Post by WaTcHeR on Jun 1, 2006 13:35:05 GMT -5
Tasers have been billed as a non-lethal alternative in police enforcement. But why are some cops abusing them?
06.01.2006 - The latest Taser scandal hit Connecticut three weeks ago, when East Windsor police officer John Scavotto was arrested for shooting a fellow officer with one of the widely used electroshock guns.
Scavotto was at a police station when he apparently tested the weapon without its darts, saw that it was working, attached a cartridge containing the darts and reportedly shot again, hitting fellow officer Arkadiusz Petlik, an arrest warrant said. The Taser darts hit Petlik´s cheek and gums and a microphone cord near his neck, and he yelled in pain as he reached to shut off the current, the warrant alleges, according to the Hartford Courant .
Tasers are used by police to subdue aggressive suspects by delivering 50,000 volts of electricity via darts attached to a wire that are shot from the weapon, or by direct contact. The electric shocks paralyze or ¨stun¨ victims for a few seconds giving police time to get dangerous situations under control.
When Officer Petlik was shot by Scavotto, he suffered ¨significant¨ injuries and was sent to Hartford Hospital, police said. East Windsor´s chief, Edward J. DeMarco Jr., reacted sharply, arresting Scavotto despite his claim that the gun´s safety had been on when he fired.
¨The actions of Officer Scavotto, the removal of the Taser from its holster, the direct pointing of the Taser at the face of Officer Petlik, the removal of the safety of the Taser, and the subsequent depressing of the trigger, were without question, done in a deliberate and willful manner,¨ the warrant said, ¨without regard to the safety of Officer Petlik and with extreme indifference to human life.¨
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Though it may have been a stupid accident, the East Windsor shooting wasn´t a unique occurrence. For example, a similar incident allegedly occurred in Manchester in November, when a police officer was accused of accidentally shooting a man with a non-energized Taser dart inside a store that sells law enforcement products, causing the man to bleed for 15 to 20 minutes.
The incidents bear the increasingly familiar hallmarks of the incaution associated with Taser misuse around the country.
To put it simply: would Scavotto have tested his pistol by firing it at another officer´s face, even if he thought the safety was on? Certainly not, unless he was prepared to murder his colleague.
The relative safety of so-called ¨less lethal¨ weapons like the Taser, along with other weapons like beanbag rounds and pepper spray, has encouraged the growth of a new category of offensive police action. Not only are Tasers associated with a rising number of deaths -- more than 150 in the U.S. in the last five years, according to Amnesty International -- but accounts of officers using the weapons against non-aggressive people or without any justification at all are also turning up.
While even critics of the Taser agree that it is a useful alternative to a firearm, the device appears to be giving an outlet to the carelessness and dark side of those entrusted with its use. ¨When you look at how Tasers have been used, you see time after time that it´s used not as a genuine alternative to shooting someone, but just to get compliance,¨ said Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast regional director of Amnesty International USA, which tracks Taser misuse and fatalities.
The East Windsor incident ¨shows what a cavalier attitude people have about Tasers. They treat it like a toy. It delivers 50,000 volts of electricity. It´s not a toy.¨
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When a Taser is fired, compressed nitrogen propels two dart-tipped wires up to 25 feet, depending on the model of the weapon, and into the skin of the target person, according to the manufacturer, TASER International.
A battery in the weapon electrifies the wires with 50,000 volts of electricity at a relatively low current of .0036 amperes, causing involuntary muscle contractions and temporary paralysis. With the darts in, an officer can repeatedly shock a person who continues resisting.
The Taser ability to immobilize suspects makes it useful in a variety of situations -- ¨anytime there´s going to be a fight of some sort,¨ said Lt. Paul Melanson, the training commander at the West Hartford Police Department.
