EDITORIAL: Public risk from tasers: Unacceptably high or low enough to accept?

January 2009
Journal of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CJEM)

Tasers, like nuclear weapons, haloperidol, fireworks, and even scissors, can be dangerous in untrained hands. However, banning tasers will not necessarily make the public safer. Despite the controversy surrounding taser use in North America, the question surrounding taser use should not be “Is it safe?” but, rather, “Is it as safe as, or safer than, the alternatives?”

In this issue of CJEM, Han and colleagues(1) report a case of ocular trauma sustained from a taser. It is possible that the injury described in this case will add to the continuing controversial calls by some that conducted energy weapons (CEWs), like the taser, be prohibited. But before we throw out the baby with the bathwater, let’s reconsider our options.

Emergency physicians are well aware of the difficulties and risks in managing violent and unstable patients. Like the police, we cannot always follow an orderly linear progression, beginning with dialogue and systematically following an algorithm of successively more invasive acts. Analogous to emergency airway management, the use of police force involves a very rapid assessment in an often deteriorating situation, with the best intervention being that which is most likely to completely control the situation while reducing, not eliminating, risk. Just as it is not necessarily appropriate to try an oral airway before an endotracheal tube, an attempt to gain hands-on physical control is not necessarily an appropriate initial use of force by a police officer in an unstable situation.(2)

Gaining control of a violent or disoriented individual is a challenging scenario in which the unpredictable risk is affected by numerous factors involving the individual, the environment and the intervention. Adverse outcomes, including death, are possible. In any dynamic, unstable scenario, the risk must be weighed against the need to gain physical control, prevent injury to others and limit the destruction of property. Even the risk of death can remain acceptable in the context of other immediate and measurable dangers. Considering this also requires knowledge of the risks of other modalities, including the use of batons, impact weapons and firearms, this raises the still partially unanswered question, “What are the risks of CEW use by police?” and the more important question, “Is it as safe as, or safer than, the alternatives?” If only the negative outcomes of any single restraint method are published, then the popular media, and even our medical journals, may distort the risk of adverse outcomes with the use of force. Without a careful analysis of all use of CEWs and force, the perceived level of risk can be overblown.

Data collection of CEW use and other police restraint methods has begun in Canada and the United States, but these efforts should be standardized and expanded. Independent, prospective analysis of injury patterns has begun to delineate the risk profile of the taser, and early reports are favourable. Bozeman and colleagues,(3) in data presented at the 39th Scientific Assembly of the American College of Emergency Physicians in 2007, found that in 962 field applications of the TASER (TASER International) by 6 US law enforcement agencies, 99.7% of subjects sustained no or mild injury (95% confidence interval [CI] 99.1–99.9). Three individuals sustained moderate or severe injury: 1 with rhabdomyolysis, 1 with a cerebral contusion and 1 with an epidural hematoma. There were 2 in-custody deaths, both of which were deemed to be unrelated to taser use after a review of case details and autopsy findings by the study investigators. Even if those 2 deaths were included in the severe outcome category, the proportion of subjects with no or mild injury following taser use in the field was 99.4% (95% CI 98.8–99.8) and the proportion with moderate or severe injury becomes 0.5% (95% CI 0.2–1.2).

Similarly in Canada, a preliminary review of Calgary Police Service data (2005–2007)(4) indicates that police use of force occurs in only 0.07% (about 1 in 1400) of face-to-face police–public interactions and that taser deployment on 271 individuals resulted in no deaths, and no or minor injury in 236 cases (87%, 95% CI 82.5–90.8). Of the remaining 35 individuals, 3 were admitted to hospital (1.1% of the total taser cohort, 95% CI 0.2–3.2) and these cases are under review to determine whether they were associated with the taser deployment. This study will soon expand to include numerous police agencies throughout Canada and the United States.

Previously, deaths have been reported from the use of physical restraint (e.g., neck restraint, hog-tying, multiple officer restraint) and even pepper spray; deaths following police use of force are not necessarily taser-specific. The current calls for suspension of taser use completely disregard the findings of a very low actual risk associated with taser use in the field. Even the deaths that have occurred following taser application cannot be considered outside a broader context. We still do not fully understand the role of the controversial concept of excited delirium, and the causal role (if any) that CEWs or other force options play in deaths involving restraint.

Some have suggested that CEW use simply be suspended until “further research is available on the safety of the device.”(5,6) However, such research cannot be based on more study of healthy volunteers or animal models. Police agencies should continue to use the taser and collect rigorous data while they do so. Otherwise, we eliminate a reasonably safe option without learning the relative risk of known injurious alternatives like batons, firearms or unproven restraint methods.

As of Nov. 4, 2008, 28 Canadian men have died at some point following police use of a taser (Steve Palmer, Canadian Police Research Centre, Ottawa, Ont.: personal communication, 2008). Yet reporting of police use of force in Canada is not standardized, it does not cross agency boundaries and no national database for in-custody deaths exists. The lack of anatomical data surrounding dart placement in the field precludes the ability to interpret animal studies that suggest paracardiac dart placement increases the risk of arrhythmia.(7,8) Documentation that includes injuries and subject behaviour leading to the use of force or variations from policy needs to be standardized and collected in a national registry.

Industry-independent researchers need access to national records on police use of force. Accurate data that is independent of the information obtained from manufacturers would allow police agencies and policy-makers to objectively evaluate safety. Appropriate evaluation of real risk would limit the possibility of abrupt, reactive policy decisions generated in response to anecdote or misinterpretation of medical literature.(9)

Good information has a price, but funding must also be independent from industry. Government and other agencies that recommend research be conducted should provide funding for these initiatives.(5,6,9–11) Subsidies from CEW manufacturers, regardless of transparency, is not an acceptable alternative given the obvious conflicts that exist. Involvement from interested physicians is also essential. We must accept this responsibility. The creation of a national physician’s working group with an interest in in-custody injury and death would bring expertise to the debate and offer a neutral alternative to the assertive industry responses to medical journal publications on CEWs.(12–14)

The taser is a weapon, and all weapons have risks. But in trained hands, it’s also a tool, and emergency physicians are familiar with tools that have risks. To remain free from the potential for industry bias and public alarm, we need national-level research on CEWs and other force modalities. The safety of our citizens and our police officers is at stake. Now is the time.

Competing interests: Dr. Hall is the principal investigator of the RESTRAINT Study, a prospective, multicentre study of persons undergoing police restraint and of the SCAPGAS Study, which seeks to determine whether an alternate method for the procurement of capillary blood gases can be developed for use in agitated, combative and often handcuffed patients in the prehospital setting. Funding for both these studies was provided by the Canadian Police Research Centre. Dr. Hall is also carrying out a 10-year review of custody death in Alberta with the cooperation of the Alberta Solicitor General and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Alberta. This is funded in part by the Canadian Police Research Centre. Dr. Hall has no affiliation, financial or otherwise, with TASER International.

References

1. Han JS, Chopra A, Carr C. Ophthalmic injuries from a TASER. CJEM 2009;11:90-3.

2. Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Board of Directors. A national use of force framework. Ottawa (ON): The Association; 2000. Available: http://ilecnet.org/Standards/Canada%20National%20Use%20of%20Force%20Model%202000.pdf (accessed 2008 Nov 24).

3. Bozeman WP, Winslow JE, Hauda WE II, et al. Injury profile of TASER electrical conducted energy weapons (CEWs). 39th Scientific Assembly of the American College of Emergency Physicians. Seattle (WA): Oct 8–11, 2007.

4. Butler C. Force Science News # 102. Mankato (MN): Force Science Research Center; 2008. Available: www.forcesciencenews.com/home/current.html (accessed 2008 Nov 24).

5. Amnesty International. Amnesty International’s continuing concerns about taser use. London (UK): Amnesty International; 2008. Available: www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR51/030/2006/en/dom-AMR510302006en.pdf (accessed 2008 Nov 24).

6. American Civil Liberties Union. Citizen deaths in police custody, ACLU of Colorado call for limits on use of electroshock weapons. New York (NY): The Union; 2004. Avaialble:
www.aclu.org/crimjustice/gen/10119prs20040226.html (accessed 2008 Nov 24).

7. Nanthakumar K, Billingsley IM, Masse S, et al. Cardiac electrophysiological consequences of neuromuscular incapacitating device discharges. J Am Coll Cardiol 2006;48:798-804.

8. Dennis AJ, Valentino DJ, Walter RJ, et al. Acute effects of Taser X26: discharges in a swine model. J Trauma 2007;63:581-9.

9. Kiedrowski J, Petrunik M, Melchers R. An independent review of the adoption and use of conducted energy weapons by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Ottawa (ON): Royal Canadian Mounted Police; 2008. Available:
www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca.ccaps/cew/kiedrowski_report_e.htm (accessed 2008 Nov 24).

10. Braidwood Inquiry Media Release. Victoria (BC): Province of BC; 2008. www.braidwoodinquiry.ca/

11. Breitkreuz G. Report of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security: study of the conductive energy weapon - TASER. Ottawa (ON): House of Commons Canada; 2008. Available: www2.parl.gc.ca/Content/HOC/Committee/392/SECU/Reports/RP3582906/392_SECU_Rpt04_PDF/392_SECU_Rpt04-e.pdf (accessed 2008 Nov 24).

