If ever there was a case that should be my last, this was it. The cops killed an innocent, unarmed, naked, perhaps dying young man who needed their help, not a dozen officers’ bullets through his body. The cops claimed they were afraid. So if a cop feels fear he has the right to kill us rather than help? It was my son Kent’s case; he was a skilled trial lawyer, and I thought this could be a father and son seeking justice in a case in which the police had committed murder—because they could.
It was September 8, 2005, in Clackamas County, Oregon. Fouad Kaady was in his twenty-seventh year. In ways he was still little more than a boy, with dark, soft eyes that denied a single hostile gene, and his smile was set on a hair trigger. But that day wasn’t his day. His car ran out of gas. He’d borrowed his parents’ car along with a five-gallon can, filled the can with gas, and was on his way to rescue his car when things suddenly went wrong. Somehow the car he was driving caught fire and exploded into a consuming inferno—and Fouad, trapped inside, was burning alive. He lost control and smashed the car into other vehicles parked alongside the road. His burned flesh hung from his body like meat on a spit, and he was seen running crazily through the woods, naked. Soon a dozen or more cops responded to calls that reported the accident.
A veteran deputy sheriff from Clackamas County, David Willard, and a police officer of more recent tenure from the City of Sandy, William Bergin, discovered Fouad. Somehow he’d traveled through the thick woods and across an open field. The cops found him sitting on the pavement’s edge of a nearby road. He was, according to the cops’ statement, in critical shape. His skin was peeling off; he was covered with blood, catatonic, and unresponsive. Months later Fouad’s parents called our office for help. My son Kent, who was an expert in civil rights cases, had responded.
We had a copy of the police reports that introduced us to the two officers involved, including photos of both. Their interviews, conducted by someone in their department, were provided to us as well as to the media. I’ll allow the two police officers to take up the story from here as revealed in the interviews conducted by a fellow officer. As we all know, if ten people see the same incident they’ll provide ten differing accounts. It’s worth noting that while Willard and Bergin were supposedly questioned separately, their answers were nearly identical.20
First, Deputy Willard. His photo revealed a man with an extraordinarily high forehead, one you might see on a Harvard professor. He stood about five-ten, wore glasses, and had a thick mustache that turned up slightly on the ends like Groucho Marx’s. He sported a full head of short black hair. I judged him to be in his late forties. Here’s what the supplied record revealed.
DEPUTY SHERIFF WILLARD: The man we were directing our attention at was completely nude, sitting about a foot off of the shoulder Indian style, kinda bent down with his hands in front of him like this (indicating his hands at his lap).
The younger cop, Officer Bergin, offered his story. About the same height as Willard, he wore glasses on a round baby face with prominent ears and the closely cropped haircut standard among cops. His appearance offered no hint of any hidden personality demerits.
OFFICER BERGIN: This male subject was sitting on the ground, in what we called in elementary school (chuckle) “Indian style.” He had his hands tucked between his legs.
WILLARD: His head was down as if he was in a prayer kind of mode. Every portion of his body had some blood on it. He appeared to be burned, the upper portion of his body from his waist up.
BERGIN: As soon as we pulled up I could see his skin was brown and it was peeled back all over his entire body.
WILLARD: He had small lacerations, little cuts and things all over him, and he appeared to have dirt and leaves and other things on him.
BERGIN: His skin was charred.
WILLARD: The first thing that struck me was that this man was seriously injured. I could see his burns from clear back at the car. He is not looking up at us. He is not doing anything. I tell Bergin, “I don’t see a weapon, do you?” And Bergin said, “No.”
I told him, “I’m going to transition to nonlethal [meaning putting aside his firearms], and I am going to take my taser out.”
BERGIN: I gave him the command to show me his hands, and he showed me his hands right away.
WILLARD: And I started to approach him telling him to get on his stomach. I had my taser on the guy.