¨We have used it several times on suicidal people,¨ Melanson said. ¨We had a guy who had stabbed himself in the neck one time and was about to do a second swing with the knife. He was Tasered and he froze up. If they didn´t have the Taser, he´d probably be dead.¨
In situations where an officer may be attacked, he can Taser an aggressor before the person gets close enough to grab the officer´s gun, Melanson said. West Hartford only started using the devices a year ago, but the notoriety of Tasers is already making them a useful tool, even when they´re not fired.
¨What we´re finding is that, the more that we use it, when individuals see the officer has a Taser, you know what? They don´t want to fight anymore,¨ he said. ¨It has that benefit.¨
Melanson has studied the Taser track record and he argues, along with manufacturer Taser International, that the devices are almost never cited as official causes of deaths, though he acknowledges they are often listed as contributing factors.
He said he´s also familiar with videos on the Internet showing non-aggressive people being Tasered by police. He mentioned one video of an elderly woman being Tasered while sitting down; another much-circulated clip shows an officer shocking a young woman while she lies on the ground, surrounded by police.
¨It all comes back to training and review,¨ Melanson said. ¨No matter what there is out there, there is a potential abuse for any type of equipment.¨
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The growing ranks of people who have been shot under questionable circumstances include Jeffrey Stephens of Stonington, who was Tasered in a Pittsburgh parking garage last year when he was told he was under arrest for leaving his dog in his truck.
According to an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , police said Stephens, age 30 at the time, began to ¨argue and yell¨ and moved away from an officer when asked to place his hands behind his back. His attorney, Michael O´Day, said the subsequent Tasering caused his client ¨incredible and intense pain.¨ The charges were dropped when the officers did not show up in court, O´Day said.
Another suspect Tasering, shown in a video on the website of the Palm Beach Post, shows two officers in Boynton Beach, Florida, stopping a woman for alleged traffic violations in August 2004 and then Tasering her when she refuses to stop talking on her cell phone and get out of the car.
The woman supposedly tried to slap at one of the officers, but the slap isn´t visible on the videotape. Much of the video consists of her lying on the asphalt and wailing in shock after being Tasered.
Neither the officers nor the suspects appear to have been in any danger of physical harm. Rather, the officers appear to have stunned the suspects a quick and easy process that typically leaves the target with no lasting injury as an alternative to calming them down and negotiating an arrest.
O´Day, a former prosecutor, said he respects police for doing an often difficult job, but he also thinks some officers can´t handle the responsibility that comes with carrying what amounts to a portable torture device. ¨It takes a certain type of person to be a police officer -- the aggressive type -- otherwise you get run over. That type of personality breeds the possibility of misuse,¨ he said.
¨Every kid gets Christmas presents, right? And you want to see what your toys can do. What the Taser does, more than anything else, it gives these guys something to do, and something to look at,¨ O´Day said. ¨It´s an easy way to kind of put a bug under a magnifying glass.¨
After Tasering Jeffrey Stephens, one of the Pittsburgh cops allegedly taunted him, saying something like, ¨How´d you like that?,¨ according to O´Day, who is suing the city in civil court. ¨I think this [officer] did it just to see what it would do to him,¨ O´Day said.
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In the Pittsburgh and Boynton Beach cases, the police could at least argue that they´d repeatedly asked a resistant suspect to submit to arrest. Such borderline cases are common.
In another such example, which garnered media attention in Los Angeles last year, an officer Tasered a 78-year-old man who was apparently resisting arrest. On a video of the incident, the man did not appear to be threatening anyone, but witnesses said he was acting ¨crazy¨ and cursing before he was Tasered, according to an article in the Daily Breeze newspaper.
But then there are the cases where the police officer really has little or no defense.
Last year, a police officer in Orlando Florida, Peter Linnenkamp, Tasered a hospitalized drug suspect who refused to give a urine sample or consent to a catheter, the Orlando Sentinel reported. The suspect´s arms and legs were tied to a hospital gurney at the time. A supervisor initially OKed the Tasering, but after the newspaper published a story about the incident the officer was charged with battery.
