Two prison guards one of which a Corporal snap on an inmate all on camera learn their fate in court for their actions.
Inside the Cuyahoga County Jail in Cleveland, Ohio, inmate Terrance Debose, who suffered from documented mental health challenges, was placed into an emergency restraint chair and fitted with a spit mask following a verbal dispute with staff over basic accommodations.
Debose later stated all he was asking for was a bed to sleep on. With his arms, legs, torso, and head fully immobilized by heavy straps, Debose was completely incapable of shielding himself or moving away.
Corporal Nicholas Evans, the supervisor on duty, engaged in a heated argument with Debose as insults were exchanged. As his anger escalated, Evans did something that shattered protocol and destroyed his career: he reached up with his hand and intentionally powered off his department-issued body-worn camera, immediately killing both the audio and video feed.
What Evans failed to account for was the facility’s ceiling-mounted security camera operating directly overhead.
The fixed ceiling footage captured what happened the moment the bodycam went black: Evans unleashed a barrage str!kes directly to Debose.
Subordinate officer Timothy Dugan then stepped in, throwing two additional into the immobilized inmate. Debose was left strapped in the chair for nearly two hours post attack.
The incident occurred while the Cuyahoga County Jail was already under intense federal and state scrutiny following a damning U.S. Marshals Service report that exposed severe overcrowding, corruption, and systemic civil rights violations across the facility.
In his subsequent incident reports, Evans claimed he "blacked out" from rage after being insulted. However, state prosecutors shredded that excuse in court, demonstrating that the physical act of reaching up to deliberately shut off his recording equipment proved conscious premeditation and calculation before delivering the str!kes.
Ohio prosecutors indicted Evans not only for the attack, but also slapped him with a third-degree felony charge of Tampering with Evidence for intentionally disabling official recording equipment to conceal a crime.
Both guards subsequently resigned and accepted plea agreements:
Former Corporal Nicholas Evans pleaded guilty to attempted felonious assault and tampering with evidence. Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John O’Donnell sentenced Evans to 9 months in state prison at the Lorain Correctional Institution, plus 3 years of post-release supervision, citing the deliberate bodycam shutoff as a flagrant attempt to undermine the administration of justice.
Former Officer Timothy Dugan pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and abduction, receiving a sentence of 10 days in county jail alongside community control probation.
Following the sentencing, Debose and his legal counsel called the 9-month sentence a mere "slap on the wrist" for brutalizing a restrained man unable to raise a hand to protect himself, subsequently launching a federal civil rights lawsuit against Cuyahoga County.
Is justice served on this one, or another example of the two tier justice system in action?
Does this mean it could be the oil of other people too? 🤢
The metallic smell on your hands after handling spare change isn't metal; it is your own body oil breaking down.
Copper, zinc, and nickel coins are completely odorless solids that cannot vaporize into the air to trigger your olfactory receptors. When you hold loose change, natural skin sweat containing lipid peroxides reacts instantly with divalent metal ions on the coin's surface. That rapid chemical reaction degrades the fatty acids on your skin, producing volatile organic compounds like 1-octen-3-one. What you are actually smelling is oxidized human skin chemistry catalyzed by contact with metal.