I later asked my grandson Cade, then age ten, “What do you think police officers should do when they come onto an unarmed person who’s badly burned and covered with blood and sitting peacefully on the ground?”
“Call for an ambulance. They got radios, Grandpa.” He acted like I should have known.
“An ambulance was already there, waiting for the police to finish whatever they were doing,” I said. “Should the police make him lie on the hot pavement on his burned stomach?”
He looked like he was about to cry. He didn’t answer.
WILLARD: As I’m getting up to him, and see the burns and am sorta accessing him physically, my concern is two things: One, I decide I am not going to let this man leave here, because we have heard some pretty bizarre things, and secondly, and almost as important, I am going to get this man medical help. He needs help right now. But I need to make sure we’re safe. So I tell him to turn around and lay down on his stomach on the pavement. I had dealt with burn victims before.
BERGIN: He was saying, “OK,” but then he wouldn’t get on the ground.
WILLARD: He looked up at me and he says, “No.”
BERGIN: We told him to move to the grass and get on his stomach because there were concerns about the asphalt and the heat, ’cause it was a hot day. And he wouldn’t comply with that.
WILLARD: And I says, “You gotta do this. I need you to lie down.” And he says, “No,” again.
BERGIN: I told him to get on his stomach or he would be tased.
WILLARD: I repeated that several times. And again, he just sort of leaned forward and ignored me.
BERGIN: We wanted him to lay on his stomach so we could get him in restraints [handcuffs].
WILLARD: I said, “Look over there. See the grass?” And he says, “Yes.” And I says, “Carefully go over there and lay down on the grass.” It was cooler and I thought he might accept that. And he said, “OK.” And I said, “Are you going to do that?” And he just sat there. I don’t think there was any response at that point. At that point I was about to deploy the taser. And the Sandy officer [Bergin] deployed his taser. The Sandy officer got behind him and had his full back. From training, that is actually the best shot. It will affect more of the muscle tissues.
One may believe that Tasers are a humanitarian compromise weapon. They allow the cops to immobilize a man without killing him. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Between 1999 and 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union reports, at least 148 people died in the United States and Canada from being shocked by cops with Tasers.
BERGIN: At this point I walked behind Deputy Willard to the rear of the subject to get a better shot with my taser. I had put my firearm away [holstered it], turned my taser on, and got behind him and told him again to lay on his stomach or he’d be tasered. He appeared to be catatonic, and I got a good shot with the taser. Both prongs went into his back.
WILLARD: He had loose, hanging, burned flesh, at least a couple of layers down.
BERGIN: When I tased him he flopped backwards on the ground. And from his behavior after I tased him, and the ineffectiveness of the taser, I even made the comment to Deputy Willard, “I don’t wanna get hands on this guy.” I just knew if we were to get hands on with him in a physical fight there would be no stopping him. He woulda not felt any pain.
WILLARD: The first time I tased him he fell back, flat out, proned out on his back on the ground. He was shaking a little, which is fairly typical of someone who is taking an electrical shock. When that five-second shot was done I said to him, “You need to do what we ask you to do. We need you to go over and lay down on that grass, and if you don’t do what we ask you to do you are going to get tased again.” And it was right around that time, and I am still looking at him assessing him—and I am thinking I don’t want this guy even near me. And if he complies, what am I gonna do? We’ll wait until other officers get here before we do anything.
WILLARD: Somebody needs to glove up before they touch this man. He’s got blood literally from head to toe and multiple lacerations and cuts and dirt. And I didn’t want to touch this man. I really felt there was a real risk to my safety and the officer who was there if we weren’t protected before we came into physical contact with this man.
BERGIN: We again told him to roll on his stomach or he would be tased. The prongs from my taser were still in him. So I did another pull of the trigger with the taser, and I noticed that one of the barbs was a good hit, the other was in him, and he was getting the shock from my taser, but it wasn’t really stuck and it hung on him. At this point he was laughing and giggling while I was tasing him the second time.
