TWO VULNERABLE ADULTS ALLEGE POLICE BRUTALITY IN LAWSUITS

In two lawsuits, a 73-year-old Minneapolis woman and a disabled
Minneapolis man accuse Minneapolis police of injuring them without
provocation during separate incidents.

Police Chief Robert Olson and Deputy City Attorney Michael Norton
declined to discuss the suits Tuesday.

In one, filed last week in Hennepin County District Court, Helen M.
McGee said she was kicked by an officer and dragged by his squad car.
The suit alleges that the force of the kick pushed her into the
driver's seat of the vehicle, which began to move in the alley behind
her north Minneapolis home last fall.

The suit alleges that the squad car wasn't in park when the officer
got out and kicked McGee. It also alleges that the officer in the
passenger seat didn't stop the car. McGee's teenage nephew, according
to the suit, jumped into the driver's seat and stopped the car.

McGee was unconscious and unable to walk after the car stopped. She
was taken to a hospital, where she was treated for bumps and bruises,
said her lawyer, Toni Jackson. The incident aggravated existing hip
problems, Jackson said.

McGee was near the squad car Oct. 14, 1999, because she was checking
to see if a young man in the back seat was her nephew, Jackson said.
He wasn't.

"She has lived in Minneapolis for 40 years. She's never been in
trouble her entire life," Jackson said. Jackson said McGee had worked
with police in the past to help clean up a liquor store parking lot
near her home.

In the other suit, also filed in Hennepin County last week, Joseph
Curtis, 53, alleges he was thrown from his bed, handcuffed and
repeatedly kicked by officers during a crack cocaine raid at the home
where he was living almost a year ago.

Strokes had left Curtis barely able to speak or to walk before the
raid, according to the suit.

His lawyer, Robert Bennett, said Curtis was living with his brother
and his nephew and was primarily confined to his bed and bedroom.
Medical records indicate that he was paralyzed on his left side,
Bennett said.

The suit accuses unnamed police officers of throwing him out of his
bed after he tried to tell them he couldn't get on the floor as
officers requested. Curtis' two front teeth were dislodged, the suit
alleges, and he was handcuffed and kicked by other officers. He was
taken to the hospital and treated, Bennett said..

He said Curtis' walker and cane were near the bed during the raid: "If
you were ever to meet Joe Curtis you would immediately recognize him
as disabled. . . . He's in pretty rough shape."

Neither McGee nor Curtis was arrested or charged in either incident,
their lawyers said.