A shel­ter for ado­les­cents in south­ern Illi­nois is suing the local sheriff’s office for what it describes as an unpro­voked attack by two police offi­cers on four chil­dren, three of whom were tasered, and one of whom was threat­ened with sodomy by a sheriff’s deputy.

The South­ern Thirty Ado­les­cent Cen­ter near Mount Ver­non, IL, filed the law­suit on behalf of three chil­dren in its cus­tody, who the law­suit says were tasered by Jef­fer­son County sheriff’s deputies who had been called to help sub­due two mis­be­hav­ing chil­dren, aged 11 and 12. Nei­ther of those chil­dren were among those who were tasered dur­ing what one news ser­vice described as a police “rampage.”

The inci­dent took place on July 4, 2008. The fed­eral law­suit was filed in an East St. Louis court on Fri­day. In the suit the chil­dren are named only by their ini­tials: B.B., R.E., and Z.P.

Accord­ing to the legal fil­ing, quoted in the Mount Ver­non Reg­is­ter, one deputy “phys­i­cally pushed R.E. towards his bunk and shocked him repeat­edly with a taser. … R.E. was tased mul­ti­ple times to mul­ti­ple loca­tions on his per­son, includ­ing, but not lim­ited to, his neck. Deputy Bow­ers shouted to B.B. to lie down in his bunk and phys­i­cally forced him to lie down.

Full story at http://rawstory.com