Unnecessary Police Force and the Use of Tasers

In Denver in July 2011, Alonzo Ashley was killed by the Denver Police. He was at the Denver Zoo, and he was struggling with heat exhaustion, so he put his head in a water fountain to cool off. He was acting weird (as anyone with heat exhaustion will), and when the police told him to take his head out of the fountain, he did not. They raised their voices; he raised his voice right back. The Denver Police used tazers on Alonzo to “subdue” him. While he laid on the ground, he began convulsing and stopped breathing. He died in police handcuffs. He died because he was trying to cool himself down on a hot day at the zoo.

544 Taser-Related Deaths in the United States Since 2001

August 23, 2013

Electronic Village Blogspot - Today we added 76-year old Zheng Diao (St. Louis Park, MN) as the 191st taser-related death in America since 2009. [NOTE: the full list is shown below].   Mr. Diao is the 2nd nursing home senior citizen electrocuted to death by the police with taser guns over the past few weeks.

According to Amnesty International, between 2001 and 2008, 351 people in the United States died after being shocked by police Tasers. Our blog has documented another 193 taser-related deaths in the United States in 2009-2013. That means there have been 544 documented taser-related deaths in America.

This blog has been pointing out incidents of police taser torture for quite awhile. The work done over the past few years by Patti Gillman and Cameron Ward continue to be the inspiration for our work. Gillman and Ward documented over 805 taser-related deaths in North America on their blog.

I wonder if anyone cares about the rising use of the taser as a lethal weapon?  At least we know that the Department of Justice cares.  They issued a report about the pattern of abuse against the mentally ill in Portland that included the frequent, unnecessary use of Tasers.   Recent deaths have begun to reignite the debate on taser torture.

On the other hand, I think that something is wrong in America when the police electrocute folks on a WEEKLY basis with their taser arsenal ... and the public is mute in its response. Cops are so liberal with their use of the taser that a blind man isn't safe! Sometimes it takes a lawsuit ... like the one recently settled in Ohio ... to get the police to cool it.  The police in Cincinnati, Ohio took the hint ... they changed their taser policy!

I encourage you to use our COMMENTS ('Post a Comment') option at the bottom of this blog post to let us know what you think about these weekly taser-related killings.

Tased to Death?

August 13, 2013

US News - Caught by Miami Beach police for spraying paint, an 18-year-old took a Taser shot to the chest and died—one of 500 such deaths since 2001. Winston Ross on the ‘nonlethal’ weapon of ‘first resort.’ Israel Hernandez-Llach was armed with a can of spray paint. He was 18 years old, 5 feet 6, 150 pounds. He was spraying the letter “R” at 5 a.m. on a shuttered McDonald’s in Miami Beach, Florida, and when the cops pulled up, he bolted. Now he’s dead.

The burgeoning artist was known throughout the community and in some circles across the country. A police report obtained by the Miami Herald  indicates that the teenager led officers on a zigzag chase to avoid capture, skirting through buildings and up and down alleys. When finally cornered a block away, Hernandez-Llach bolted straight at the officers, at which point Officer Jorge Mercado deployed a Taser. It struck Hernandez-Llach in the chest. An hour later, he was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

To some activists and residents in Miami and beyond, the artist’s death is a tragic reminder of excessive force at the hands of local police, bringing back memories of a 2011 incident when a man pulled over for driving erratically wound up dead after six officers fired 100 bullets into his car, injuring multiple bystanders. Others say at issue is the improper and excessive use of the Taser itself. Amnesty International says that since 2001 more than 500 people have been killed in the U.S. after being shocked by a Taser. Of those, more than 60 were listed by medical examiners as being directly attributable to the device; others had a cause of death unknown.

Amnesty says Tasers have become tools of the lazy cop who wants a suspect down in an instant, a tool that police have been told so often is “nonlethal” that they have come to use it without much regard for why they’re firing it or where they’re aiming.

The problem, said Suzanne Trimel, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International, is that police have come to rely on Tasers as a “weapon of first resort.”

“They were introduced as a nonlethal equivalent of firearms, but more and more they’re used when firearms wouldn’t even be justified,” she said.

Steve Tuttle, a spokesman for the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Taser Inc., dismissed that criticism in an interview with The Daily Beast. The vast majority of Taser deployments don’t result in any injury, he said, adding that the same can’t be said of other tools at an officer’s disposal—the nightstick, the clenched fist, pepper spray, or revolver.

“This means we’ve gotten away from beating somebody into submission,” Tuttle said. But the device isn’t a “magic bullet,” he added. “Is it the right tool for every situation? It sure isn’t.”

What has organizations like Amnesty International calling for a moratorium on police use of Tasers is the scarcity of training for officers nationwide and lack of uniform protocol about how and when to use them.
The Miami Beach Police Department protocol for use of the M-26 Taser, for example, requires officers to use it only “in an arrest situation when a subject fails to comply with verbal commands and [emphasis theirs] physically resists efforts to effect an arrest, or to debilitate a subject to prevent serious injury to others.” Taser use isn’t warranted for “passive physical resistance or a single act of verbal non-compliance.”

The policy prohibits using a Taser if flammable gases or liquids are nearby, or if it could trigger a fall from an elevated location or into deep water. Also banned are Taser use on a pregnant woman, young children, or the elderly, “unless deadly force is justified.” The policy says nothing about avoiding the chest.

