Excursion, and instead of getting in and taking me to jail right away, both cops stood outside discussing something with each other. I noticed that Lewis took a chain out of one of his pockets and tightly wrapped it around his wrist. A few hours after I was taken to jail, Lewis came back to drug test me. I asked him why he charged me with ‘Battery On An Officer,’ and this time, he said it was because I pinched his hand in the handcuffs. I asked when that happened, and he told me it was when I turned and said, “F*** you!” I never said that and I didn’t turn when I told him to shut the f*** up.
After sitting in jail for a month and a half, the D.A. changed my charge from ‘Battery On An Officer’ to ‘Battery By A Prisoner’ because I was in handcuffs. Because it was my word against two cops and there were no witnesses, I took the plea bargain to drop my charge from ‘Battery By A Prisoner,’ a catagory B felony, to ‘Battery On An Officer,’ a gross misdemeanor. I made my plea, and was sent to rehab. I was out of jail for a month before I was sentenced. When I saw the judge for sentencing, he gave me one year in county, suspended. Instead of it being suspended for one year on Alternative Sentencing, it was suspended for three years on Parole and Probation. I ended up doing the year in jail, because being on P&P, even not having a felony charge, they issued a felony warrant for my arrest for not doing ‘Anger Management’ classes. When I was being arrested, every cop involved with my arrest had me at gunpoint. I’m not even a violent person, but now I have a serious violent charge on my record.
Aaron Lewis was fired a few months after he charged me with ‘Battery On An Officer’ for sexually assaulting women on Alternative Sentencing and wrongfully charging people for crimes that they didn’t even do! Since I was already sentenced, the D.A. refused to just drop my charge, even though I asked my Public Defender about it. I told her that I wanted to take back my guilty plea and she lied to me by saying Aaron Lewis was found ‘not guilty’ and that he was back working in the office, and tried scaring my by saying that if I did take back my plea, the judge would have me re-arrested when I went back to court for sentencing, and I’d be in jail again with my ‘Battery By A Prisoner’ charge. She said I’d be facing fifteen years in prison if I took it to trial and lost, so I didn’t take back my plea.
Kyle Ostergaard
Wrongfully Charged is a post from Cop Block – Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights
Source: http://www.copblock.org/57871/wrongfully-charged/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wrongfully-charged
