The New Mexico State Medical Investigator concluded that Saenz’s breathing abilities were “markedly impaired” when, after extensive tasering, he was placed face down in the back of a patrol car with his legs shackled and bent behind him and a police officer sitting on his lower back. Dr. Jeffrey S. Nine also found high levels of cocaine and the presence of marijuana in Saenz’s bloodstream after he died in the early morning hours of Nov. 18, 2007.

The autopsy found multiple abrasions on Saenz’s neck and chest, a broken rib, and a puncture wound on the left side of his abdomen believed to be related to the shocking — a metal Taser tip was discovered beneath his skin. The physical restraint and position of his body impaired Saenz’s breathing ability, heightened the effect of the drugs in his system and contributed significantly to his death, the report concluded.

Raton Police Chief Vince Mares declined to discuss specifics of the case, but confirmed that the officer who sat on Saenz’s back remains on administrative leave. It is unknown whether criminal charges would be filed. A call to the Eighth Judicial District Attorney in Raton wasn’t returned.

It’s remarkable that the Investigator managed to ignore the potential effects of repeated, prolonged, taser shock from multiple weapons that was, even by the standards of Taser International, excessive. The irregularities surrounding this case stink of a whitewash.

• Police claimed they tasered Jesse once. He was tasered 23 times by two officers over a period of five minutes.
• The investigation was turned over to the NM State Police but the autopsy report was released by the office of the State Medical Investigator.
• The State Police were unaware of the report prior to its release and unsure of how it would impact their investigation.
• Both officers claim their Tasers malfunctioned. Taser International has not released a statement about the alleged simultaneous malfunctions.

It will be interesting to see whether the Raton Police stick to their story about Taser malfunction, and how Taser International responds to that claim.

This is old news (the homicide happened in April of 2006 and was ruled justifiable in February of 2007) but demonstrates how tasers have become law enforcement’s option of first response, even against people who are absolutely no threat to officers.

Delafield called police to her house and confronted them with knives and a hammer from the confinement of her motorized wheelchair. Police knew of her mental health issues; they had been at her house 28 times in the past. Officers Barbara Luedtke and James Acres decided to use tasers instead of batons or pepper spray on Delafield despite the fact that she had a limited range of motion and was on oxygen due to her medical condition.

After a 13-minute standoff Delafield raised the knife and Luedtke fired her taser. She told investigators she recycled the weapon up to four times when the shock did not appear to have an effect. Acres tased Delafield two minutes later after Luedtke’s shocks appeared not to be having an effect. Examination of the two weapons shows Luedtke’s was fired nine times and Acres’ once for a total of 121 seconds. Delafield collapsed several minutes after being shocked and died after she was taken to Orange Park Medical Center.

Associate Medical Examiner Valerie Rao, who performed the autopsy, called Delafield’s death a homicide and said the taser shocks were a contributing but “very small factor.” She described Delafield, who was obese and had an enlarged heart, as on a “precipice” health-wise, and said the shocks could have impacted her breathing.

The State Attorney’s Office report said the use of tasers was justified. Ryan Delafield, 35, the executor of Emily Marie’s estate, became frustrated after waiting three months for a death certificate and hired Jacksonville attorney Rick Alexander to investigate the case.

Police arrested Dean Martin Fontenelle at a Roswell hotel. Investigators said Fontenelle used the stun gun to overpower the 23 year old woman and get into her home. He then bound her wrists and ankles with duct tape and raped her. Afterwards, police said, he put the woman in the trunk of a car and drove around for several hours before he let her go.

Officer George Gordon said Fontenelle had a handgun during the time he was driving around with his captive. He is charged with rape, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and kidnapping.

The market is saturated with stun guns and tasers and they’re powerful weapons for intimidation. See an earlier post about taser and stun gun crime here.

Patrick claimed the Taser gun left permanent marks on his back, shoulder and chest. Witnesses testified at the original trial that they saw Spitzer tase Patrick multiple times, even after he was handcuffed. One bystander told the jury that every time Patrick cried out or screamed, Spitzer would hit him with the Taser gun. Troopers and the Attorney General’s office declined interviews on last week’s settlement, except to say that it “was not an admission of wrongdoing or liability on the part of the state or Trooper Spitzer.”

Between this and settlements for two separate incidents, Spitzer has cost the state nearly $700,000. Mr. Patrick’s attorney David Henderson wonders why he’s still a trooper. “The troopers, they keep paying out this money but they deny he’s ever done anything improper. The last time we did his deposition, he said after the $85,000 settlement, he was promoted into Anchorage into the undercover unit.” In Alaska, official wrongdoing earns a promotion.

Don’t expect the situation to improve. Despite the verdict and Spitzer’s record, troopers stand by him. According to their statement at the time, Spitzer acted professionally and reasonably in taking Patrick into custody, “which he did without injury to Mr. Patrick or to others.” There’s a racial angle here, too- Mr. Patrick is a Yupik person, and the original Bethel jury was all Native, a jury of peers. In a classic case of blaming the victim, made easier, no doubt, by the racial divide, one blogger published the following last February. Can you detect a slight bias in these remarks?