12. Luceri RM. An open letter to the law enforcement community. Florida Arrhythmia Consultants. J Am Coll Cardiol 2007;49:732.

13. Kroll MW, Calkins H, Luceri RM. Electronic control devices and the clinical milieu. J Am Coll Cardiol 2007;49:732-3.

14. Kroll MW, Calkins H, Luceri RM, et al. Electronic control devices. CMAJ 2008;179:342-3.

Correspondence to: Dr. Christine Hall, Vancouver Island Research, 1952 Bay St., Memorial Pavilion, Kenning Wing 1, Victoria BC V8R 1J8; chris.hall@cprc.org

CJEM • JCMU January • janvier 2009; 11 (1)

Murder charge in transit death - Oakland officer who may have used his handgun rather than taser by mistake arrested in Nevada

January 15, 2009
Terry Collins, ASSOCIATED PRESS

OAKLAND, Calif.–A former transit officer has been charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black man that set off violent protests, officials said yesterday.

Johannes Mehserle, 27, was arrested Tuesday in Nevada and was promptly returned to California.

Witnesses said Mehserle, who is white, fired a shot into the back of 22-year-old Oscar Grant while the man was lying face down on a train platform in Oakland.

In videos of the incident widely viewed on the Internet, Mehserle appeared stunned after the shooting, holding his head in his hands. His body language and the apparent senselessness of the shooting has fuelled speculation the officer meant to subdue Grant with his Taser but drew his 40-calibre handgun, roughly the same shape but heavier, by mistake.

Grant and others had been pulled off a train after reports of fighting after midnight on New Year's Eve.

The shooting inflamed long-running local tensions between law enforcement authorities and the black community. People have taken to the streets calling for prosecution of Mehserle, with one rally last week spiralling into more than 100 arrests and damage to dozens of businesses.

Mehserle surrendered without incident Tuesday at a family friend's house on Lake Tahoe, officers said.

Arresting officer Paul Howell said Mehserle went to Nevada temporarily for his own safety. "He just wanted to get out of the Bay Area. ... He wasn't trying to run.''

Mehserle refused to talk to transit investigators before resigning last week. "I want to know why he did it," said board member Carole Ward Allen yesterday. "We've heard from everybody else but him."

Police shouldn't be investigating themselves: Ontario ombudsman

January 14, 2009
The Globe and Mail

WINNIPEG — All provinces should follow the lead of Ontario and Manitoba and establish a civilian unit to hold police to account or risk more internal investigations marred by favouritism, Ontario's ombudsman said Wednesday.

Andre Marin just completed an investigation into Ontario's special investigations unit and is advising Manitoba on the creation of a similar body. He said police show bias when they investigate one of their own and Canadians deserve better.

“Police should not be investigating other police when there is serious injury or death,” said Mr. Marin, who once headed Ontario's special investigations unit. “When they do so, inevitably the investigations will suffer from favouritism and bring into question the results of those investigations. “The public will never be satisfied.”

Alberta will only allow civilians to observe investigations involving police while officers remain “in the driver's seat,” Mr. Marin said. Despite questionable investigations into police shootings in Quebec and British Columbia, both provinces defend the status quo, he added.

Police in Manitoba have come under fire for their botched investigation into a fatal traffic collision involving an off-duty Winnipeg constable. A public inquiry was called after Crystal Taman died in February 2005 when her car was rear-ended by the officer at a red light. Derek Harvey-Zenk, who had been drinking that night, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death and was given two years of house arrest. An inquiry concluded the investigation into Ms. Taman's death was “riddled with incompetence” and recommended Manitoba set up an independent body to conduct similar probes into police conduct.

Police who investigate themselves often give officers months before asking for a statement because they “need time” to recover from the trauma, Mr. Marin said. The same courtesy is not extended to civilian witnesses, who are immediately segregated and questioned.

He pointed to the passengers on board a Greyhound bus on which a young man was decapitated last summer.

Although police say civilians aren't equipped with the necessary investigation skills, Marin said that is a self-serving argument. It doesn't take a genius — or a police officer — to probe alleged wrongdoing by police, he said.

“You don't have a mass murderer on the loose,” Mr. Marin said. “It's a question of whether there was legal justification for causing serious injury or death.”

Northwest Territories mother says she was stunned by RCMP taser with kids on lap

January 14, 2009
CBC News

A woman in the Northwest Territories says RCMP jolted her with a Taser while child protection workers apprehended her children in Yellowknife last year.

The woman, who cannot be identified, told CBC News that two of her youngest children, aged one and five, were sitting on her lap when a Yellowknife RCMP officer used the electric stun gun on her.

At the time of the March 2008 incident, RCMP had forced their way into her Yellowknife home to help social workers apprehend her children, the woman said.

"I still wouldn't let my kids go, so they did it to me again," she said. "That's when I was in shock, I guess, because I couldn't move after that. And then they took my kids."

The woman complained to the RCMP, but she said a police investigation concluded that the officer who used the Taser on her had acted appropriately.

No one from the RCMP was available for comment when contacted by CBC News earlier this week.

Seeks apology

The woman said social workers had told her she could not have her children back unless she stayed away from their father, an alleged drug dealer. The woman said she had split up with the father a year earlier, but said he was in the house on the day police arrived.

The woman said she got her children back a month after the Taser incident, on the day she left Yellowknife to move to Inuvik, N.W.T. "I think what should've happened is at least get an apology, at least for my kids," she said. "They're still scared to this day. Like, they ask me if I'm OK, or if they're going to come back."

Complaint did not go to watchdog

The woman did not turn to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, an independent police watchdog agency set up by Parliament. Members of the commission say more Canadians are turning to the agency, but add that many are still taking their complaints about RCMP conduct to the RCMP itself. "We certainly found that people were not that aware of the commission," said Brooke McNabb, a special adviser to the commission, who visited the North last spring.

"We have people who have training in mediation and in police investigations, we're set up to help people frame their complaint, so that when it is investigated there's a better chance that what's being looked at is what the real issues are for the complainant."

The commission is starting to receive more complaints from the Northwest Territories: it has received 25 complaints in the last nine months, compared to eight complaints three years ago.

Last month, the commission launched its own probe into a March 2007 incident at the Arctic Tern Young Offenders Facility in Inuvik, in which an RCMP officer used a Taser on a 15-year-old female inmate.

Two RCMP investigations, as well as a probe by the territorial Justice Department, cleared authorities of any wrongdoing in that case.

An Open Letter to all candidates for Columbia Police Chief

January 12, 2009

An Open Letter to all candidates for Columbia Police Chief:

We welcome you to Columbia, and in the spirit of helping you know our community better, we are providing you with the enclosed information. As you may know, in Columbia, police training, use, and oversight of TASERs are under
scrutiny by our coalition of non-profit groups and other concerned citizens. The Coalition to Control TASERs is composed of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), GRO-Grass Roots Organizing, Mid-MO Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

TASERs are relatively new to us. Some Columbia Officers had the use of the TASER weapon starting in 2006. However, in early June of 2008, the City Council received a Department of Justice grant and used it to buy more TASERs and double the TASER-armed officers with the goal of arming them all. This unanimous decision, with very little community input, alarmed many of us.

We want our community to do all it can to protect both our police and the public from the harmful effects of the use of this 50,000 volt weapon, which is proving much more dangerous than claimed by TASER International.

We also want to protect our city and our police from liability and lawsuits resulting from inadequate TASER training, weak regulations, and the lack of oversight, all of which can lead to and have led to TASER injuries and abuse even in Columbia. For example:

In February, 2008, a young Hickman High School student was tased five times for fighting on the school grounds, even though he was innocent. Members of his family, hearing of our efforts to control TASERs, gave us their report from the Police Department. They believe that he has developed mental, physical, and emotional problems due to this “incident”.

In July ’08, a Columbia citizen suffered a fractured skull, both arms broken and other physical, mental, and emotional injuries when tased from an I-70 bridge by Columbia police. He is asking the city, through his lawyer, for a $500,000 out of court settlement.

Two other well-known, sad, and alarming occurrences were:

In August of 2008, a 23 year-old man in Moberly, MO, 30 miles north of Columbia, died after being tased. The Medical Examiner declared it a ‘homicide’. The deceased’s family is now suing the city of Moberly.

Several years ago, in Hallsville, 17 miles northeast of Columbia, a Police Chief became severely disabled after suffering a heart attack right after being voluntarily tased during police TASER training. TASER International settled out of court.

You will find in your packet pertinent newspaper articles and commentary in particular the Columbia Police Department CD containing 48 cases from their TASER deployment records. All cases were requested via the Sunshine Law filed by us in August ’08. Finally, the end of October ’08, with the assistance of the City Council, most deployment records were obtained from the Department. Enclosed are our summary/questions regarding each case as well as
statistics.

In light of our extensive research on TASERs, our Coalition has worked and will continue to work to educate others and persistently and adamantly press our City Council and Police Department to protect us and resolve Columbia’s TASER problems. We want training that recognizes the TASER as potentially deadly, and we want training based not on TASER International’s self-serving materials, but on the proven realities of TASER use and abuse. Our police training needs more tried and true methods: these include highly successful de-escalation,
crisis management, scenario role-playing, and conflict resolution techniques.

Also, a Mental Health professional should always be ‘on call’ to assist police with someone contemplating suicide or experiencing other mental health problems. A recent hopeful sign of dealing with incidents involving the mentally ill is described in the enclosed newspaper article entitled, “Program aims to improve policing of people with mental illness.”

