GALVESTON — A Houston attorney representing three Galveston policemen accused of assaulting a 12-year-old girl mistaken for a prostitute said Monday he’s working to have a lawsuit filed in federal court dismissed before it reaches trial late next year.
Bill Helfand declined to discuss specifics of the lawsuit filed Aug. 22, in which a Galveston woman alleges plain-clothed policemen targeted her daughter exactly two years earlier.
The lawsuit, filed by Galveston attorney Anthony Griffin, accuses the officers of failing to identify themselves when they approached Dymond Larae Milburn at 7:45 p.m. outside her house in the 2000 block of 24th Street.
Emily Milburn was preparing her children for school the next day when the electricity failed, and Milburn dispatched her daughter outside to flip the breaker back on, the lawsuit says.
Police were sent to the area to look for three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black man selling drugs, when Sgt. Gilbert Gomez saw a black female and ordered her detained, the lawsuit says.
Four officers got out of a blue van and ran toward Dymond, who is black.
The officers suspected she was a prostitute, because she wore tight shorts, the lawsuit says, arguing her detention was unfounded, unreasonable and violated her constitutional rights. It also says she wasn’t wearing tight shorts.
Crying For ‘Daddy’
“Dymond grabbed a tree and started yelling, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’” Griffin wrote in the lawsuit, which accuses officer David Roark of covering Dymond’s mouth.
Officer Sean Stewart held one of Dymond’s arms, Roark handcuffed the other, while Gomez also grabbed her, the lawsuit claims.
Wilfred Louis Milburn, 47, heard his daughter’s cries for help, the lawsuit says. When Milburn and his wife went outside, “Dymond was hysterical and holding onto the tree with one arm (and) two officers were striking Dymond in the head, face and throat,” the lawsuit says.
The parents tried unsuccessfully to have police release Dymond to them, so they might comfort her, the lawsuit claims.
It is unclear how much time elapsed that night before Dymond’s parents took her to the University of Texas Medical Branch for treatment of injuries, which the lawsuit says included head injuries, multiple contusions, loss of vision and hearing and a bloody nose.
The head injury resulted from a blow from an officer’s flashlight, the lawsuit claims.
Father, Dymond Charged
Police charged Wilfred Milburn with interfering with public duties, a misdemeanor, stemming from an incident that night at the same address, Galveston County First Assistant Criminal District Attorney Joel Bennett said. Bennett said he couldn’t discuss anything related to juvenile cases.
On Sept. 15, 2006, police arrested Dymond at her school. She was an honor student taking advanced classes at Austin Middle School, the lawsuit says.
Police said they can’t comment on juvenile cases, but the lawsuit claims Dymond was charged with assaulting a police officer.
A mistrial in Dymond’s case was declared Oct. 3, 2007, and no retrial was pending at the time Griffin filed the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages for a list ailments and to cover medical bills and attorney fees.
The officers’ conduct was extreme and outrageous, the lawsuit claims. Helfand denies the claim.
Father Pleaded To Drug Charge
Two days following Wilfred Milburn’s Aug. 22, 2006, arrest on a misdemeanor interfering charge, police charged him with cocaine possession and with having an invalid driver’s license.
Three misdemeanor charges, including the interfering charge, against Wilfred Milburn were dismissed in exchange for his pleading guilty to cocaine possession, Bennett said. Milburn received a two-year, state-jail sentence, Bennett said.
Attempts to reach Griffin or the Milburns were unsuccessful. The Daily News went Monday to the house where the incident occurred, but no one answered the door.
No officers had been disciplined in the case, police said. Helfand said the family hasn’t filed a complaint with the police department.
When asked whether police identified themselves, Helfand declined to discuss specifics of the case, but said, “... the officers made it clear she was under arrest, and it is against the law to resist arrest.”
Fourth Officer Dismissed
The fourth officer has been dismissed from the lawsuit.
Helfand said if the lawsuit isn’t dismissed, it could go to trial late next year or in early 2010.
Helfand said he would present mitigating circumstances in court.
Galveston Police Chief Charles Wiley also declined to comment specifically about the case, citing a law that keeps some information about juvenile crimes out of the public’s view.
“The defense/plaintiff’s attorney in this case knows that the state is constrained in what’s released and not released and has used that to try the case in the media,” Wiley said. “We have to wait for the court to handle this.”
Wiley said the facts of the case as he knew them and as related in police reports differed with a version of the event reported by a Houston newspaper.
Attempts to obtain the police report detailing the incident were denied because the Texas Attorney General had ruled the report could be withheld, said Sgt. Tom Karlok of Galveston police.