And in yet another Florida case, a deputy sheriff in the Pensacola area, Charles Dix, pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges earlier this year in connection with a Taser incident. His department had been sued by two people who said Dix Tasered them after they tried to cooperate with law enforcement or emergency personnel, the Pensacola News Journal reported.
In a 2003 incident, an emergency worker reportedly asked a man to stay in his car with his pregnant wife after an accident, and when police ordered him out of the car and the man argued, Dix allegedly Tasered him. Then Dix turned to a group of witnesses and yelled, ¨Does anybody else want some?,¨ according a lawsuit filed by the victim.
In a 2004 incident that led to the federal indictment, Dix was reportedly hostile toward a woman who was trying to report child abuse, and she used her cell phone to call dispatchers. Dix allegedly lunged at her and then shot her in the back with the Taser, according to news reports.
In one of the most blatant examples of electroshock misuse, in 2004 a police officer in Middletown, Ohio used her Taser on a homicide suspect to allegedly get even with him for attacking a sheriff´s deputy during an escape attempt, the local newspaper reported. Officer Kathy Jones, a 14-year police veteran, was fired after an internal investigation found that she shocked the man without provocation as she was taking him back into the jail, the paper said.
With both Jones and Dix, their bosses seemed at a loss to explain the shootings, other than to fault some inexplicable lapse of judgement. ¨She´s lost her career because she let her emotions get in the way of good professional police work,¨ the chief of Jones´ department said.
It´s as if the opportunity provided by the Taser the newfound ability to engage in an unwarranted, malicious attack, with the reasonable expectation of getting away with it exploited a hidden character trait too deeply rooted for sublimation, even after years of training and experience.
After one of Dix´s shootings was reviewed, a supervisor chose not to record the incident on an evaluation, saying Dix ¨had been through enough,¨ according to the News Journal . Even when a federal indictment in the Tasering of the woman forced his department to reveal Dix´s repeated attacks on civilians, his chief deputy continued to defend him. Dix ¨had a bad incident here,¨ the deputy told the newspaper. ¨Did he make a mistake? Yes, he did. But he was a good officer.¨
06.01.2006 - The latest Taser scandal hit Connecticut three weeks ago, when East Windsor police officer John Scavotto was arrested for shooting a fellow officer with one of the widely used electroshock guns.
Scavotto was at a police station when he apparently tested the weapon without its darts, saw that it was working, attached a cartridge containing the darts and reportedly shot again, hitting fellow officer Arkadiusz Petlik, an arrest warrant said. The Taser darts hit Petlik´s cheek and gums and a microphone cord near his neck, and he yelled in pain as he reached to shut off the current, the warrant alleges, according to the Hartford Courant .
Tasers are used by police to subdue aggressive suspects by delivering 50,000 volts of electricity via darts attached to a wire that are shot from the weapon, or by direct contact. The electric shocks paralyze or ¨stun¨ victims for a few seconds giving police time to get dangerous situations under control.
When Officer Petlik was shot by Scavotto, he suffered ¨significant¨ injuries and was sent to Hartford Hospital, police said. East Windsor´s chief, Edward J. DeMarco Jr., reacted sharply, arresting Scavotto despite his claim that the gun´s safety had been on when he fired.
¨The actions of Officer Scavotto, the removal of the Taser from its holster, the direct pointing of the Taser at the face of Officer Petlik, the removal of the safety of the Taser, and the subsequent depressing of the trigger, were without question, done in a deliberate and willful manner,¨ the warrant said, ¨without regard to the safety of Officer Petlik and with extreme indifference to human life.¨
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Though it may have been a stupid accident, the East Windsor shooting wasn´t a unique occurrence. For example, a similar incident allegedly occurred in Manchester in November, when a police officer was accused of accidentally shooting a man with a non-energized Taser dart inside a store that sells law enforcement products, causing the man to bleed for 15 to 20 minutes.
The incidents bear the increasingly familiar hallmarks of the incaution associated with Taser misuse around the country.