WILLARD: He started to get on his left side and was looking at me. And that was the first time he was also growling at me. It was a sort of a low level growl, and I remember him showing his teeth because on one side the blood was running down and it looked sort of bizarre with his growling and his teeth out. He started to go up on his side towards me, and the Sandy police officer hit him with the taser again. This time he fell back on his back and it appeared to me that the taser was still being deployed when he started sitting up. While we are tasing him he comes forward, and you can see him still getting shocked. He is getting the electrical current and he gets up.
WILLARD: And the Sandy police officer hit the taser again. My gosh. He is being tased and he is still getting up. He reached back and knocked one barb off because I remember watching that drop to the ground. Then he took off running away from us.
WILLARD: I started to go after him, to get close enough so that the taser would continue to be effective. He turned and faced us.
BERGIN: He started growling again.
WILLARD: And I went for another reload. And almost at the same time he turned around and he started screaming, “I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna kill you,” and running right toward me. His saying that was a little weird and extremely frightening because of the blood and the strength he had displayed.
As I read this police report I began to imagine how I’d present these facts to a trial jury. Wasn’t this exactly what the cops wanted Fouad to do—to charge them? The cops didn’t want to touch him. Was their best tactic to torment him to the point that they could kill him? Witnesses up the road both saw and heard what was going on, and not one heard Fouad say, “I’m going to kill you.”
Elaine Thornlimb, a forty-six-year-old school librarian who lived nearby, offered her own perspective. She followed Fouad for about a half mile north on 362nd. At one point, he waved and smiled at her. She said that Kaady’s hair was matted and bloody and that skin was hanging from his arms. She followed him slowly in her car. He jumped onto the roof of Thornlimb’s Ford Explorer and down again. Thornlimb told the grand jury that when Fouad sat down in the road she told 911 dispatchers that he appeared to have given up. “I felt all along that the officers were there to help him,” she said. “When they shot him, I drove home and sobbed for hours.” One witness said he heard Fouad say to the officers, “Please don’t.” I felt sick. I didn’t want to admit that what I was reading in the transcript represented acceptable human conduct.
Under the law, before you can kill in self-defense you must retreat to the wall, the legal jargon meaning you must retreat to the point where retreat can no longer save you from your attacker. Only then can you kill in self-defense. That law applies to the police.
The cops admitted Fouad got up and ran away, but they next claimed he turned back, charged Willard, and screamed he was going to kill him. Willard claimed he retreated and was “extremely” frightened for his own safety.
BERGIN: At this point I saw Deputy Willard retreat.
WILLARD: I started to run around the rear of the police car and looked back and he was gaining on me. He was about three or four feet behind me.
BERGIN: And at the same time he was still growling like a wild animal.
WILLARD: And still screaming, “I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna kill you,” and making this kinda clawlike motions with his hands and intermittently growling. I ran around the rear of the police car. That was when I decided this man needed to be stopped. I couldn’t leave him … and I was scared.
BERGIN: And he ran between us, and I had concerns that he’d be charging at Deputy Willard and might get at Deputy Willard’s shotgun, and I also saw that Deputy Willard had a weapon in his hands that he could get at and use on either Deputy Willard or me.
WILLARD: I tossed my taser on the trunk of the police car.
BERGIN: I can’t get my taser into my holster, and I tossed it up on the windshield of the car.
WILLARD: And I transitioned to [got out] my handgun.
BERGIN: Deputy Willard was at the rear of my patrol vehicle. The subject was still growling like a wild animal and jumped up on the hood or the roof of my car still charging toward Deputy Willard and screaming, “I’m going to kill you,” and screaming like an animal.
WILLARD: I came up on him and remember taking a look across my front sight right at him, and I remember clearly yelling two things: “I’m the police and you need to get down.” And I’m sure this is all just a matter of a few seconds. But it seemed like a long time. The Sandy police officer had come around to that side of the car, too, and was right next to me.
