Positive News on TASER Use

Finally we are starting to see some sanity evolve in the use of  TASERS by police. The 9th Circuit issued what looks like a landmark ruling on the use of TASERS. The unbridled use of these weapons is getting worse everyday and for less and less of a reason.

A federal appeals court on Monday issued one of the most comprehensive rulings yet limiting police use of Tasers against low-level offenders who seem to pose little threat and may be mentally ill.

In a case out of San Diego County, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals criticized an officer who, without warning, shot an emotionally troubled man with a Taser when he was unarmed, yards away, and neither fleeing nor advancing on the officer.

[...]

As lawsuits have proliferated against police and Taser International, which manufactures the weapons, the nation's appellate courts have been trying to define what constitutes appropriate Taser use.

The San Diego County case is the latest ruling to address the issue.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit affirmed the trial judge's ruling on Monday, concluding that the level of force used by the officer was excessive.

McPherson could have waited for backup or tried to talk the man down, the judges said. If Bryan was mentally ill, as the officer contended, then there was even more reason to use "less intrusive means," the judges said.

"Officer McPherson's desire to quickly and decisively end an unusual and tense situation is understandable," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the court. "His chosen method for doing so violated Bryan's constitutional right to be free from excessive force."

Some lawyers called it a landmark decision.

Eugene Iredale, a San Diego lawyer who argued the case, said it was one of the clearest and most complete statements yet from an appellate court about the limits of Taser use.

He said after Monday's decision that courts will consider all circumstances, including whether someone poses a threat, has committed a serious crime or is mentally troubled.

"In an era where everybody understands 'don't tase me, bro,' courts are going to look more closely at the use of Tasers, and they're going to try to deter the promiscuous oversue of that tool," he said.

[...]

"Certainly the officer should be able to articulate the reason the force (was used), and a mere resistance to comply may not be enough," said Sheriff John McGinness.

The sooner police understand that they can use a TASER under very strict rules and not just to make their jobs easier the better off we will be. Police have a tough job but taking the easy way out with such a dangerous device is not the answer. It's a brutal weapon and it kills. This is going to battled around in the courts for a while yet but at least we are seeing some movement in the right direction.

About Time TASER Use is Questioned

I haven't posted much about TASERS other than to say I think they are unnecessary and used entirely too much in the course of normal police work. The truth is that they scare me to death. There is story after story of people who haven't committed a crime and just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time being brutally tortured and electrocuted when it is completely unnecessary to protect others or the police. Finally, we have some encourging news on the legal front. I personally think that TASERS have no place in day to day policing and I think a police officer having one is just asking for the use of excessive and potentially deadly force. The Atlanta appeals court has ruled on this Taser casualty in Florida:

(CN) – The 11th Circuit rebuked Orlando officers for Tasering an unarmed man eight to 12 times in two minutes, causing his death. Judge Stanley Marcus said the repeated shocks were “grossly disproportionate to any threat posed and unreasonable under the circumstances.”

According to an eyewitness, Anthony Carl Oliver Sr. flagged down officer Lori Fiorino from a grassy median. She allegedly pulled out her Taser gun and asked him what was wrong. “They’re shooting at me,” he told her, and pointed across the street.

Fiorino tried to calm him down, and later said he had been “very fidgety.”

The witness said Oliver wasn’t belligerent and threatened or cursed at the officer.

Fiorino called for backup, and she and responding officer David Burk considered taking Oliver in for a psychiatric evaluation, because they thought he might be mentally unstable.

When Burk tried to get Oliver to cross the street, Oliver “struggled and pulled away from him,” according to the ruling.

Without warning, Fiorino Tasered him in the stomach, bringing him to the ground. Once the five-second pulse wore off, she Tasered him again. The witness said Oliver never got up after the first Tasering, and never hit, punched, kicked or threatened the officers.