We need adherence to existing regulations as well as increased restrictions. For example, we support placing a limit on how many times a person can be tased and a restriction that prohibits the tasing of children. It is essential that there be strict, meaningful oversight of training and regulations, automatic review of all instances of TASER use (as is done with a firearm), and appropriate consequences for TASER abuse.

In your Police career, have you worked with a Department that employed the TASER weapon and, if so, were the officers under an “imminent danger” standard? That is what we want our City Council to pass (some say “reaffirm”) and enforce. This means that the TASER would not be used for threats and/or deployment unless the officer, the public, or the suspect is faced with a
physical threat. The fact is, in the vast number of cases when our police deployed TASERs, there was no “imminent danger”. It appears that, on many occasions, the officer escalated the conflict or used the TASER for convenience -- or even punishment. Our Columbia Police are using a TASER when a gun would not even be considered.

It is disturbing that the 48 cases reveal that a disproportionate number of African Americans and mentally ill were tased. Also, most tasings occurred in Columbia’s First Ward. We regret that our Police Department currently refuses to release, with the necessary redacting of all names, addresses, and other traceable information, the 20 additional TASER deployments where the individuals were innocent or the cases were dropped or are pending. The refusal to disclose the
circumstances leading to the TASER deployment in these cases adds to the suspicion that there may be more TASER abuse.

In February, this discussion is expected to continue with the Columbia City Council when the Police will again offer a Report to the City Council. We will be present to request passage of necessary changes in TASER policy.

We seek a good relationship with the new police chief, and our goal is to have a police force we can be proud of. We believe that the TASER weapon, as it has been portrayed and used in Columbia, presents a challenge to community policing. TASERs have caused many of our families to experience pain, anger and fear. Citizens are now more informed about the danger of TASERs and TASER abuse. City Council inaction in addressing the people’s TASER threat and usage concerns, the inconsistent use that varies from officer to officer, the shoddy reporting and accountability, and the confusion as to where this weapon fits in the Force Continuum are some of the conditions which have caused many Columbians to react with increased suspicion, hostility, non-cooperation, and lack of trust. With improved leadership from our Chief, better TASER training, regulations, oversight, and transparency, these problems can be corrected and
the animosity and distrust healed.

We want a police chief who has a working knowledge and thorough understanding of the TASER issue and who is willing to communicate openly and amicably with the public and intent on justly resolving this troublesome issue. The new Chief should have a positive attitude of service to the public and creative ideas aimed at protecting us all. We hope that that person is among the current candidates.

Thank you for your consideration and attention to the packet materials. If you have questions, feel free to contact any of us.

Sincerely,
Ms Carolyn Mathews
4200 Rock Quarry Road
Columbia, MO 65201
573-443-5985

Mr. Ed Berg
1215 S. Fairview Road
Columbia, MO 65203
573-445-4065

Ms Linda Green
206 Anderson
Columbia, MO 65202
573-443-6977

Ms Mary Hussmann
5306 Rice Road
Columbia, MO 65202
573-474-1983

MISSOURI SUNSHINE REQUEST FOR GOVERNMENTAL
DOCUMENT UNDER SECTION 610.010 RSMo. et seq.
TO: Captain Zim Schwartze
Custodian of Records
Section 610.023 RSMo requires each public governmental body to make available for inspection and copying all public records maintained by said public governmental body. Each request for public documents must be acted upon as soon as possible. Any response to such request must be in writing and furnished to the requester no later then the end of third business day (5:00 p.m.) following the date the request is received by the custodian of said records. If records are maintained on an electrical format, then they are requested to be furnished in either wordperfect or word.

If access to any document which is requested is denied then a written reply complying with Section 610.023 RSMo must be provided in a timely manner which means that the response must be provided to the requestor on January 15, 2009 at 5:00 0' clock to Edward Berg at 1215 S. Fairview, Columbia, Missouri 65203.

Further under Section 610.024 if a public document contains both materials which are not exempt and/or exempt from disclosure, it is your responsibility to separate the exempt materials and make such materials which are not exempt available. Your agency may redact the information which is exempt from disclosure by law, but must in writing for each such occurrence explain such action.

Fees charged for providing copied documents must be calculated in
accordance with Section 610.026 and be certified as correct upon payment of said amount. If there is to be a charge, then there must be an estimated cost as to each item requested/ However, it is further requested that any and all fees for production of requested documents be waived as provided in Section 610.026 RSMo since the disclosure of information is in the public interest and is likely to contribute significantly to the public understanding of how and when the Columbia Police Department uses TASERS and said information is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester.

Further if this request for waiver of fees for reproduction is denied or ignored, then it requested that a written explanation be provided.

Penalties may be accessed against the custodian or agency for failure to comply with Section 210.010 et seq.

It is requested that the following information be provided to

Edward Berg
Attorney at Law
1215 S. Fairview
Columbia, Mo. 65203

1. The number of times police officers of the Columbia Police
Department between January 1, 2006 through December 31, 2008 used the TASER Model X26 to obtain compliance of individuals by displaying such weapons or sparking such weapons and verbally threatening to use such weapons if a person did not do as ordered, but when such weapons were not discharged against such individual.

2. How many written reports were filed by police officers of such use and provide copies of each and every narrative report filed by police officers as to such incidents.

3. Provide a copy of any and all Columbia Police Department policies which permit such use of the TASER against its citizens.

Date Requested:
January 12, 2009
Date Response is to be received: January 15, 2009

Hello Anonymous TD Bank Employee!!

I don't normally "out" my visitors. However, COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT!!

At 11:00:39 am this morning, this site received the following hit:

Jan 12, 2009 11:00:39 AM nat-soc-241-254.tdbank.ca
Referring URL: http://www.google.ca/search?q=truthnottaser&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-

(OK, so the visitor - whom, I might note, has visited here many, many times - was from the Toronto Dominion Bank, a Canadian financial institution whose head office is in Toronto.)

At 11:02:08 am, I received the following "Anonymous" comment:

gee he struggled after the darts were pulled and tried to kill police officers. it sounds like the taser didn't even work and you count this as a taser case. the truth. I'm not sure you are posting the truth

Then, after I posted the above information, this non-private message arrived in my guestbook:

What is your name? Andy
Where are you from? Toronto

Please enter your comments

Patti
Please understand one thing
Why do I like and support Tasers
Because I had a family member who was a cop.
That is until some kid on drugs crippled him in a struggle and destroyed his knee
So ya I support cops and Tasers to keep the officers safe, and at a safe distance from some of these people.
A blog is about an open exchange of information
If you don’t like my comments, simply don’t show them
But there are two sides to each and every story
Cheers


Well, gee whiz, THANKS FOR SHARING, Andy! At least now, I have *some* understanding about where you've been coming from all these months. I guess we represent both sides of the coin, don't we?

California man dies in police custody

January 12, 2009
Bakersfield Californian

A Bakersfield man who acted bizarre, paranoid and combative was finally subdued Sunday afternoon by officers in a struggle, but later stopped breathing and died at Mercy Hospital, officers reported.

Police are investigating the death and an internal affairs investigation is also being conducted. The man was identified as 31-year-old Rodolfo Lepe.

Police went to the 4000 block of Maize Court near Pacheco and Akers roads at 4 p.m. when a woman reported that her brother at a house next door was acting bizarre and paranoid, officers said.

As police arrive they saw Lepe run into his home. His sister gave police a key and officers found him in a bedroom closet where he refused to come out and he tried to keep the doors closed.

Officers opened the door, but the Lepe made incoherent statements and threatened to kill the officers. Police shot him twice with a Taser but it was ineffective because he pulled the darts out of his skin.

Police tried to physically take Lepe into custody, but he fought the officers, struck and bit one officer, and grabbed another officer's holstered firearm.

Officers struggled with him for several minutes before additional officers arrived and he was subdued. Officers then saw that he was not breathing and began providing medical aid including CPR and calling for an ambulance.

Lepe was taken by an ambulance to Mercy Hospital where he died.

Lepe was arrested on suspicion of possession of drugs for sale and being in a place where drugs were used in 2002, but the charges were later dismissed, Kern County court records show.

The officer who was struck and bit sustained minor injuries. He was treated and released from a hospital.

EDITORIAL: Police stay mum on key issues

January 12, 2009
Editorial - The Amherst Daily News

As concern over Taser use grows, police agencies would be advised not to prevent the public from seeking information on the issue.

A new report on freedom of information laws, released Friday, showed that police forces in this country continue to withhold key information from the public regarding the devices.

In a project launched by the Canadian Newspapers Association, 219 requests were sent to 22 municipal governments and their police services, 10 provinces and the Yukon and 11 federal departments and Crown corporations.

The requests were made by students acting as ordinary citizens.

Roughly 20 Canadians have died after being shot with the Tasers in the past few years. The Tasers can be a valuable tool, when used with discretion. But there are fears that more and more often, they are used by police officers in situations where they aren't warranted – sometimes with catastrophic results. They weren't intended as a crutch in non-lethal situations.

Most in Canada are familiar with the tragic death of Robert Dziekanski, 40, a Polish man who died several hours after he arrived at Vancouver International Airport in October 2007.