I wasn’t consciously aware of what he [Bergin] was doing, but I was on him [Fouad]. I think I yelled, “Shoot.” I might not have. I might have just been thinking it. But in any case, when it appeared he was going to leap off the car at me, I fired.
BERGIN: I fired several shots at him.
WILLARD: And I know I fired two very quick successive rounds. He stepped back on the car and stopped jumping, and then it appeared he was going to come toward us, but down toward the trunk. I fired one more round.
BERGIN: Until he was down.
WILLARD: And almost simultaneously with firing that last round his right foot slipped on the rear window of the car, and he fell on his back on the right against the lower right rear window, and then hit the car and slid off the car headfirst. I remember hearing his head hit the ground.
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: What was the subject’s reaction when he was shot?
WILLARD: I guess “shocked” would be the best way to describe his reaction.
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: While you were looking down your sight with your gun pointed at him, what were you thinking?
WILLARD: I was thinking, I don’t want this man touching me. I don’t want him getting on me.
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: You mentioned that you had concerns about this man making contact with you. What were those concerns and risks?
WILLARD: In my training as a police officer I had a number of classes regarding blood-borne pathogens and hazards, and my concerns were hepatitis. This man was bleeding as if he was on some form of drugs. I know through my training that hepatitis is fairly common among IV drug users.
My first and foremost concern was hepatitis, and secondly for the AIDS virus being transmitted through blood. And with the volume of blood he had on him, even with standard precautions, gloves and mask, it would have been very possible to get blood in my eyes or in my mouth or I actually could have an open wound at the tip of one of my fingers at the time that I was concerned about.
* * *
Of course, the best way to prevent Willard from having to touch Fouad was to kill him. Willard was telling us about IV drug users. What evidence did he have that Fouad Kaady was an IV drug user? The toxicologist reported that Fouad was not under the influence of any drugs. Moreover, this young man had no criminal record. As those in the police business would have to admit, “He was clean.”
As would be expected, the prosecutor called a grand jury, and that body, led by the prosecutor, found that the police were justified in shooting Fouad Kaady to death. Some argue, especially the police, that we have to make room for the dangers police face daily in their work. Well, all right, let’s assume you are a cop in the Fouad Kaady case. Your job is simple to define—to protect the people, not to kill them. Fouad Kaady happens to be a citizen and is entitled to your protection. As a matter of fact, technically he’s your employer.
You find him naked, unarmed, and his burned flesh is hanging from his body. He’s sitting quietly on the pavement. He refuses to lay his burned flesh down on the pavement or the grass. But you are a cop. People, even if they are crazed with pain, better do what you say or else. You now decide not to call the ambulance folks who are waiting but to show this naked man, who may be dying of his wounds, who’s boss. When he fails to submit to your commands you decide to tase him—to further injure him. You continue to tase him. And for what? So you can handcuff him?
Now you claim that from the tasing itself you’ve created a monster, this naked, unarmed, perhaps mortally wounded citizen. How do you protect yourself from this monster? You can’t walk away? You can’t get in the police car? You can’t give the situation a little time? You can’t call in the ambulance people? You only have one way, right? You must kill him.
What do we learn from this story? The case teaches: Never bleed in front of the police, and if we’re injured we better not ask the police for help. They would rather kill us than touch us. If what the police did here was acceptable police conduct, would any of us ever be safe from the very people we hire to keep us safe?
* * *
The grand jury’s finding did not prevent us from filing a civil rights suit against the cops for the Kaadys’ loss of their son. As we know, grand juries are often but tools by which prosecutors gather the evidence they seek to discover or preserve—in this case evidence to clear their cops. We filed our case for the Kaady family. The police’s insurance companies stepped up to defend them, and their lawyers had learned what I’ve preached for years: You can never successfully defend a case. You can only attack, and for the insurance companies that meant attacking the dead, namely Fouad Kaady.
