[Its Not About Good/Bad Cops. “Authority" itself is Abuse] Joliet Police Union Fires Latino Sgt Who Revealed Video of Cops Sticking a Baton into a Handcuffed Black Man's Mouth in Custodial Death

As TheFreeThoughtProject reports on a regular basis, cops who point out corruption in their department and attempt to prevent violence, often times find themselves on the receiving end of this justice system — persecuted for doing the right thing. This retaliation against cops for exposing corruption within their departments, completely destroys the “one bad apple” theory. If the entire department moves to snub out a cop for doing the right thing, is this “one bad apple”?

Joliet police Sgt. Javier Esqueda refused to stay silent about the alleged criminal acts of his fellow cops and risked his career and now his freedom to shine light into darkness. He watched a video of his fellow officers appear to suffocate a man who later died and decided that enough was enough. His fellow officers held down Eric Lurry as he was handcuffed, cut off his breath, hit him, and shoved a baton in his mouth just before Lurry died.

Lurry, a 37 yr old Black man, was taken into custody during a drug arrest in January 2020. The county coroner's office called his death an accidental drug overdose, and local prosecutors said his death wasn't the result of officers' actions.

In video footage from a squad car camera obtained by WBBM-TV, a Joliet police sergeant, identified by the station as Doug May, is seen slapping Lurry's face while he was handcuffed in the back seat of the car. "Wake up, bitch," May says.

May then appears to pinch Lurry's nose closed for a minute and 38 seconds, WBBM-TV reports. Joliet police Sergeant Javier Esqueda, a training officer, told the station Lurry may have been chewing on a bag of drugs earlier in the video footage and officers wanted him to open his mouth.

"That's been written in the law for a couple years you can't do that anymore to try to get him to cough up any kind of drugs in their system," Esqueda told WBBM-TV in an interview broadcast last July.

Later, another officer is seen on the squad car video inserting a baton into Lurry's open mouth. Lurry is eventually taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead hours after his arrival. [MORE]

For exposing the crimes of his fellow cops, Esqueda was arrested and subsequently indicted and charged on four counts of official misconduct for accessing a video of alleged criminal activity within his own department. He now faces the possibility of 20 years behind bars for doing the right thing.

Surely, no one in Esqueda’s department or union would go along with such an atrocity, right? Wrong. According to a report in USA Today this week, members of the Joliet Police Officer’s Association on Wednesday voted 35-1 to expel Esqueda.

As TFTP reports on a regular basis, cops who point out corruption in their department and attempt to prevent violence, often times find themselves on the receiving end of this justice system — persecuted for doing the right thing. This retaliation against cops for exposing corruption within their departments, completely destroys the “one bad apple” theory. If the entire department moves to snub out a cop for doing the right thing, is this “one bad apple”?

Joliet police Sgt. Javier Esqueda is a good cop. We can say this with certainty because he proved it by refusing to stay silent about the alleged criminal acts of his fellow cops and risked his career and now his freedom to shine light into darkness. He watched a video of his fellow officers appear to suffocate a man who later died and decided that enough was enough. His fellow officers held down Eric Lurry as he was handcuffed, cut off his breath, hit him, and shoved a baton in his mouth just before Lurry died.