Dziekanski was on his way to Kamloops to live with his mother in the B.C. interior, but became agitated when he couldn't find his mother, whom he was supposed to meet at the airport. Subsequently, four RCMP officers Tasered the man.

Why four presumably well-trained police officers needed to Taser an unarmed man who had shown little if any signs of violent behaviour is one question; another is why would the RCMP provide false information to the public in the days after the incident, information that didn't line up at all with the chilling eyewitness video?

At the heart of the newspaper association's findings is this: some police agencies don't seem willing to give up information when requested, and that is not a good sign. Police have long wrapped a shroud of secrecy on the use of Tasers – now is the time for the public to demand more.

Researcher says police who use stun guns could save lives with defibrillators

January 11, 2009
The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER, B.C. — If police are going to continue to carry stun guns, they should also have to carry defibrillators, says a retired expert in electromagnetics.

Andrew Podgorski has been fascinated with the devices since they went on sale in the United States decades ago, and has generated a half-metre-thick stack of files and reports on the weapons.

The Taser device is one of the most widely used shock weapons by Canadian police forces.

The conducted energy weapons have come under greater scrutiny across the country following deaths of several people after being shocked by police.

None of those deaths was more controversial than that of Robert Dziekanski, who died on the floor of Vancouver's airport after he was shocked five times. Witness video of Dziekanski's dying moments were broadcast around the world.

Podgorski's study, which was filed with the B.C. public inquiry looking into Dziekanski's death, concluded the stun guns "could induce a fatal fibrillation of the human heart."

The B.C. Crown prosecutor's office announced last month no charges would be laid against the officers involved in the incident.

The inquiry is set to resume Jan. 19.

Podgorski, who worked for Canada's National Research Council until 1995, said he believes the weapons are very dangerous.

And he said if every officer carrying a Taser also had a device to restart the heart, it would save lives.

"If you use Tasers, you have to have a defibrillator," Podgorski said in an interview from his Ottawa home.

He said that in almost all the cases where the heart stops beating, a defibrillator can revive the person.

Podgorski believes the weapon is connected to the deaths of about one in 1,000 people shocked by the devices.

Taser International, based in Phoenix, Ariz., has consistently argued the devices aren't the cause of people dying after police confrontations.

Pete Holran, vice-president of public relations at Taser, said dozens of tests show impulses from the device don't affect the heart.

He added that it wasn't until 1999, well after Podgorski's study, that the weapon was fully developed to incapacitate the body's muscles, making a person incapable of moving.

"Before it was just a pain-compliance device," he said.

RCMP started using Tasers in 2001 and the weapons now are widespread among Canadian police forces.

Podgorski's 1990 report concluded stun guns can affect the heartbeat and present a serious safety hazard.

The study was conducted on pigs with pacemakers. Each pig was killed by a stun-gun shock, then jolted back to life with a defibrillator.

"From the human point of view, this was stunning," Podgorski said. "I mean, the pig was dying and then we revived it."

But Podgorski said that would take more police training and it would be expensive for officers to carry around the life-saving devices.

He said he's sad to hear news stories about people dying after being jolted by Tasers.

"I predicted it. I'm sorry about it."

RCMP Sgt. Tim Shields said police haven't seen any documented evidence that would support Podgorski's theory.

"If someone has something that has been well-researched, then we would definitely like to see it," he said.

"Our priority is saving lives and we only use the Taser in cases where there are direct threats to the public or to the police officer."

Shields said the suggestion that police officers who carry Tasers also carry a defibrillator might not be practical because of the training and cost involved.

"However, if carrying defibrillators was a reality ... we would be all for it, because there are many other incidents where a defibrillator might come in useful to save somebody's life, completely unrelated to the Taser."

Last month, municipal police forces in B.C. agreed to remove and test stun guns acquired before 2006 over concerns they generated higher shocks than manufacturer specifications.

Several other forces across the country, including the RCMP, also announced they would begin a more rigorous testing process for the weapons.

Holran said defibrillators have been proven to save lives.

"What isn't proven is a direct correlation between the use of a Taser device and the need for a defibrillator," he said.

He said the Taser is probably the most tested device weapon a police officer carries, and human studies have shown the heart isn't affected.

"And so if there's no effect on the heart, if it's only affecting the skeletal muscles, then the correlation would be there would be no need for a defibrillator in direct causal relationship with Taser use," Holran said.

Taser use within procedure

Derrick Jones, 17, Martinsville, Virginia

January 11, 2009
Martinsville Bulletin

A Martinsville police officer’s use of a Taser while trying to subdue a teen on Thursday was within the department’s procedure for using Tasers, according to city Police Chief Mike Rogers.

Tasers are electronic control devices and are considered non-lethal, according to Rogers and online information.

“The Taser may be used only when necessary to overcome actual or threatened physical resistance encountered in the discharge of an official duty where it is reasonably believed that the use of a less obtrusive method would either allow the individual to escape, or would expose the officer or others to physical injury,” the police department’s “Use of Force” policy states.

The 17-year-old teen, who Rogers would not identify because of his age, became unresponsive after the Taser was deployed. Rogers said efforts to resuscitate him failed, and he was pronounced dead at Memorial Hospital in Martinsville.

"The officer was well within the guidelines of our policy when he used the Taser," Rogers said.

An autopsy is being conducted to determine the teen's cause of death, authorities said. Preliminary results of the autopsy may be completed by Monday, according to Sgt. Bob Carpentieri of the Virginia State Police, which is handling the investigation.

However, Carpentieri said the findings may not be released to the public until the investigation is completed.

“I cannot put into words how much I hated to hear of this young man’s death,” Rogers said at a Friday press conference. “Meeting with this man’s mother” to tell her about the incident “was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do during my career” in law enforcement.

Rogers said he assured the teen’s mother that he is confident the investigation and autopsy “would provide us with an explanation for why her son died.”

In the meantime, “I would ask our citizens to withhold any judgment concerning the actions of our department or the actions of this young man until the investigation has been completed and all of the facts and details concerning the case are known,” Rogers added.

A 15-year-old was charged with disorderly conduct in connection with the incident that began after two 911 calls summoned police to Rives Road, Rogers said. Neither that juvenile nor the victim are being identified by police because of their ages.

The first call was received by the dispatch center at 9:25 p.m. Thursday when a passerby reported “a subject standing in the middle of Rives Road using the bathroom,” Rogers said.

The second call, at 9:26 p.m., reported that “two male subjects were in the road yelling or fighting with each other,” the chief said.

Martinsville Officer R.L. Wray arrived at 307 Rives Road, a two-story duplex apartment, at 9:30 p.m., according to a news release.

Wray saw a white male enter the apartment on the right side of the building and “run up the stairway inside the home,” according to Rogers and a release.

The front door of the house was standing open and the officer noticed signs of a forced entry, Rogers said. Blood also was visible on an interior wall of the home, he added, and the officer thought a home invasion was in progress. No explanation for the blood was given Friday.

“While giving commands for the white male subject to come down the steps, the officer could hear what sounded like someone striking something in the ground level back room of the duplex, which was later determined to be the kitchen,” Rogers said of what he described as a “small apartment.”

After entering the home, the officer asked the subject in the back room to come out so he could speak with him, according to a release.

A black male came out of the kitchen and “and moved rapidly toward” Wray “in an offensive stance,” according to a release. Rogers said the subject also made comments that were “not too kind” to the officer. He did not elaborate on those comments. The officer deployed his Taser on the male, who was subdued on the floor and handcuffed, according to Rogers and a release.

With one suspect in custody, Wray was briefly confronted by the other male who by then was on the porch, according to a release. That person was ordered to lie down and he “eventually complied” with the officer’s commands, police said.

After handcuffing the second male, Wray returned to the black male and found him unresponsive, according to a release.

“At that time the officer removed the handcuffs and immediately called for rescue, and the officer began giving the person CPR,” Rogers said.

When they arrived at the scene, Martinsville Fire & EMS crews treated the juvenile and then transported him to Memorial Hospital in Martinsville, where he was pronounced dead, Rogers said.

Following protocol, Rogers said that when he learned of the incident, city officers secured the scene and “I immediately called the Virginia State Police in to investigate this case. This is standard procedure among nearly all law enforcement agencies, and it assures the family and public that a fair and impartial investigation is being conducted.”

Rogers said several witnesses told police that just before the officer arrived, the victim was sitting, and at one point lying down, in the middle of Rives Road. He was not wearing shoes or a shirt, and at least two people yelled at him to get out of the road, Rogers added.

“We would very much like to talk to all of the young people who were trying to get him to get up out of the road” as well as anyone else who has information on this incident or anyone who was involved in it, Rogers said.

Wray, who has been on the police force for two years, was placed on paid administrative leave, which is standard procedure, Rogers said.

Representatives from the state police have told Rogers the investigation may continue for one to two weeks, he said.

Autopsies conducted on people who died after being subdued by Tasers revealed complications from drugs, alcohol or pre-existing medical conditions, Rogers said Taser autopsy reports have shown.

Family settles Michigan taser lawsuit for $1.95M

January 10, 2009
Associated Press

SHELBY TOWNSHIP, Mich. - The family of a man who died in August 2007 after police used a Taser to subdue him settled a lawsuit filed against a Macomb County community and five officers involved for $1.95 million.

The suit claimed that police in Shelby Township violated the civil rights of 49-year-old Steven Spears by striking him with Tasers, and beating and suffocating him while they were restraining him.