In preparing their defense, the insurance investigators claimed they talked to Fouad’s girlfriend, who supposedly said he wasn’t himself that day. The investigators claimed they had a witness who would testify he put eight cigarettes in his mouth at one time and lit them all and then drove over the curb of the parking lot of the store where he’d bought the cigarettes. The witness claimed he dumped out a lot of change on the counter, more than the price of a pack and left the excess with the clerk. So Fouad was obviously mentally deranged, and dangerous. The case never went to trial and was settled before I had the opportunity to talk to this supposed witness. But our investigation didn’t discover a single witness in the world who would claim that Fouad had been suffering from any kind of mental aberration before or on the day of his death.
Then the insurance lawyers were ready to introduce their newest invention—that Fouad suffered from “excited delirium,” a gimmicky piece of purported science lately used by the police around the country to excuse their killings.
Persons supposedly suffering from “excited delirium” were said to be very strong, irrational, impervious to pain, and therefore dangerous. But Eric Balaban of the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out in 2007 that “excited delirium” has not been recognized by the American Medical Association or the American Psychological Association (still true in 2015), and he says that “the diagnosis serves as a means of whitewashing what may be excessive use of force by officers during an arrest.”21 Nowhere in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders can such a diagnosis be found, which to me is another way of saying that credible authority will not create an excuse for police murders where none exists.
Police psychologist Mike Webster testified in 2007 at a British Columbia inquiry into Taser deaths that there is a link between the excess use of Tasers and this defense. Indeed, in his testimony, Webster went on to say that he believed police have been “brainwashed” by TASER International (the manufacturer) to justify “ridiculously inappropriate” use of the electronic weapon. Webster called “excited delirium” a “dubious disorder” used by TASER International in its training of police.22 Am I hearing correctly: The proper police response to citizens who are wild with pain is to shoot them in the back with those Taser darts and jolt them with 50,000 volts, yes, 50,000? That should calm them right down.
When we eventually got to trial I thought we should ask a jury: “What about receiving multiple blasts of 50,000 volts into one’s hide that has already been roasted away in a fire? Is it all right for the cops to then shoot the victim with their Tasers? Naturally, the victim goes crazy from shock and pain. Have the cops by their own actions earned the right to kill the citizen because he might present some kind of speculated threat to them, something with a scientific sounding name called ‘excited delirium’?”
Now, coincidentally, hear how Bergin had described Fouad in the police reports: “I had, uh, you know, I knew that he had a very bad mental health problem or he was definitely under the influence of drugs or a combination of both” (my emphasis).
Kent was all over that. “How could Bergin claim to know that Fouad had a ‘very bad mental health problem’? Bergin had never met or seen Fouad before; much less did he know anything about any supposed mental health problems.”
Every legal pretrial motion the insurance companies dumped on overworked judges ensured delay and earned their lawyers thousands in fees. Pretrial they continued to claim that Fouad was under the influence of drugs or was otherwise mentally disturbed or psychotic. They argued that the cops had immunity, meaning they couldn’t be sued since they were government employees who had acted reasonably and without malice. They asked the judge to throw the case out without a jury trial.
I wasn’t afraid of the standard “immunity defense” that people’s lawyers nearly always face in every case they bring against the police. The law protects cops by holding they are not liable in damages for their killing even if they were negligent. Under the law, we were required to make even greater proof than negligence to earn our right to a jury trial. We had to prove that the police were grossly negligent or “willful and wanton.” I believed if we couldn’t make such a showing in Fouad’s case the police could always get away with needless killings of our citizens. But beyond this high legal bar was the even higher bar of the likely years of delay before the judge would set our case for trial.