To put it simply: would Scavotto have tested his pistol by firing it at another officer´s face, even if he thought the safety was on? Certainly not, unless he was prepared to murder his colleague.
The relative safety of so-called ¨less lethal¨ weapons like the Taser, along with other weapons like beanbag rounds and pepper spray, has encouraged the growth of a new category of offensive police action. Not only are Tasers associated with a rising number of deaths -- more than 150 in the U.S. in the last five years, according to Amnesty International -- but accounts of officers using the weapons against non-aggressive people or without any justification at all are also turning up.
While even critics of the Taser agree that it is a useful alternative to a firearm, the device appears to be giving an outlet to the carelessness and dark side of those entrusted with its use. ¨When you look at how Tasers have been used, you see time after time that it´s used not as a genuine alternative to shooting someone, but just to get compliance,¨ said Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast regional director of Amnesty International USA, which tracks Taser misuse and fatalities.
The East Windsor incident ¨shows what a cavalier attitude people have about Tasers. They treat it like a toy. It delivers 50,000 volts of electricity. It´s not a toy.¨
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When a Taser is fired, compressed nitrogen propels two dart-tipped wires up to 25 feet, depending on the model of the weapon, and into the skin of the target person, according to the manufacturer, TASER International.
A battery in the weapon electrifies the wires with 50,000 volts of electricity at a relatively low current of .0036 amperes, causing involuntary muscle contractions and temporary paralysis. With the darts in, an officer can repeatedly shock a person who continues resisting.
The Taser ability to immobilize suspects makes it useful in a variety of situations -- ¨anytime there´s going to be a fight of some sort,¨ said Lt. Paul Melanson, the training commander at the West Hartford Police Department.
¨We have used it several times on suicidal people,¨ Melanson said. ¨We had a guy who had stabbed himself in the neck one time and was about to do a second swing with the knife. He was Tasered and he froze up. If they didn´t have the Taser, he´d probably be dead.¨
In situations where an officer may be attacked, he can Taser an aggressor before the person gets close enough to grab the officer´s gun, Melanson said. West Hartford only started using the devices a year ago, but the notoriety of Tasers is already making them a useful tool, even when they´re not fired.
¨What we´re finding is that, the more that we use it, when individuals see the officer has a Taser, you know what? They don´t want to fight anymore,¨ he said. ¨It has that benefit.¨
Melanson has studied the Taser track record and he argues, along with manufacturer Taser International, that the devices are almost never cited as official causes of deaths, though he acknowledges they are often listed as contributing factors.
He said he´s also familiar with videos on the Internet showing non-aggressive people being Tasered by police. He mentioned one video of an elderly woman being Tasered while sitting down; another much-circulated clip shows an officer shocking a young woman while she lies on the ground, surrounded by police.
¨It all comes back to training and review,¨ Melanson said. ¨No matter what there is out there, there is a potential abuse for any type of equipment.¨
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The growing ranks of people who have been shot under questionable circumstances include Jeffrey Stephens of Stonington, who was Tasered in a Pittsburgh parking garage last year when he was told he was under arrest for leaving his dog in his truck.
According to an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , police said Stephens, age 30 at the time, began to ¨argue and yell¨ and moved away from an officer when asked to place his hands behind his back. His attorney, Michael O´Day, said the subsequent Tasering caused his client ¨incredible and intense pain.¨ The charges were dropped when the officers did not show up in court, O´Day said.
Another suspect Tasering, shown in a video on the website of the Palm Beach Post, shows two officers in Boynton Beach, Florida, stopping a woman for alleged traffic violations in August 2004 and then Tasering her when she refuses to stop talking on her cell phone and get out of the car.
The woman supposedly tried to slap at one of the officers, but the slap isn´t visible on the videotape. Much of the video consists of her lying on the asphalt and wailing in shock after being Tasered.