The Detroit Free Press and The Macomb Daily of Mount Clemens report U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood approved the settlement Dec. 8.

Police say they found Spears running through traffic wearing only his underwear. They say they used the Taser gun to subdue him with an electrical shock.

A medical examiner later ruled Tasers were not a factor in Spears' death.

Newspaper association audit of information laws shows wide disparity

January 10, 2009
The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Police forces in Canada continue to withhold key information from the public about how officers are using Taser stun guns, says a new report on freedom-of-information laws.

Police in Regina, Saskatoon and Saint John, N.B., refused to release any so-called use-of-force reports, which must be completed when officers draw their Tasers, says an audit commissioned by the Canadian Newspaper Association.

Winnipeg police agreed to release the information but at a cost of $4,500, and Hamilton police claimed that Ontario law prevented them from making such reports public.

Other city forces - in Halifax, Fredericton, Calgary and Victoria, for example - did provide the information, without charge.

The RCMP last year apologized for the excessive secrecy surrounding its own use-of-force Taser reports, which initially had key information removed when released to The Canadian Press and other news media.

Inconsistencies across Canada were a major finding of the association's annual audit of Canada's freedom-of-information laws, this one organized by Fred Vallance-Jones, a journalism professor at the University of King's College, in Halifax. It's the fourth such audit carried out by the daily newspaper group.

The exercise involved sending 219 requests to 22 municipal governments and their police services, 10 provinces and the Yukon and 11 federal departments and Crown corporations. The requests were made by students acting as ordinary citizens.

Other findings:

-Windsor, Ont., wanted to charge more than $103,000 to release information on city payments that some other municipalities provided at no cost.

-The CBC asked for an extra six months to provide a list of senior employees and their salary ranges.

-Saskatoon and the province of Saskatchewan got the highest marks, A-minus, while the vast majority of others audited got C or less, based on a grading system that took into account speed, completeness, fees and time extensions.

A newspaper association official said the withholding of Taser information was particularly disturbing, given the growing controversy about the use of the energy weapon in Canada.

"The police must be held to account, just like government or anyone who exercises power on the public's behalf," said David Gollob, senior vice-president of policy and communications.

"But we can't do the job properly when authorities block information, or make it difficult or prohibitively costly to obtain."

Gollob added that public accountability has never been more important as Ottawa and the provinces embark on unprecedented spending to help dig Canada out of a recession.

Canada's information commissioner said the audit's findings show that key institutions are failing in their responsibilities.

"Police forces are supposed to be examples of lawful compliance," said Robert Marleau. "The CBC, as a publicly funded media outlet, should be the standard bearer of freedom of information and perform accordingly when it is the subject of requests."

The CBC, which became subject to the federal Access to Information Act on Sept. 1, 2007, has been inundated since with requests for information and with formal complaints about inadequate responses.

Marleau singled out the federal act as "an outdated piece of legislation with a weak compliance model."

"Many of the provincial laws, while not perfect, are more effective and more comprehensive in their scope. Federally, we are slipping backwards."

Canada needs "more angry Canadians to write to their elected members and urge them to update and strengthen these laws."

17-year-old dies after taser incident in Virginia

Derrick Jones, 17, Martinsville, Virginia

This young man, apprehended for the crime of urinating outdoors, is the FIFTH 17-year-old to be tasered to death in North America, four in the US and one in Canada (Michael Langan). According to reports, "The officer turned around and saw the 17-year-old was unresponsive ... the "subject" did not appear to have a pulse." As we ALL know (except for the coroners who are scared of being SUED) "becoming unresponsive" and "being tasered" are too often one and the same.

This poor young man was, as usual, UNARMED. I'm outraged - are YOU?? It only gets worse by the day. Much worse.

Is this the world YOU want to live in?

Our deepest sympathy to this child's family and friends.

January 9, 2009
WDBJ7 Roanoke News

A 17-year-old man died after a Martinsville police used a taser on him. The incident happened late Thursday at a home on Rives Road.

Martinsville police said an officer was responding to a report of a person urinating in the street. When the officer arrived, he saw a person run inside a house. The officer followed and saw signs of forced entry and blood on a wall. As the officer went inside the house, a person ran upstairs. Another person, the 17-year-old, was in the kitchen. He became combative, according to the officer, who used his taser and then handcuffed the teen. The officer then went upstairs and handcuffed the other person in the house, a 15-year-old. The officer turned around and saw the 17-year-old was unresponsive. The officer started CPR and called for an ambulance. The teen died at the hospital. His name was not released at a Friday news conference.

The officer is on paid administrative leave. State Police are now investigating the incident. Witnesses told police there was a person lying in the street before police arrived and investigators are trying to determine if the teen was sick.

Martinsville police officers have been armed with tasers since 2006. The city's police chief defended their use in Friday's news conference.

Here is the full news release:

State Police Assist in Local Investigation

MARTINSVILLE, Va. - The Martinsville Police Department is working with the Virginia State Police on the investigation of an incident which occurred in the City of Martinsville on Thursday evening.

Martinsville Police Department Officers were dispatched at 9:25 p.m. to 307 Rives Road, a duplex apartment, in reference to a possible fight and/or disturbance. Upon arrival, Officer R. L. Wray observed, from his police cruiser, a young male run inside apartment number two. Officer Wray exited the vehicle and approached the front door of the residence where he observed signs of forced entry. Officer Wray then contacted dispatch requesting assistance.

Officer Wray then came in contact with an individual near the front door of the residence. Wray heard a series of loud repetitive noises coming from the kitchen area of the apartment. Officer Wray asked the individual in the kitchen to come out so that he could speak with him. The individual, also a young male, exited the kitchen and moved rapidly toward Officer Wray in an offensive stance. Officer Wray then deployed his Taser and subdued the individual. While he was in the process of handcuffing the individual from the kitchen, Officer Wray was confronted by the other male subject, who was now on the front porch. Wray gave the individual a verbal warning. The subject ceased his action and complied with the warning. Officer Wray finished handcuffing the individual from the kitchen, then proceeded to the front porch and advised the other male subject that he was under arrest.

MPD Officer E. W. Dillard arrived to assist Officer Wray. When Wray went back to the other individual from the kitchen and started speaking to him the subject was unresponsive. Officer Wray immediately called for medical assistance. The subject did not appear to have a pulse, so Officer Wray began CPR.

Medical personnel from Martinsville Fire & EMS arrived and treated the individual at the scene then transported him to Memorial Hospital of Martinsville and Henry County. The individual, later determined to be a 17 year old male juvenile, was pronounced dead at Memorial Hospital later that evening. The other arrestee, later determined to be a 15 year old male juvenile, was taken into custody without further incident. There were no other injuries.

"My thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of this young man and with Officer R. L. Wray and his family. This is one of the hardest things to deal with that any one can imagine as a citizen, a parent, or a law enforcement officer. We contacted the Virginia State Police as soon as we found out what had happened. They will take over the investigation from here forward. We will work with them in any way possible to bring this investigation to a fair and successful conclusion. May God bless all those involved and their families," said Martinsville Police Chief Mike Rogers.

The Virginia State Police will handle the investigation and media relations pertaining to the case from this point forward. Any questions should be directed to Sgt. Bob Carpentieri at 540-375-9598.

Martinsville Teen Dies After Being tasered by officer
MARTINSVILLE, Va. - A 17-year-old boy died in the hospital after being Tasered by a Martinsville police officer during an incident Thursday night, the city says.

At 9:25 p.m., an officer responded to a duplex apartment on 307 Rivers Road on a report of a disturbance, according to a city news release.

Upon arrival, Officer R.L. Wray observed a boy run into one of the apartments.

The officer exited his vehicle and approached the front door of the residence where he saw signs of a forced entry and immediately requested an additional officer.

Wray then heard several loud noises coming from the kitchen of the apartment and asked the boy to come out to speak with him.

A release says the boy then came out of the kitchen and came at Wray "rapidly" in an "offensive stance," when the officer deployed his Taser and subdued him.

While the boy was being handcuffed, a 15-year-old boy confronted the officer, but listened to commands to stop.

After the first person was handcuffed, Wray went to arrest the second teen.

Another officer arrived and when the officers went to check on the 17-year-old who was Tasered, the boy was unresponsive without a pulse.

EMS was called and officers immediately began CPR, the release states.

The teen, who has not been identified, later died in the hospital.

The Virginia State Police has been requested to investigate the case.

"This is one of the hardest things to deal with that any one can imagine as a citizen, a parent or a law enforcement officer," said Mike Rogers, Martinsville police chief.

"We will work with (the state police) in any way possible to bring this investigation to a fair and successful conclusion."

Edmonton cop faces hearing after using taser on teen suspect

January 9, 2009
By ANDREW HANON, SUN MEDIA

A city cop who was acquitted of assault charges after using a stun gun on a teenager during a strip search faces an internal disciplinary hearing this spring.

Const. Todd Hudec pleaded not guilty to three counts of discreditable conduct and two of insubordination on Thursday. His hearing is scheduled for March 5 and 6.

Hudec is accused of using his Taser on a burglary suspect as punishment for lying. In 2006 a judge called the incident “so egregious” that she threw out the burglary and weapons charges against the 15-year-old because of Hudec’s “shocking abuse of police powers.”

