Did Malibu Police Contribute To Mitrice Richardson's Death?
Oh boy, this really frosts my flake.
Skeletal remains were found in Malibu Canyon today and were identified as that of Mitrice Richardson, a 24-year old college honors student and former beauty queen. Almost a year ago, Mitrice was taken to the Malibu, Ca. jail after she was unable to pay her $89.51 tab at a local restaurant. Richardson was bi-polar, and restaurant employees state she was acting strangely the night of the arrest.
Malibu police took her to the station, impounded her car, which had her cell phone in it, and then released the mentally unstable woman sometime after midnight without letting her family know. The area where her body was found was within two miles of the station, and it's clear now that she either wandered off and became lost in the treacherous canyon and died of who knows what, or someone killed her and dumped her there. The family may never know exactly how she died, but they know the Malibu police failed to do the right thing.
If you'll recall, this is the same department that arrested Mel Gibson for his DUI back in 2006, when he shouted racist and anti-Semitic curses at the officers while resisting arrest. How did Gibson get home? Got a ride from the police. And as Mr. Richardson, Mitrice's father pointed out, Charlie Sheen got a ride home from the police too, and he's a multi-offender accused of domestic violence. In fact, lots of celebrities get special treatment the regular public would never get.
Police have a responsibility to protect and serve, and to be fair in their treatment. While it hasn't been brought up yet, Mitrice was also a young black woman in a predominately white community. I hate to get all Al Sharpton on you, but clearly this woman was not treated the same as Mel or Charlie, or perhaps even as well as young white woman might have been.
Something is NOT right about this story, and at the end of the day, there's a dead woman - someone's daughter. The fact that they knew she was mentally ill and let her walk out of that station after midnight without a cell phone, a car, her purse, or a way home, was pretty much her one-way ticket to death.
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