Neither the officers nor the suspects appear to have been in any danger of physical harm. Rather, the officers appear to have stunned the suspects a quick and easy process that typically leaves the target with no lasting injury as an alternative to calming them down and negotiating an arrest.
O´Day, a former prosecutor, said he respects police for doing an often difficult job, but he also thinks some officers can´t handle the responsibility that comes with carrying what amounts to a portable torture device. ¨It takes a certain type of person to be a police officer -- the aggressive type -- otherwise you get run over. That type of personality breeds the possibility of misuse,¨ he said.
¨Every kid gets Christmas presents, right? And you want to see what your toys can do. What the Taser does, more than anything else, it gives these guys something to do, and something to look at,¨ O´Day said. ¨It´s an easy way to kind of put a bug under a magnifying glass.¨
After Tasering Jeffrey Stephens, one of the Pittsburgh cops allegedly taunted him, saying something like, ¨How´d you like that?,¨ according to O´Day, who is suing the city in civil court. ¨I think this [officer] did it just to see what it would do to him,¨ O´Day said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Pittsburgh and Boynton Beach cases, the police could at least argue that they´d repeatedly asked a resistant suspect to submit to arrest. Such borderline cases are common.
In another such example, which garnered media attention in Los Angeles last year, an officer Tasered a 78-year-old man who was apparently resisting arrest. On a video of the incident, the man did not appear to be threatening anyone, but witnesses said he was acting ¨crazy¨ and cursing before he was Tasered, according to an article in the Daily Breeze newspaper.
But then there are the cases where the police officer really has little or no defense.
Last year, a police officer in Orlando Florida, Peter Linnenkamp, Tasered a hospitalized drug suspect who refused to give a urine sample or consent to a catheter, the Orlando Sentinel reported. The suspect´s arms and legs were tied to a hospital gurney at the time. A supervisor initially OKed the Tasering, but after the newspaper published a story about the incident the officer was charged with battery.
And in yet another Florida case, a deputy sheriff in the Pensacola area, Charles Dix, pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges earlier this year in connection with a Taser incident. His department had been sued by two people who said Dix Tasered them after they tried to cooperate with law enforcement or emergency personnel, the Pensacola News Journal reported.
In a 2003 incident, an emergency worker reportedly asked a man to stay in his car with his pregnant wife after an accident, and when police ordered him out of the car and the man argued, Dix allegedly Tasered him. Then Dix turned to a group of witnesses and yelled, ¨Does anybody else want some?,¨ according a lawsuit filed by the victim.
In a 2004 incident that led to the federal indictment, Dix was reportedly hostile toward a woman who was trying to report child abuse, and she used her cell phone to call dispatchers. Dix allegedly lunged at her and then shot her in the back with the Taser, according to news reports.
In one of the most blatant examples of electroshock misuse, in 2004 a police officer in Middletown, Ohio used her Taser on a homicide suspect to allegedly get even with him for attacking a sheriff´s deputy during an escape attempt, the local newspaper reported. Officer Kathy Jones, a 14-year police veteran, was fired after an internal investigation found that she shocked the man without provocation as she was taking him back into the jail, the paper said.
With both Jones and Dix, their bosses seemed at a loss to explain the shootings, other than to fault some inexplicable lapse of judgement. ¨She´s lost her career because she let her emotions get in the way of good professional police work,¨ the chief of Jones´ department said.
It´s as if the opportunity provided by the Taser the newfound ability to engage in an unwarranted, malicious attack, with the reasonable expectation of getting away with it exploited a hidden character trait too deeply rooted for sublimation, even after years of training and experience.
After one of Dix´s shootings was reviewed, a supervisor chose not to record the incident on an evaluation, saying Dix ¨had been through enough,¨ according to the News Journal . Even when a federal indictment in the Tasering of the woman forced his department to reveal Dix´s repeated attacks on civilians, his chief deputy continued to defend him. Dix ¨had a bad incident here,¨ the deputy told the newspaper. ¨Did he make a mistake? Yes, he did. But he was a good officer.¨