Hudec was charged with assault, but acquitted in 2007. The judge in his trial said the cop’s actions were reasonable because the boy had previously lied about carrying hidden knives.

The case goes back to Dec. 24, 2003, when Hudec and another police officer arrested two teenaged burglary suspects. A 15-year-old boy, who cannot be identified because he was underage at the time, claimed he was unarmed. But when police searched him they found several knives. The teen claimed that later in the squad car, Hudec pulled out his Taser and said he was going to use it on him to teach him a lesson about lying. Hudec admitted to zapping the boy after a strip search at the North Division station, but said he did it because the youth became aggressive and advanced on him. The teen claims Hudec pinned him against a wall and said, “you’re lucky you’re only getting this in the thigh.”

Hudec is also accused of failing to get medical attention for the teen after zapping him and failing to properly document the incident.

Last week Chief Mike Boyd told Sun Media that he supported the appropriate use of Tasers. However, he said that he was “not confident with how the Taser was being used in Edmonton” prior to 2006 when he was appointed chief. He tightened up the department’s Taser-use policy, especially in regard to reporting incidents where they’ve been used. In two years, Boyd said, Taser use was reduced by 75% and complaints of misuse have dramatically declined.

“I totally support the use of Taser by officers certified to properly use it,” he said. “I think that it saves lives, saves personal injury to citizens and saves personal injury to police officers.”

Police taser lawsuit settlement announced by San Jose

"... officers continued stunning and beating him despite his pleas to stop. After a few minutes, Rios went limp and he was later pronounced dead..." The coroner attributed Rios’ death to heart failure caused by the violent struggle with police while in a state of cocaine intoxication, but also listed the police Taser use as a contributing factor.

January 9, 2009
aboutlawsuits.com

A California wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of a man who died after San Jose police officers used a Taser stun gun on him, was settled last month for $70,000.

On Nov. 18, 2005, an off-duty police officer used pepper spray in an attempt to subdue Jose Angel Rios after observing him in an altercation with his wife in a parking lot. Other officers subsequently arrived and tried to subdue Rios by jolting him repeatedly with a Taser stun gun and beating him with batons.

In a lawsuit originally scheduled to go to trial in October, Rios’ family alleged officers continued stunning and beating him despite his pleas to stop. After a few minutes, Rios went limp and he was later pronounced dead.

The coroner attributed Rios’ death to heart failure caused by the violent struggle with police while in a state of cocaine intoxication, but also listed the police Taser use as a contributing factor.

Rios’ wife and son filed the wrongful death police brutality lawsuit in November 2006. On December 16, 2008, the city of San Jose announced that they have agreed to pay $70,000 to the family, which is the first such settlement linked to a police Taser death in the city.

The Taser uses electro-muscular disruption technology to incapacitate individuals being apprehended by police who may pose a threat or flee.

There have been a number of reports of overuse and abuse of the weapons, with fatal consequences in some cases. Although Taser International, the manufacturer of the stun guns, claims that the weapons are non-lethal and safe, Amnesty International has linked hundreds of deaths to police Taser use.

A report released by Amnesty International last month called on the government to limit police Taser use to life-threatening situations or to stop using them altogether. The organization cited 334 Taser deaths between 2001 and August 2008.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, at least five police Taser deaths have occurred in San Jose, California since 2004, with at least two other wrongful death lawsuits pending against the city.

In June 2008, a San Jose federal jury found Taser International partly responsible for the February 2005 death of Robert C. Heston, who was jolted repeatedly by Salinas police during an arrest. This was the first lawsuit where the manufacturer of the stun gun was held responsible for a death after use of a Taser by police.

The jury originally awarded Heston’s family $5.2 million in punitive damages, but this amount was later overturned, leaving $153,150 in compensatory damages.

Outlaw tasers

UPDATE - with regret, knowing as we do that "became unresponsive" and "deployed his taser twice to subdue him" are synonymous.

January 9, 2008
The Associated Press

MOBERLY, Mo. | A Howard County prosecutor says no criminal charges will be filed in the death of a suspected drunken driver killed after a police officer fired a Taser at him. Prosecutor Mason Gebhardt says Moberly police officer J.J. Baird was justified in using a Taser to try to arrest 23-year-old Stanley Harlan of Moberly during a traffic stop in August. Gebhardt says he reviewed reports and a video of the incident to determine Harlan was resisting arrest. Baird made the stop, suspecting Harlan was driving drunk and placed him under arrest. Police say when Harlan resisted, the officer deployed his Taser twice to subdue him. The first Taser shock lasted five seconds and the subsequent shock was only one second. Harlan became unresponsive soon thereafter. Officers started CPR until an ambulance arrived. Harlan was pronounced dead at a hospital.

















On November 19th, I posted the message below. Today I received these photos and this message: we would be honored if the families and friends of the victims on the list wanted to send a pic to our email (outlawtasers@yahoo.com) so we could post their pics on theirs, or even contact us at the email address if they wanted to see the memorial themselves and place pics or decorations themselves.

November 19, 2008

I received this message on my guestbook and I am posting it here in case anyone would like to be involved in this:

We are a group of friends & relatives helping a mother (who's son was tased by local police in front her Aug. 28, 2008). We are currently working on making 386+ crosses representing the people whom have died from being tased. (Names found on this site ) We have not set a date as when we will place these in the ground, but wish to do it before the holidays. It would be nice if we had some kind of picture of deceased, family or friend to come & place the cross, news story or anything, We would like to make it known nationally, our goal is to have the taser outlawed everywhere.

As I mentioned, my friends son was tased, he was unarmed, was not on drugs. It was another instance of police brutality here in our small town.

For more information or to send a photo, contact outlawtasers@yahoo.com

Officer in BART shooting quits force, avoids internal affairs quizzing

This is a tragic story. Officials are investigating the possibility that the involved police officer may have intended to use his newly-acquired taser, but instead ended up grabbing his revolver and shooting a young, unarmed and already restrained man, Oscar Grant, to death. Today, as Oscar Grant's family gathered together for his funeral, the officer sent a resignation letter instead of showing up to answer investigators' questions. According to the following report, "Mehserle's resignation means he does not have to talk to BART investigators."

There oughta be a law ...

January 7, 2009
Demian Bulwa, Henry K. Lee, San Francisco Chronicle

The BART police officer who shot an unarmed man to death on the platform of the Fruitvale Station in Oakland early New Year's Day resigned from the force today, avoiding an interview with police internal affairs investigators about the incident.

Officer Johannes Mehserle, 27, was supposed to have been questioned today by internal affairs about why he shot Oscar Grant, 22, of Hayward as Grant lay face down on the station platform, BART spokesman Linton Johnson said.

However, Mehserle did not show up for the interview. Instead, his lawyer and union representative appeared and handed over a short resignation letter, Johnson said.

Mehserle's resignation is effective immediately. BART said its investigation of the shooting would continue, as will a separate investigation by the Alameda County district attorney's office.

BART had come under fire from John Burris, the attorney for Grant's family, for not having forced Mehserle to talk with internal affairs investigators since the shooting. Unlike in criminal investigations, in which a suspect has the right not to talk to police, officers involved in on-the-job shootings must talk to inspectors as part of administrative inquiries or risk being fired.

Mehserle's resignation means he does not have to talk to BART investigators.

"I'm not surprised," Burris said of Mehserle's departure. "It should have happened long ago."

Anger over Grant's death was evident this afternoon at Fruitvale Station, where about 200 protesters gathered just after 3 p.m. outside the entrance to the station. The demonstrators were not obstructing passengers.

Johnson said today that Mehserle's attorney, David Mastagni, had postponed a meeting between the officer and internal affairs investigators that had been set for Tuesday and wanted to reschedule it for next week. Instead, BART told Mehserle to show up this morning, Johnson said.

Mehserle resigned the same day that Grant's family gathered in Hayward for his funeral. Burris has filed a $25 million claim against BART on behalf of Grant's mother and 4-year-old daughter, the likely precursor to a lawsuit.

In the claim, Burris said Mehserle "mercilessly fired his weapon" at Grant after the supermarket butcher and several friends were pulled off a train at the Fruitvale Station following a reported dispute with another group of passengers.

Grant was unarmed when he was shot in the back; the bullet went through him and ricocheted off the platform, then hit him again in the torso.

BART, Mehserle and the officer's lawyer have all been silent about why Mehserle opened fire, but BART has said one possibility it is investigating is that Mehserle mistook his revolver for a Taser stun gun.

Mehserle was a BART police officer for two years. He and other BART officers were equipped with stun guns only within the past few weeks.

Grant's death has attracted attention well beyond the Bay Area. An official of the human rights group Amnesty International USA, Dalia Hashad, said today before Mehserle resigned that BART's delay in interviewing the officer "hints at the callousness to the worth of human life to a public that is all too familiar with racial profiling, police brutality and cover-ups."

4 NC officers cleared for using taser on man who died

"... officers used a taser three times on Thompson ... an ambulance came after he began bleeding from his mouth ... an autopsy report said Thompson died from complications of cocaine toxicity."

TRY AS I MIGHT, I can find no online reference to link "bleeding from the mouth" with "cocaine toxicity."

"... authorities said he appeared to have a seizure and go into cardiac arrest in the ambulance."

WITH VERY LITTLE EFFORT, I can find at least a bazillion online references that link "having a seizure and going into cardiac arrest" with "taser use".

