“An inmate at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin died after he charged at Alameda County sheriff’s deputies and was subdued with the help of Taser shock weapons, authorities said Thursday.
Martin Harrison, 50, of Oakland died at a hospital early Wednesday, two days after the jail incident, sheriff’s Sgt. J.D. Nelson said.”
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Some might refer to the “jail incident” as murder. This guy was in Santa Rita on DRUNK DRIVING charges.
Tasers must be banned. They are lethal force, PERIOD.
“Oakland and BART police officers shot and killed a man Saturday morning near the Fruitvale BART Station when, authorities said, he charged the officers holding a knife in each hand after leading them on a chase for blocks.
Five officers opened fire on the man when he threatened an officer after police unsuccessfully tried to subdue him with a Taser stun gun, Oakland police Officer Jeff Thomason said.”
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When does it stop?
“The BART Police Department will start redistributing Tasers to its force this week, nearly two months after the use of stun guns was halted so that officers could be retrained and updated on new department policies.
“Beginning this week and hopefully completed by next Monday or Tuesday, we will redeploy Tasers to all police zones,” police Cmdr. Dan Hartwig said Monday night, adding that officers will be able to choose whether or not to use them.”
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Well, I guess this confirms the idea that the removal of tasers was a red herring. Gotta love a good “policy review!”
“A federal appeals court says three Seattle police officers were justified when they used a stun gun on a pregnant mother who refused to sign a traffic ticket.
Malaika Brooks was driving her son to school in 2004 when she was stopped for doing 32 mph in a school zone. Rather than give her the ticket and let her go on her way, the officers arrested her. They used a Taser three times when she refused to get out of her car.”
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Needless to say, this isn’t good news.
“The parents of a schizophrenic man who died after a confrontation at a San Jose hospital during which he struggled with Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies and was stunned with a Taser by a Campbell police officer have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit.
The death of 26-year-old Edwin Rodriguez in December 2008 at Valley Medical Center was the result of “excessive, unnecessary and inappropriate force” on someone suffering from paranoid delusions, said the suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose.”
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The use of tasers to attack people who are delusional or suffering from a breakdown is insidious and terrible. One more reason why we’re against tasers.
“One-third of shootings by San Francisco police over a five-year period might have been avoided had officers been equipped with less-lethal options such as Tasers, a police study suggests.
…
The study focuses on the 15 shootings by San Francisco police officers from 2005 through August 2009 involving serious injury or death. Eight of the targets were killed, and seven were wounded.
In all but one of the confrontations, Tabak said, the suspects were too close for police to use nonlethal bean-bag rounds, which are fired from a shotgun.
None of the shootings violated department policy on use of force, the report said. But a number of them, Tabak concluded, could have ended differently if officers had ‘a viable alternative to the use of deadly force.’”
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First, the answer to police shooting people in cases where they need not employ deadly force (i.e., in cases where they are not in immanent and serious peril) is NOT more weaponry. Why not try fewer police, less confrontation, more de-escalation, appropriate social service responses (including preventative physical, psychological, and social health care), etc? Indeed, the fact that cops are shooting people in cases where non-lethal responses are adequate means that they are systematically using excessive force. Why should the people trust an organization that has already demonstrated its inability to use some weapons responsibly with further weaponry?
Second, tasers are LETHAL.
Finally, the article mentions the issue of mental illness (somehow forgets about the issues of race and poverty… GO FIGURE!). Mental illness played a role in 4/15 killings — by now let’s just drop the pretension and call them MURDERS. In Berkeley, we’ve been dealing with this issue a lot lately. That is, cops are not psychologists and they are not an appropriate response to someone in the midst of a psychotic episode. They don’t have the training, and the training that they do have (not to mention their machismo) emphasizes tactics of command, control, escalation, fear, power, and manipulation — in general the opposite of what people who are having mental health crises need. Cops should not be mental health first responders!
“In what is being heralded as a landmark decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently declared that police officers could be held liable for using a Taser without proper cause. And in making their determination, the court also set new legal parameters on how law enforcement is to use Tasers, stating, “The objective facts must indicate that the suspect poses an immediate threat to the officer or a member of the public.” The federal finding substantially changes the landscape of Taser usage, and may signal the end of Tasers for law enforcement agencies who are now more vulnerable to civil and criminal action then ever before.
The decision, which has already caused law enforcement agencies to re-evaluate their Taser policies, stems from a case involving a Coronado police officer, Brian McPherson, who tased unarmed 21-year-old Carl Bryan during a traffic stop for a seatbelt infraction in Southern California. After being pulled over, Bryan was standing outside of his vehicle, wearing only boxer shorts and tennis shoes. He was 20 to 25 feet from the officer, and when tased, fell face first to the ground, fractured four teeth, and had to get the Taser prongs removed with a scalpel. Bryan went on to sue the Coronado Police Department, and the federal appellate court was making a determination if McPherson had immunity to the lawsuit as an officer. The court ruled in favor of Bryan.”
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Not everything we need, but a step in the right direction. Again, tasers are deadly weapons. Period.
“Here’s what happened. In June, Cardall, 32, was returning to Arizona after visiting Utah when he experienced a manic episode brought on by his bipolar disorder. He pulled his car to the side of the road, got out, removed his clothes, and began flagging down vehicles on State Road 59 outside Hurricane.
Cardall’s wife gave him medication, called the police, informed the dispatcher of her husband’s psychotic condition and the fact that it would take a while for the medicine to take effect. But Cardall ran out of time.
Just 42 seconds after Hurricane Chief of Police Lynn Excell and officer Ken Thompson arrived at the scene, Thompson claims, a confused Cardall, who refused to get on the ground as ordered, stepped toward the officers. Thompson fired his Taser, striking a naked and unarmed Cardall in the chest over the heart. When the Flagstaff resident attempted to rise, Thompson gave him a second jolt. Within minutes, Cardall was dead, one of about 350 Americans to die after a Taser deployment since 2001.”
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Seriously, how many times does this have to happen before we get a nationwide ban? Why does it seem reasonable to anyone to shoot unarmed people (particularly disabled or mentally handicapped people) with anything?
“Gregory Williams, 40, a double-leg amputee, spent six days in jail on suspicion of domestic violence and resisting arrest after the Sept. 11 incident. Merced County District Attorney Larry Morse II said there wasn’t enough evidence to file charges, however.”
“Williams says he was publicly humiliated after his pants fell down during the incident. The officers allegedly left him outdoors in daylight, handcuffed on the pavement, nude below the waist. Williams said the arrest also left him with an injured shoulder, limiting his mobility in his wheelchair.”
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According to the report, the two cops are still on duty. It’s worth remarking: He was an unarmed, wheel-chair bound man. What physical threat could he have posed to the cops? Tasers must go!