Battered cargo: The costs of the police 'nickel ride' In city patrol wagons, suspects slam into walls and slide across the floor. Paying the price are the injured and the taxpayers - not the police.
Gino Thompson stepped into the police van an able-bodied man.
He emerged paralyzed from the waist down.
Thompson had been arrested outside a North Philadelphia convenience store after a drunken argument with a girlfriend over a set of keys. Police put him in the back of a patrol wagon, his hands cuffed behind his back.
The low, narrow benches had no seat belts. The bare, hard walls had no padding. As the wagon headed south on Broad Street, toward the 22d District police station, the driver accelerated - "like they were going to a fire or something," Thompson said.
Then the wagon came to a screeching stop, Thompson and one of the officers recalled.
Thompson was launched headfirst into a partition and suffered a devastating spinal-cord injury.
"They took me right out of the store and into the wagon, and that's the last I walked," said Thompson, father of 11 children. "That wagon changed my whole life."
Thompson was a victim of a secretive ritual in Philadelphia policing: the wild wagon ride, with sudden starts, stops and turns that send handcuffed suspects hurtling into the walls.
Top commanders acknowledge that rough rides are an enduring tradition in the department. The practice even has a name - "nickel ride," a term that harks back to the days when amusement-park rides cost 5 cents.
An Inquirer investigation documented injuries to 20 people tossed around in wagons in recent years. Thompson was one of three who suffered spinal injuries, and one of two permanently paralyzed.
Most of the victims had clean records. They were arrested on minor charges after talking back to or arguing with police. Typically, the charges were later dismissed.