I think I'll become a coroner.

January 7, 2009
ABC News

GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) -- Four Greensboro police officers have been cleared in connection with the death of a man who was shocked with a Taser during a traffic stop. Guilford County District Attorney Doug Henderson said in a statement Tuesday that the officers "acted appropriately and within the confines of the law."

The statement said officers pulled over 24-year-old Paul Thompson Jr. on April 22 for speeding. Officers used a Taser three times on Thompson for resisting, and an ambulance came after he began bleeding from his mouth.

Authorities said he appeared to have a seizure and go into cardiac arrest in the ambulance. He died at an area hospital five days later. An autopsy report said Thompson died from complications of cocaine toxicity.

Letter to the Editor: stun guns an effective policing tool

If only I had the time to fully respond to this load of crap!! This guy's obviously bought the company line - lock, stock and barrel.

Repeating the mantra of the brainwashed that the taser is a "less dangerous option than a firearm", he asks and answers the following question: "Does the deployment of a CED have the capability of avoiding serious bodily harm and/or death to all involved parties that might otherwise have led to the use of a firearm? Without a doubt -- yes." I would counter with a question and answer of my own: "Does the deployment of a CED have the capability of CAUSING serious bodily harm and/or death to ONE OR MORE involved parties that might otherwise NOT HAVE LED to the use of a firearm? Without a doubt -- yes."

January 7, 2009
Owen Sound Sun Times

Editor:

Recently, there have been many points of view expressed across the country, the province and the Owen Sound area regarding the pros and cons of Tasers.

Conducted Energy Devices (CED) are recognized by the global policing community as a valuable tool and a less dangerous option than a firearm. The CBC News study has identified pre-2005 models of the X-26 Taser that were recommended for re-testing. As a result, some police services have taken the step of testing those particular models. Currently, the X-26 Tasers deployed by the Owen Sound Police Services are a newer production line of this device and therefore were not part of the recommended re-testing. As well, it should be pointed out that the name Taser is a registered trademark name and although more popular than other such devices is still only one type of CED marketed throughout the world for military, law enforcement and, where permitted by law, civilian use.

Police officers are required to respond and intervene in a variety of situations involving the risk of violence, injury or death to members of the public and the police. Often these situations require immediate intervention, where the condition and emotional state of the subject is uncertain.

Police officers require a range of use of force options, often referred to as the use of force continuum, which include verbal commands, negotiation, physical restraint, intermediate force options, and deadly force. CED's are one such intermediate force option, which have been successful in reducing injury to officers and violent subjects as compared to other use of force options, including lethal force.

As a front-line supervisor with over 22 years of policing experience, what I can personally attest to is that next to the introduction of the semi-automatic handgun, the technology of the CED, has been potentially one of the top use of force options that have been made available to front-line policing over that time period. Any officer who has or will be forced into a potentially life-threatening situation should be permitted to utilize this device to assist with the peaceful resolution of the situation.

During my career, I have been critically shot in the line of duty, been forced to discharge my firearm in order to protect myself and have had immediate family members who are in the policing profession discharge their firearm in order to protect themselves and others. These are split second decisions that are made by front-line officers across the country on a daily basis. They are never taken lightly. Anyone that would express the thought that it is better to potentially have a loved one shot with a firearm versus deploying a CED has possibly missed why the device was introduced in the first place. Do firearms have the potential for taking a person's life when discharged? Absolutely! Will this affect the loved ones of the person(s) involved as well as the officer(s)? Unfortunately yes -- and it will for the rest of their days.

Does the deployment of a CED have the capability of avoiding serious bodily harm and/or death to all involved parties that might otherwise have led to the use of a firearm? Without a doubt -- yes.

Currently, the Police Association of Ontario (PAO) which represents over 32,000 police and civilian members supports the e of CED's as an occupational health and safety measure to reduce injury to members of the public, violent subjects and police officers; we support standardized training, reporting and accountability of the use of CED's; as well as the deployment to all front-line police officers after having received the approved training.

The public does require more information both for and against the use of such devices. At the same time the media needs to report with the same enthusiasm on the positives of how such devices can actually defuse situations and save many more lives on a weekly basis across the entire country when police officers are faced with potentially life-threatening situations.

In the meantime, police officers across the province will await the recommendations from the Canadian Police Research Centre on the safety of CED's for both police and the public and will continue to do the job that they have been sworn to uphold.

Bill Rusk
President
Owen Sound Police Association

Officer felt he had to taser Hula Hoop Lady

"Officer Parks didn't know he was dealing with a citizen who was brain-injured.... All he knew was she was noncompliant and agitated."

Uh-huh.

January 7, 2009
By Michelle Washington, The Virginian-Pilot

The officer who used a Taser to shock the Hula Hoop Lady of Granby Street in October felt he had no choice but to do so, according to Norfolk's city attorney.

On Tuesday, lawyers for Pamela Brown filed a lawsuit in Norfolk Circuit Court, seeking $5 million in damages against Officer Nicholas Parks. The lawsuit says Parks violated Brown's civil rights and used excessive force during the incident.

Brown, 49, was charged with making excessive noise and assaulting Parks after he responded to a noise complaint on the median of Granby Street near Wards Corner, where she hula-hoops. Brown suffered a brain injury in 1977 when she was hit by a truck, and she has seizures and short-term memory loss. A prosecutor dropped the charges in November.

According to the lawsuit, Parks disregarded Brown's repeated statements that her injuries prevented her from putting her arm behind her back, as the officer had ordered. The lawsuit says Parks ignored Brown's efforts to tell him about the documents she had with her that described her condition.

The exchange was captured on a camera mounted on Parks' Taser. City Attorney Bernard Pishko said Tuesday that he had reviewed the tape with Parks.

"We're not defending it as best practice," Pishko said. However, "Officer Parks didn't know he was dealing with a citizen who was brain-injured.... All he knew was she was noncompliant and agitated."

Pishko said he supported dismissing the criminal charges against Brown because there wouldn't have been any point to prosecuting them. Further, he said, Brown had not suffered any serious injury from the shocks.

"The officer misjudged," Pishko said. "He didn't realize she was brain-damaged and overreacted."

Earlier Tuesday, Brown's lawyers gathered outside the courthouse. They said Brown had been injured by the Taser.

"She's a cracked egg to begin with," said Stephen Smith, one of her lawyers. "When she was out there with her hula hoop, she was somebody. Now she's scared. She needs more and intensive psychological therapy and rehabilitation."

Was BART cop reaching for taser?

January 7, 2009
By Sean Maher, Oakland Tribune

OAKLAND — The BART police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man early New Year's Day in Oakland could have done it intentionally or by dire mistake, and a key factor is whether the officer was armed with a Taser that day, an attorney representing the dead man's family said Tuesday.

The officer, identified as Johannes Mehserle in a wrongful death claim, is seen on several recently released cell phone videos of the Fruitvale station incident standing over Oscar Grant III, at which point the officer appears to draw his gun from its holster on his right hip and point it at Grant, who is facedown on the station floor. Within moments a gunshot is heard and, in a video released Monday night, the officer looks up and down twice, then briefly touches his face with his hand.

Many online viewers of the video have posted comments speculating the officer may have thought he was reaching for a Taser when he grabbed his gun, suggesting he meant only to stun Grant, a 22-year-old Hayward man.

"In the case I'm involved in, it doesn't matter if he was reaching for a Taser or not," said civil rights attorney John Burris, who is representing Grant's family in a $25 million wrongful death claim filed Tuesday against BART and Mehserle. "At the end of the day, it's what he did that counts."

Burris has publicly asked Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff to consider filing criminal charges against Mehserle, however, and said the Taser question could have bearing on that issue.

"If he thought he was reaching for a Taser and pulled a gun, that's negligent. That would be involuntary manslaughter, a negligent homicide," Burris said. "If he didn't have any Taser on him ... that's an intentional killing: second-degree murder."

Burris and BART police Chief Gary Gee have said the facts remain unclear whether Mehserle had been carrying a Taser that day.

BART police began training to use Tasers about three months ago, BART spokesman Linton Johnson said.

The department does not have enough of the stun guns to equip every officer with one, Gee said. When officers do carry Tasers, he added, they are kept on a separate part of their belts from their service pistols.

"They keep those Tasers on the opposite side of their gun hand, or in the middle, pointed the opposite direction so you have to turn your hand to get it," Burris said. "No movement (on the videos) suggests (the officer) was reaching for anything other than the location where the gun was."

Burris said he has not requested any information from BART police but plans to submit a request in the next day or two.

Standard-issue pistols for BART police are Sig-Sauer .40-caliber semi-automatic pistols, Gee said, and the department uses the X26 model Taser.

A loaded Sig-Sauer weighs nearly three times as much as the X26 Taser and is taller by about 2 inches, according to specifications on a gun dealer and official Taser Web sites.

When five officers responded to reports of a fight on a BART train by stopping the train at the Fruitvale station about 2 a.m. Jan. 1, they ordered several passengers to get off that train and detained some of them, officials said. Grant was among those passengers, though officials have yet to confirm whether he was suspected of being involved in the fight.

BART officials have not confirmed the exact time of the shooting. The Oakland Fire Department responded to a call for medical help at 2:13 a.m., and Grant was still breathing at 2:22 a.m. when an American Medical Response ambulance arrived to take him to Highland Hospital, where he died.

