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Tuesday, July 12, 2022

The Brinda Sue McCoy Attempted Suicide-By-Cop Case

     Brinda Sue McCoy, a 48-year-old registered nurse, lived with her husband Frank and their 5 children in Cypress California, a suburban town of 47,000 in Orange County. Frank McCoy, a former Cypress Councilman and commander with the Long Beach Police Department was chief of police in Oceanside, a southern California city of 174,000. Frank McCoy had been chief of the 260-member department since 2006. His wife Brinda worked at Hoag Hospital in the Orange county town of Newport.

     At seven in the evening of December 16 2010 Brinda McCoy, while alone in her house and feeling "overwhelmed and distraught," called friends and relatives to inform them of what songs to play at her funeral. Earlier in the day she had argued with her husband and her son.

     Under the influence of prescription medicine to calm her down and a few martinis, Brinda called 911 for "police assistance." She had recently read a news account about police in another town killing a man wielding a garden hose nozzle. She thought she might be able to get the local police to kill her. Since this would end her suffering she thought her death would be a relief to friends and family.

     When members of the Cypress Police Department responded to the call Brinda McCoy refused to come out of the house. During the standoff the distraught woman appeared at a window with a pistol in her hand. She pointed the gun at her head, at the ceiling, then at the police outside. After being warned that if she discharged the gun police officers could get hurt, she fired a shot out the window in the direction of police officers positioned behind a parked pickup truck. The police did not respond in kind. Twenty minutes later she fired again in the general direction of the officers. 

     About an hour after the shootings a police officer talked Brinda McCoy out of her house. As she crawled out the front door members of a SWAT team subdued her with a beanbag gun.

     Following 72 hours of observation at a local hospital Brinda McCoy was taken into custody. She posted her $250,000 bail and was released.

     Charged with five counts of police assault with a firearm, felonies that could send her to prison for 30 years, McCoy went on trial in an Orange County court on May 24, 2012. Twenty-five days later, after the defendant testified on her own behalf for two days, the jury, after deliberating 5 hours, found Brinda McCoy guilty on all counts. She would await her September sentencing under house arrest.

     In 2011 police officers in the United States shot 50 women, killing about half of them. Most of these women were armed with knives and had histories of mental illness. Most of them, like Brinda McCoy, did not have criminal records. Many of these police involved shootings were "suicide-by-cop" cases.

     Had Brinda McCoy been a mental case or a drug addict in Philadelphia, Chicago or Miami, she would have probably been shot. But in Orange County California where the officers knew they were dealing with the disturbed wife of a police chief, they were patient and used nonlethal force.

     Four days after she was released on bail to await her sentencing, police officers found Brinda bleeding in her back yard following an attempted suicide. Judge Francisco Briseno ordered the police to take the suicidal woman into custody for her own protection.

     Prior to Brinda McCoy's sentencing date, Deputy District Attorney Rebecca Olivier, in a rare legal action, agreed to retroactively modify the charges against the defendant by removing the firearm discharge count, the conviction of which carried a mandatory 20-year sentence. In return, defense attorney Lew Rosenblum withdrew his motion for a new trial.

     On September 7, 2012 Judge Briseno sentenced Brinda McCoy to fifteen years in prison. Had the charges against her not been modified after the fact she would have been sentenced to 30 years behind bars.

     As deputy sheriffs escorted McCoy out of the courtroom in handcuffs she spoke to her husband, relatives and friends there to support her. "Thank you guys," she said. "Everyone, I love you."

     Justice was not done in this case. Fifteen years in prison for a mentally ill woman who tried to use the police to commit suicide was too harsh.

3 comments:

  1. The police also decide whether you, a disabled
    senior citizen, get to live in your own home, on
    which you pay taxes. Frank Mccoys little army
    in black ousted me illegally from my home in
    Oceanside. So much for America the free etc.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It also determines whether you get to live in
    your own home with police "permission."

    ReplyDelete
  3. This post of yours is very informative. Thanks for sharing what you know.

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    ReplyDelete