Unavoidable delay comes about like this: The insurance company lawyers make their argument to the trial judge that the cops are immune from suit. It sometimes takes a year or more in a busy court to get the judge’s ruling on that. If the judge holds against the cops, the insurance company lawyers can then make what’s called an interlocutory appeal to the circuit court (an appeal before the jury has even heard the case), which usually results in another couple of years of waiting. If we get a favorable decision from the circuit court, the case will eventually be set for trial. More time. If we win with a jury at trial, the insurance company lawyers can appeal again. On and on. And we could lose the case anywhere along the way. So delay and the uncertainty of how judges will rule, not a lack of proof in our case, were the danger, as they are in all such cases.
For insurance companies it’s cheaper to pay big fees to their lawyers than to let a jury cast its collective eye on such a case as this. Delay wears down even the hardiest people with the best resources. For the poor, delay is often impossible to weather. They need money for funeral bills and lost wages, and they grow poorer and more desperate with every passing day, and finally they lose confidence in their lawyers because they can’t understand such delays, and they agree to settle for a pittance. And their lawyers may have thousands of hours in unpaid labor and more thousands in expenses during all of those years. The insurance companies take the spilled red blood of the victims, watch it dry and crumble over time, and finally turn to the green of the money they’ve saved by delay.
But for some unexplainable reason the county, on behalf of Willard, failed to raise the immunity defense. Only the city’s insurance company on behalf of Bergin had raised the defense. As is sometimes my way, I lost my patience. I said, “Let Bergin out of the case. That’ll save us years of delay, and we’ll collect every penny of damages due the Kaadys from Willard’s insurance. Under the law we can recover only one total sum for Fouad’s death anyway.” Besides, I was getting older. It was becoming more difficult for me to endure long days in long trials, and I wanted to try this case before the last of me was used up.
Kent was adamant that we should hold further negotiations with Bergin’s insurance company. “Calm the lion” was his mantra. I was the lion. “Let’s see if we can get some money out of Bergin’s insurance company before we get all huffy and turn his insurance company loose.”
In May of 2009, Kent settled the case against the city and Bergin for $1 million, while I’d been willing to dismiss Bergin and go for the whole load against the county and Willard. Thanks to Kent, we provided the Kaadys with immediate, sure funds, and we still had our case against Willard.
I began in earnest to prepare for that trial.
* * *
In preparing for the Kaady trial, I’d been filling an old brain with new facts. Kent and I had both worked those long, focused hours that consumed days and nights. I read the depositions that Kent and others had taken of the witnesses. Mountains of work lay ahead, and as the trial date loomed I was deep into the preparation of my cross-examination of the insurance companies’ experts and the arguments I’d make to the jury.
The one thought that kept my belly tight and ready for the fight: If we can’t turn to our police to help an unarmed, perhaps mortally injured citizen, if they would rather kill a citizen than touch him, then the police are killers on the loose.
Shortly before trial the company that insured Willard offered us another million to settle. Should we agree to settle the whole case for what would total $2 million? I’d proclaimed this was a case we should never settle. It was my habit to fight, not settle. But how did I know I could win yet again? Most often the odds in my cases were against winning, and I was eighty-one. Even old champions in the ring eventually had to give up. I wasn’t ready. Stepping out of the ring had something to do with dying.
How could one love such a fight? You walk into a courtroom and face judges who’ve been appointed by Power. You face prosecutors who unlawfully hide the evidence, and who knowingly haul lying witnesses into court, especially snitches who buy their way out of prison with their lies. Because Power owns the media, year after year it dumps on us endless propaganda that undermines our belief that we are all presumed innocent as guaranteed by the Constitution. That’s just fancy lawyer talk. Continuous cop shows and movies portray criminal defense lawyers as greedy, soulless shysters, and in the minds of the American public that sacred rule of law has been changed. Today the accused is presumed guilty. He’d better prove his innocence or he’ll be convicted.
The Constitution? What about the Kaadys? Should we ask them to endure a renewal of their pain in a long trial? Day after day the lawyers would examine every drop of blood shed by their son, his inconceivable pain from the cops’ Tasers, and they’d hear every shot that had been fired into his burned, naked body. Then they’d hear the insurance companies’ experts take an oath that Fouad was suffering that phony invention they liked to call “excited delirium.”