Oliver, who was lying on the hot asphalt, allegedly screamed that it was “too hot.” Fioriono said she may have Tasered Oliver 11 or 12 times, explaining that she kept pulling the trigger until he stayed on the ground. Her Taser log showed eight times in two minutes, with each shock lasting five seconds.

After officers handcuffed Oliver, he began foaming at the mouth, according to Fiorino. She said she was unable to remove all the Taser prongs from his body.

Paramedics put him on a stretcher and loaded him into an ambulance, where he began to have a seizure. He was pronounced dead at Florida Hospital, a result of “being struck by a Taser,” according to a forensic pathologist.

Amy Shirley Oliver filed suit on behalf of Oliver’s estate, claiming the officers’ use of excessive force had killed him.

Fiorino and Burk asked the district court to dismiss the case on the basis of qualified immunity, but the district court refused.

The Atlanta-based appeals court affirmed.

“The justification for the repeated use of Taser force, at least beyond an initial Taser shock, was minimal,” Judge Marcus wrote.

Oliver was not accused or suspected of any crime, posed no immediate threat to officers or others, did not act belligerently, was not trying to flee, and was “largely compliant and cooperative with officers,” Marcus noted.

“We agreed with the district court’s determination that the force employed was so utterly disproportionate to the level of force reasonably necessary that any reasonable officer would have recognized that his actions were unlawful,” the court concluded.

This is just one case where the officers went to the extreme but it could open the way for more courts to examine the circumstances around the use of TASERS indiscriminately by some police.

Electric Torture

OK, Christmas is over and it is time to get back to some of the real issues. Our friends across the pond, always admired for their civilized approach to law enforcement are in danger of slipping the reins and becoming more like their dangerous Yank cousins. Fortunately the British press is a bit more awake than ours and Johann Hari of the Independent has written a thoughtful argument against tasers. Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith is pressing for all the coppers in the UK to go full taser, it's a horrible idea, so it's right that they should be discussing it. We in the U.S. didn't get the opportunity for a public debate on whether we wanted our police to be judge, jury and executioner all in one. Now we are just routinely tortured and executed without due process and no one seems too concerned. Just last week the chief of police for Dekalb county (one of the metro Altanta counties) went before the county commission to ask for the money to equip each of his 3,000 officers with tasers. There just has to be a better way of equipping our police with the tools they need to keep the peace and do their jobs safely. I am not arguing that is not dangerous out there but the numbers show that most of the people (90%) tasered are unarmed.

Daniel Sylvester can't forget the night the police fired 50,000 volts of electricity into his skull. The 46-year-old grandfather owns his own security business, and he was recently walking down the street when a police van screeched up to him.

He didn't know what they wanted, but obeyed when they told him to approach slowly. "I then had this incredible jolt of pain on the back of my head," he explains. The electricity made him spasm; as he fell to the ground, he felt his teeth scatter on the tarmac and his bowels open. "Then they shot me again in the head. I can't describe the pain." (Another victim says it is "like someone reached into my body to rip my muscles apart with a fork.") The police then saw he was not the person they were looking for, said he was free to go, and drove off.

This did not happen in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or any other country notorious for using electro-shock weapons. It happened in north London and, if the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has her way, it will be coming soon to a street near you. In Britain there are 3,000 police officers trained to use Tasers as part of specialised armed response units, but Smith has fired a jolt forward. She wants there to be 30,000 Taser-carrying officers, authorised to use them against unarmed citizens, including children. These "stun-guns" fire small metal darts into your skin, and through the trailing wires run an agonising electric current through your body.

Smith is right to say that the police face a growing threat of violence, and these heroic frontline officers must have the means to defend themselves. She's also right to argue it better to use a Taser than to use a gun. But the police can already swiftly call out armed response teams, equipped with Tasers and firearms. If we move beyond this to a widespread culture of assault by electricity, it will only endanger the police – and the rest of us.