BART police and the district attorney's office are continuing to investigate the shooting. Anyone with information is asked to call BART investigators at 877-679-7000, ext. 7040, or the district attorney's office at 510-272-6222.

Organizers have written on Facebook that a protest of the shooting is planned to begin at 3 p.m. today at the Fruitvale station, 3401 East 12th St.

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) shooting captured on video

"A source familiar with the investigation has said BART is looking at the possibility that Mehserle had intended to fire a Taser at Grant but drew his service weapon instead ... Several cases have been documented of police officers in the United States accidentally shooting people with handguns when they intended to use Tasers ..."

January 7, 2009
Matthew B. Stannard,Demian Bulwa, San Francisco Chronicle

The New Year's Day shooting death of Oscar Grant on an Oakland BART platform has been electronically re-enacted hundreds of thousands of times as videos of the incident are broadcast on television and spread over the Internet.

The videos now could play a critical role in the investigation into the shooting of Grant, 22, by BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle, 27.

Three videos made public so far show Grant's final moments from multiple angles in a way that could help investigators, attorneys and use-of-force experts determine whether the shooting was accidental, intentional or inexplicable.

The videos - taken by onlookers - have been downloaded more than 450,000 times from KTVU-TV's Web site, said William Murray, the site's managing editor. That's tantamount to two months' worth of downloads in a few days, he said. An annotated version of one video uploaded to YouTube on Sunday was averaging more than 1,000 views an hour.

"It's taken on a life of its own," said Murray. "It's one of those phenomenons of the Internet world."

BART spokesman Linton Johnson said the agency was troubled by the way the video footage had become a media sensation.

"It does a disservice to the integrity of the investigation because people form opinions, and then they can't give independent recollections of what they actually saw because they are tainted by the videos," Johnson said. "It's unfair to (Grant's) family, it's unfair to the police officer, and it's unfair to the public. But that's the world in which we live, and you have to adjust."

The Chronicle asked several use-of-force experts, many with years of experience training police officers and military personnel and several with decades of law enforcement experience, to analyze the videos - an endeavor several experts warned can be informative but also inconclusive.

Shooting in context

The videos begin with a chaotic scene: BART officers questioning and restraining several people as a crowd of onlookers - many wielding cameras - shout in protest from a nearby train. Several videos capture, from different angles, Mehserle and another officer speaking with and eventually moving to restrain Grant.

The trainers said the scene as shown in the video moments before the shooting would be as important to understanding what happened as the shooting itself.

"The four officers have to be operating under a high level of stress given the relatively confined setting and the people on the BART train who are expressing, in a very loud vocal fashion, their displeasure with the officers' actions," said Frank Borelli, a use-of-force expert in Maryland. "Those officers, should things go bad for them, are vastly outnumbered by a group of people who have already voiced their unhappiness with the police."

But other experts saw the moment differently.

"It's clear it was not a use-of-deadly-force situation," said Gregory D. Lee, a retired supervisory special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration who has testified in federal use-of-force cases. "You've got more than enough manpower there to handle these guys."

Bruce Siddle, founder of Illinois-based PPCT Management Systems, a use-of-force training and research firm, agreed with Lee's interpretation. "If you look at the officer's body language, it's clear in my mind he didn't believe he was in a deadly force situation," he said. "He's relaxed."

Seconds before the shooting, Mehserle and another officer apparently placed Grant on his stomach to be searched or handcuffed. "Two officers appear to be struggling with Grant prior to the shot being fired," Borelli said. "This would indicate that, at best, Grant was being uncooperative, or at worst aggressively resisting arrest. I have to emphasize that no one except those two officers knows what happened in that struggle and how the officers perceived it."

Escalation of force

Several use-of-force trainers said it appeared that the struggle led the officer to change tactics. "In my mind, what happened here was this guy was resisting," Siddle said. "And at some point there was a decision made ... we can't control him, so we're going to use the Taser."

BART officials say some officers carry a Taser X26, a top-of-the-line model used by several other Bay Area police agencies. A BART spokesman said the Police Department started training to use the devices three or four months ago, but a source within BART said officers had only been using them on regular patrols since mid-December.

Agency police have not said whether Mehserle had a Taser the night of the shooting, although several of the experts said the videos appeared to show that he had the device on his belt.

The experts were split on whether Mehserle should have been drawing a weapon of any kind, lethal or otherwise. "Why would you draw a firearm in that situation to begin with?" said George Kirkham, a Florida criminologist and consultant. "This doesn't even seem like a Taser situation."

Chaos on platform

Other experts said it is possible that given the chaos on the platform and the apparent struggle, Mehserle might have concluded that using a Taser to control Grant was justified.

A source familiar with the investigation has said BART is looking at the possibility that Mehserle had intended to fire a Taser at Grant but drew his service weapon instead.

Several cases have been documented of police officers in the United States accidentally shooting people with handguns when they intended to use Tasers, including a 2002 case in which a Madera (Fresno County) police officer shot and killed a 24-year-old man. The officer was not charged criminally; a civil case brought by the dead man's family is still pending.

Similar confusion could have led to Grant's death, said several trainers, who noted that Mehserle and the other officers appeared in the video to be startled by the shooting.

Siddle said changes in how the brain processes information in a stressful situation might have led the officer to mistake the butt of his service weapon for the Taser. But other experts found the idea that the shooting resulted from such a mix-up hard to believe.

"That's as reflexive as you getting in on the driver's side of the car (instead of) the passenger side if you want to drive it," Kirkham said. "There's no remote similarity to a conventional firearm. ... The Taser is just like apples and oranges."

It is more likely, Kirkham said, that the officer and his attorney will argue that the officer saw or felt something on Grant - a cell phone, a belt buckle - that he believed was a weapon and that Grant was about to use it.

"That is the only possible explanation I can come up with," he said. "Beyond that, you've got me."

BART officials have said Grant was unarmed.

Another expert, Roy Bedard, who has trained police officers around the world, advanced a different theory after his first viewing of the video: that the shooting was a pure accident, a trigger pulled because of a loss of balance or a loud noise.

But in an indication of how the videos might move the investigation, Bedard reached a different conclusion after viewing the shooting from a different angle.

"Looking at it, I hate to say this, it looks like an execution to me," he said. "It really looks bad for the officer. ... We have to get inside his head and figure out what he was thinking when he fired the shot."

Cop fires Taser, man's jacket ignites

January 4, 2008
By Rosalio Ahumada, Modesto Bee

The jacket of a Ripon man burst into flames when an officer fired a Taser at him Saturday morning after the man, who was driving a stolen motorcycle, led officers in a two-mile pursuit in Modesto, police said.

Modesto police Sgt. Craig Plante said Rocky Snell, 31, was not injured. He said Snell did not complain of pain when he was examined by officers, and a nurse at the Stanislaus County Jail confirmed Snell was not injured.

Plante said the flames partially singed the left front of Snell's hair and his left eyebrow. He said Snell was arrested on suspicion of vehicle theft and evading a peace officer.

The three officers, who jumped on Snell and put out the fire, also were not injured, Plante said. After Snell was in custody, the officers learned the fire started when gasoline from the motorcycle had spilled on Snell before the Taser was used to deliver an electric jolt to subdue him.

The fiery incident started at 6:10 a.m. when an officer spotted Snell driving a 2002 Yamaha motorcycle near Tully Road and West Orangeburg Avenue in central Modesto, police said.

Plante said the motorcycle's headlight was not on, so the officer attempted a traffic stop. Snell refused to stop and the chase started, police said. Plante said he did not know the speeds reached during the chase.

The chase ended shortly after it started near the railroad crossing just east of College Avenue and West Rumble Road near Davis Community Park.

Plante said the motorcycle hit the side of a police car, but officers still were investigating the crash.

"The motorcycle bounces off the car, then the motor- cycle just fell on its side," Plante said.

Snell ran from the officers, Plante said. The officers didn't know that the motorcycle's gas cap was off when the bike crashed.

Gasoline spilled out of the gas tank and onto Snell's jacket, Plante said. "It was a gas cap that had a lock," Plante said. "He might have pried it off to keep putting gas into the motorcycle, but I'm just guessing on that."

The officers got out of their cars and chased Snell, who kept running when the officers ordered him to stop, police said. Modesto police spokesman Sgt. Brian Findlen said officer Cameron Cromwell pulled out a Taser and fired it at Snell.

Darts hit puffy jacket

A Taser resembles a handgun and shoots darts that deliver 50,000 volts of electricity. Plante said the Taser darts hit Snell's puffy, black Raiders jacket. He said flames immediately ignited on the jacket and spread toward Snell's head. It appears that the Taser's electrical current ignited the gasoline on Snell's jacket, Plante said.

For a second, the officers watched in shock as the fire erupted, Plante said. A suspect is not supposed to catch fire when using a Taser, he said. Officers Cromwell, Larry Meyer and Bradley Beavers quickly got over their surprise and leapt to put out the flames. "They pushed the man to the ground and ripped off his jacket," Plante said. "They stomped on the jacket and put out the fire. They were now in lifesaving mode."

He said the officers quickly went back to apprehension mode after the fire was out and handcuffed Snell, who was taken into custody without further incident. Snell was expected to be booked at the Stanislaus County Jail, police said. His family could not be reached for comment Saturday evening.