Ex-cop may be charged in case of man Tasered to death

Started by Rhapsody, July 23, 2008, 09:40:08 AM

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Rhapsody

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/22/taser.death/index.html

To sum up: Black man arrested on cocaine charges, Tasered by the arresting officer SIX TIMES in three minutes, including while he was handcuffed and on the ground.  A seventh charge is administered a bit later, man likely dies from it.  No physical responses were witnessed from his body was they shoot him with the Taser twice more.  Police pass it off as "due force", claiming the man must have had something happen to his body which caused him to go into "cardiac arrest or whatever."

Note: The area/county/town is rife with corruption, including a current police chief who was a convicted drug offender pardoned by the former Louisiana governor who is himself now serving a federal term for racketeering.

What the hell, man?
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Abuse of Power. Nothing more to it. Racism too...still rife in the South.

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Trieste

So much wrong with that situation.

What the hell was he doing with a partner who was physically unable to assist? Mister Triple Bypass should have been behind a desk until he was recovered enough to do his job properly.

It's difficult to pass any judgement on an officer in the course of his job, because unless you're there, you often don't quite know what the situtation was and what the officer felt was acceptable force... but the fact that he may have already been dead through not one but two hits ... my first thought is that the body does some very strange things when it's shutting down, and maybe they took twitching to death under 50,000 volts as an attack. Irresponsible... inexcusable... ludicrous.

I'm not very articulate when I'm horrified. :P

I did notice they got Baden in on this, though... The man is a legend in the field of forensics; he is what all little MEs want to be when they grow up. Baden's involvement meants either a) a lot of money is being thrown around for consult fees or b) it was interesting enough to catch Baden's pro bono interest. Either way, that speaks for the intricacy of it, which makes CNN's inquiries as to why it took so long sort of shrill.

ShrowdedPoet

I agree with Trieste, cops have a hard dangerous job.  You can't really say one way or the other unless you're there and people like to exagerate things to make cops look bad most of the time.  And the body does do some strange things when dieing and he was on coke right?  That could have also made him do some weird things. 
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Rhapsody

#4
Quote from: ShrowdedPoet on July 23, 2008, 10:14:40 AM
I agree with Trieste, cops have a hard dangerous job.  You can't really say one way or the other unless you're there and people like to exagerate things to make cops look bad most of the time.  And the body does do some strange things when dieing and he was on coke right?  That could have also made him do some weird things. 

The autopsy didn't turn up any sign of that:

QuoteCurry said Pikes told officers he suffered from asthma and had been using PCP and crack cocaine. But Williams said he found no sign of drug use in the autopsy, and no record of asthma in Pikes' medical history.

Nine taser uses, three of them in six minutes when a man is on the ground and handcuffed, seems a little excessive to me.  I wasn't there, so yeah. I can't say.  But you have the suspect in the back seat of the car in front of the police station. Why would you taser him in the chest for the seventh time before you haul him out to taser him twice more? Because he's making cracks about you? Because you're afraid you can't get him into the station by yourself?  Cop cars have radios, and there was an entire police department full of cops who he could have called for help.

Cops do have a hard, dangerous job, but this cop made himself look absolutely horrifying without any help from the press.
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Trieste

Yeah, no, he wasn't on any drugs... that's the first thing I looked for, because between coke and PCP, the officer may well have been justified in tasing him repeatedly in three minutes. Drugs're bad, mmkay? 'Specially for cops.

But drugs like that also do bad things to the heart, and what the flying hell was he doing tasing someone directly on the chest? You don't introduce voltage to the heart if you can avoid it, and according to the story (which may or may not be correct, since I don't trust third-party reporting fully, especially in cases like this) he was on the ground, prone, and cuffed. If you assume he was dragged out onto his back, and you assume they didn't drag him out on his stomach, roll him over, and then tase him, a leg would still have been a safer bet. It would have kept you away from a possible headbutt or teeth. I would be interested to hear his excuse for hitting the chest, as basic electrode safety states, again, that you do not introduce voltage to the heart, and the only excuse I can think of for doing so would be a rush attack... not because the perp didn't get up quick enough.

Note that it's the cop's boss that is claiming they thought he was on drugs. Given the allegations of corruption, that smells like CYA to me - especially since the bossman is possibly responsible for putting this guy on the road with a physically restricted partner. That's another thing I can't get over - why would you do that? Why would you send a cop out with another cop who has physical restrictions due to recent bypass surgery? Why? That's just asking for trouble!

*grumbles, settles down, and tries to disengage rant mode*

ZK

If the man was on PCP, they'd have to shoot him, not taser him. I've seen videos of a guy on PCP get tasered and he shrugged it off as if it was a bee sting. But, it sounds a little fishy, to me. It sounds like the cop was a sick fuck who wanted to kill a man.

I live in the South and see a lot of racism on all fronts. But, I've also seen cruelty like this from the police. I live in Georgia, we have that sort of fucked up things all the time here, it just ends up becoming buried with all the other news, it's almost a daily basis.
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This kind of stuff still surprises people? Man, I thought people knew how real the world was.

If you think that's bad, read this article and THEN tell me how bad you think things are these days:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7373172.stm
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