That element is critical, said Douglas Zipes, a cardiologist at Indiana University whose research has linked Taser deaths to cardiac arrest.

“The whole concept is so concretely established in what we already know,” he said.

Tasers fired at the chest can operate in the same way doctors sometimes stimulate a lagging heart via a procedure called cutaneous pacing. The difference with a Taser, though, is that it delivers jolts to the heart at a rate of 1,100 times per minute, versus the 70 to 80 involved in pacing, says Zipes.

What Zipes said he finds remarkable is that anyone disputes that idea. While Tuttle acknowledged that Taser Inc. recommends avoiding the chest “when possible,” he also added that “it’s not a ‘shall not.’” Asked why that recommendation exists, he cited “a theory several years ago out there that shots to the chest may have some cardiac implications. We put this out in a warning. Like any good company, we’ve got to be concerned about litigious behavior.”

In other words, it’s not that Tasers cause heart attacks. It’s just that the company doesn’t want to get sued if someone has a heart attack after being Tased.

But that litigation threat—and the filing of multiple lawsuits in the wake of Taser-related deaths—has begun to have an effect in the law enforcement community, said Chuck Drago, a former police chief and law enforcement consultant in Florida.

“In the beginning, with any amount of resistance you could use a Taser,” he said. “That’s why you heard about cases where the officer says, ‘You’re under arrest,’ and somebody goes, ‘You can’t arrest me!’ and bam. They’d hit him with a Taser. That’s a lot less likely to happen today.”

Now police have begun using the Taser only as a response to physical violence. The International Association of Chiefs of Police has issued guidelines that suggest Tasers should be used not just in the case of a person running from police but when a person is “either using physical force or it appears to be imminent,” Drago said. “Departments are toning it back, as they realize the Taser may not be as innocent a weapon as it was broadcast to be in the beginning.”

Some departments have banned officers from using Tasers altogether, although Tuttle contended that in most of those cases, the Tasers returned after the agency took the time to study the issue and retrain the force.
What’s needed now is much more training and education, argued Zipes, who said he is not against the use of the Taser by police. Lesson No. 1, he said: “Avoid the chest. If that were implemented in Miami, this youngster would not have died.”

Editor's Note: Tasers fired at the chest don't act like defibrillators. An earlier version of this story incorrectly said they did. Also, more than 500 people have died in the U.S. since 2011 after being shocked by a Taser, according to Amnesty International. Of these, more than 60 were attributed by medical examiners directly to Tasers. An earlier version said all these deaths were caused by Tasers.

Miami Taser death: Are police relying too much on stun guns?

A young graffiti artist in Miami Beach, Fla., died last week after police shot him with a Taser, reigniting a debate about whether police are using Tasers more than they need to. 

August 11, 2013

What to Israel Hernandez-Bandera was "an act of barbarism" and an "assassination of a young artist and photographer" was, to many police departments nationwide, a common response to a mounting threat.

On Tuesday, Mr. Hernandez-Bandera's son, Israel Hernandez-Llach, died after being shot by Taser stun gun. According to police accounts, Mr. Hernandez-Llach was spray-painting an abandoned McDonald's and ran away when confronted, failing to heed officers' commands.

At a time when police departments say offenders are becoming more violent and officer injuries are on the rise, Tasers have become an invaluable tool, allowing officers to subdue suspects without deadly force. But critics say police have become too enamored of them, and they point to the incident in Miami Beach, Fla., as evidence that the use of electroshock weapons is too often replacing caution and common sense.

Most police departments do not publish data on Taser incidents, as they do on incidents that involve firearms. But statistics and police statements suggest Taser use is on the rise. A 2012 study by The Chicago Tribune found that Chicago police were involved in 197 Taser incidents in 2009. By 2011, the department was on a pace to hit 857 incidents.

In eight other cities across Illinois, the story was similar, with Taser use doubling overt the same time period. In Austin, Texas, police Taser use also doubled between 2009 and 2011, according to a 2012 Austin American-Statesman report.

The trend is "societal," Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo told the paper. "Lots of economic frustrations, lack of respect for authority. It's a byproduct of what is happening in our country."

In laying out its policy on Tasers, police in the small town of Norway, Maine, laid out the argument made by departments nationwide:

"The law enforcement community has experienced a rise in the assaults on officers. Offenders have become more violent and officer injuries have risen throughout the United States," the police department paper said.

But Tasers are not always safe, critics say. A 2012 study by Amnesty International found that 500 people had died from being shot by police with Tasers since 2001.

For the most part, the debate is not primarily about using Tasers to subdue violent offenders. Rather, Amnesty targets the practice of using Tasers on nonviolent suspects, too.

"Of the hundreds who have died following police use of Tasers in the USA, dozens and possibly scores of deaths can be traced to unnecessary force being used," said Susan Lee, Americas program director at Amnesty International, in the study. "This is unacceptable, and stricter guidelines for their use are now imperative."

In Miami Beach, police are conducting an investigation into the death of 18-year-old Hernandez-Llach. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, an independent state agency, will review the report, though it can only make recommendations.

But the family has questioned why Tasers were needed to subdue a graffiti artist.

A police spokesman told The New York Times Friday that "no crime has been committed here" and that there was "definitely no gross negligence" on the part of the officer who fired the Taser. The officer, Jorge Mercado, has been put on paid administrative leave, but could be restored any time the police chief decides, according to the Times.