If you loved the mother, even a little, would you put her through all of that for money? Mothers suffer most. For a moment become the mother. Your son has been ruthlessly killed by the cops. The prosecutors have already convinced a grand jury that the cops were guilty of no crime, that the killing of your son was justified. The only justice left is a civil suit for money—dead money for a dead child.
The mother asks, “How can I take money for my child?” That’s also the cruel argument insurance company lawyers like to make to the jury: “She wants to get rich from her dead child!”
Moreover, the law takes every means possible to keep jurors from knowing that the cop himself doesn’t pay the jury’s verdict but, instead, an insurance company does. Jurors think a greedy mother is trying to squeeze $20 million from some poor cop who, like them, works for a living and has no assets except, maybe, his mortgaged home. That’s the justice game being played in every court in America every day.
Courts do not tell juries the truth, nor does the law allow anyone else during the trial to tell juries the truth—that neither the cop nor the city nor the county will pay the jury’s verdict. The insurance company will. If I were to tell the jury that truth I would be held in contempt, possibly thrown in jail and my case dismissed. The law protects the insurance company. The law does not serve the Kaadys unless it is cornered and forced to.
Still in the role of the mother: She asks, “If I spend the money for myself, it’s my child’s life I’m spending. If I go out to dinner, what am I eating? If I take a vacation, am I trying to have a good time from the mangled flesh of my son?”
At last perhaps the mother says, “If my son had lived, he’d want me to have the money. And if need be, he’d have taken care of me in my old age.” The mother is entitled to justice. But money is all the justice there is. Yet not a penny of it would come from the cops who killed her son; it would all come from one of the most powerful of all power entities in the world—the insurance company.
Kent argued that collecting a total of $2 million for the Kaady family was an incredible settlement. That settlement would be larger than any collected verdict in Oregon’s history for a similar case. He argued I ought not interject my crusading instincts ahead of our clients’ needs. The Kaadys had suffered enough even if they had agreed to take the painful journey into a long and torturous trial.
“Besides, Dad,” Kent said, “if the verdict gets out of hand and the jury awards millions more than what the company is offering, the company will appeal, and that could take another couple of years and maybe a new trial. You could extend the Kaadys’ pain indefinitely. I say it’s better for everyone to put the case to rest and give the Kaadys a chance to reconstruct their lives.” And, yes, maybe I wouldn’t live to see the end of the battle I had demanded.
A man has finally grown up when he can listen to his son.
Although that good family agreed to the settlement, they, too, will never recover. Money does not buy justice. Nor does it buy peace, nor does it erase horror. I love Mrs. Kaady. She is a dear, dear woman and a devoted mother, and I shall always admire her.
Both Kent and I and the Kaadys take some comfort when we’re told years later that the case continues to influence law enforcement training, such as when the Oregonian reported, “Clackamas County sheriff’s deputies use the scenario [of the Kaady case] as part of their Crisis Intervention Training Program, which deals with how to respond to highly agitated subjects—mentally ill or not.”23 Perhaps Fouad’s death will save other lives at the hands of cops who kill because they can or because they do not want to even touch the injured.
Bergin resigned from the Sandy police force in October 2008. He pled guilty to unrelated charges in other cases that constituted official misconduct. Last I heard, Willard was still a cop in Clackamas County.
* * *
I couldn’t get Mrs. Kaady out of my mind. A mother who loses a child is a wounded woman. We hear her laugh again, and see her go about her business of surviving, but she has been wounded and the scars go deep. I am grateful for mothers out there like Mrs. Kaady who have the strength to go on and to live full, useful lives, and who can continue to love. Such is my definition of a hero.
And I thought of men who need to kill the children of mothers. The black and white winter birds were at my feeder. They do not kill each other. And I thought that perhaps the world should be ruled by small black and white winter birds and, yes, by mothers.