Smith wants Tasers to be distributed well beyond the ranks of specially trained firearms officers, but Tasers can kill. Amnesty International has just published a report showing that, since 2001, 334 people have died in the US during or just after Tasering. Jarrel Gray was a partially deaf 20-year-old black man involved in an argument in the street in Frederick County, Maryland, when the police approached him and ordered him to lie on the ground. He didn't hear them – so they Tasered him. As he lay paralysed on the ground, they told him to show his hands. He couldn't obey. They Tasered him again. Jarrel died in hospital two hours later.

Ryan Rich was a 33-year-old medical doctor who had an epileptic seizure while driving his car on a Nevada highway. He crashed into the side of the road. The police smashed a window to get into the car and Ryan woke up, startled. The police officer reacted by Tasering him repeatedly. Only when they were handcuffing him did they notice he was turning blue. He was dead before he got to hospital. The coroner noted dryly that the Taser "probably contributed" to his death. Taser International's brochures claim their weapons have "no after-effects."

There may, in fact, be even more deaths than are recorded. Taser International has responded to medical examiners saying their weapons kill not by changing their weapons, but by suing the medical examiners. After the chief medical examiner of Summit Country, Ohio, ruled that Tasering caused the death of three young men, they sued her, and she was forced to remove the conclusions from her reports. The president of the National Association of Medical Examiners says Taser International's behaviour is "dangerously close to intimidation".

Yet Smith appears still to be taking the corporate propaganda of Taser International – who dominate the international stun-gun market – at face value. The company are startlingly glib when their spiel begins to crumble. A recent scientific study conducted by biomedical engineers for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation found that nine per cent of the guns give a far larger electric shock than advertised. Some sent a 58 per cent higher voltage through the victim's body. Steve Tuttle, the vice-president of Taser, responded: "Regardless of whether or not the anomaly is accurate, it has no bearing on safety." The UK Defence Scientific Advisory Council has warned there is research suggesting that Tasers could cause "a serious cardiac event" when fired at children. But still Smith won't compromise.

Everyday on-the-beat policing does not happen in the tightly controlled scenarios imagined by the Home Office. It is messy and scrappy and carried out at high speed by people who are frightened and coursing with adrenaline: some 90 per cent of Tasered people in the US are unarmed. Matthew Fogg, who led a SWAT team in the US, warns that Tasers create a culture where "if I don't like you, I can torture you".

Read the whole thing.

Back here in the U.S. we have another statistic:

A naked man who was banging on doors and windows at a northside apartment complex died Wednesday after being shocked by Tasers at least three times during a confrontation with Harris County sheriff's deputies, authorities said.

About 4 a.m., deputies received calls from residents at the apartments in the 200 block of Dominion Park near Kuykendahl.

Investigators said the 46-year-old man was randomly knocking on doors and windows and yelling while walking around the complex. At one point, he kicked open a front door and briefly went inside an occupied apartment, officials said.

The resident "did not know who he was," said Lt. John Legg of the Sheriff's Office.

The first deputy arrived within minutes.

"He was immediately confronted by the suspect, who ran toward his patrol car, opened the front passenger door and climbed in," Legg said.

The deputy ordered the man out, but the man ignored his commands, yelling and flailing his arms, Legg said.

"He was incoherent," the lieutenant said. "The deputy said his eyes appeared glassed over."

The deputy's Taser had little, if any, effect, officials said. After the man got out of the patrol car and pulled out the stun gun's prongs, the deputy fired it again while struggling with the man, officials said.

Autopsy ordered

Another deputy arrived and ordered the naked man to back away, then used his Taser, investigators said.

Deputies were then able to handcuff the man, officials said.

He appeared to be unresponsive when paramedics arrived, officials said.

They performed CPR en route to Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

This is totally unacceptable. Here is another example of the police torturing and killing a mentally ill person with a taser. The horror is that this is becoming commonplace. We need to seriously rethink the use of tasers in this country and the British should take the lessons being demonstrated here to heart before they allow the same in their country.

h/t Digby