“I worked with Trooper Spitzer… for well over a year. I can say without reservation that he is one of the best law enforcement officers I have ever met. Consummately professional, incredibly driven, he represents the finest in Alaska law enforcement. This case illustrates the difficulty in enforcing the law in areas traditionally unreceptive to law enforcement. The settlement recognizes the futility in attempting a fair resolution with an accurate portrayal of the facts; it simply would not occur in Bethel.”

Thank goodness that Trooper Spitzer and his consummately professional, incredibly driven colleagues have the finest of modern Tasers to help them take up the white man’s burden.

Rian Wittman agreed to a plea bargain. The sentence was imposed Friday. The child’s mother first saw marks she at first believed to be a rash on the boy in January 2007. After a second incident in February, doctors at Samaritan Albany General Hospital found numerous wounds conforming to the stun gun’s electrode pattern.

In November of 2006 a man from Somerset, Pennsylvania, shocked his infant daughter with a stun gun repeatedly over a period of several weeks. Brandon Alan Austill, 21, was charged with six counts of aggravated assault and eight counts of reckless endangerment. The baby’s injuries- not all from the stun gun- included a broken left tibia, broken left ulna, broken left femur, face fractures and two skull fractures. In July of 2007 he was sentenced to 7 to 30 years in prison.

In November of 1994 a woman from Peoria, IL, killed her 7-month-old nephew with a stun gun in an effort to stop his crying. Francine Knox, 37, also the foster mother of the baby Brandon Jordan, used the stun gun repeatedly to silence the child as he cried through the night. She was convicted in June of 1995.

None of these weapons were tasers. They were stun guns with electrodes that must be pressed against the victim’s skin to deliver a shock, the same way a taser is used in drive-stun mode. These sad incidents are the consequence of the proliferation of electric weapons. Sick people used them on infants and toddlers as helpless as handcuffed detainees tasered by zealous cops.

The Chico Enterprise Record reports that intrepid Glenn County sheriff’s deputy Cale Smith chased Omar Herrada Rivera on foot after he dropped the bicycle. After a half-block chase and several warnings that he would use the Taser, he did.

Sgt. Scott James said only one probe struck Mr. Rivera, so he received no shock. James said bold deputy Smith was fully justified in firing his Taser, because Rivera was running toward a home, and could have endangered people inside. “We consider the Taser as being at the same level of force as other weapons, including pepper spray and batons,” James said.

Rivera wasn’t tased for anything he had done, but solely for precrime considerations; he was tased for something he might do. Scofflaws in Hamilton City, beware- you’re at risk of tasering for a parking ticket you might get, or the possibility that you will spit on the sidewalk. The deputy seems to be flirting with profiling. Maybe you’re safe if you’re white- maybe California precrime statutes apply only to Latinos.

Officers Gerard Kraly and Lukas Laeuricia tasered Shawn three times using the same barbs their first shot embedded in his back: once while asleep, once after he jumped to his feet and identified himself verbally, and a third time after they examined his ID and he again identified himself as the legal resident. They then handcuffed him and threw him in the back of their car while cops from six neighboring boroughs searched his home. I haven’t seen a published count of officers, but at one or two per response, that’s 14 cops versus one law-abiding black man.

Mr. Hicks claims he was never advised of his rights and was refused medical attention. He was kept in a holding cell until 5:00 AM, then released without charges. He walked ten minutes to the nearest hospital. He filed a police complaint shortly thereafter. Once again, we see Law Enforcement’s Four Step Response:

Step One: Manage Perceptions. Police Chief Henry Wiehagen said the officers would not comment, but he disputed Hicks’ version of events. Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr., who works for the same legal system that spawned the trigger-happy cops, determined that the officers did not commit a crime in their treatment of Hicks. The FBI also reviewed the case and determined Hicks’ civil rights were not violated, a spokesman said.

Step Two: Deny Wrongdoing, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. “Our police just don’t go to the scene and Tase somebody,” he said. Yes, they did. He also is quoted as saying, “I’d rather get hit with a Taser than a .40 caliber.” Can it be that he believes those are the only two options available when fourteen cops jump one sleeping man?

Step Three: Blame the Victim. Chief Wiehagen also said officers found a small amount of marijuana on Hicks, but opted not to file charges because they didn’t want to bog down the court system. Or expose themselves to scrutiny, I suppose.

Step Four: Walk away whistling and hope for the best. The North Braddock police department originally referred inquiries to the borough solicitor, John Bacharach, but he declined to give the officers’ side of the story. “I know about the incident,” he said “I don’t want to comment because I am not confident enough in the facts to say one way or the other.” He promised that “the matter will be investigated.”

This story has received enough national attention that it will be tough to hide. Shawn Hicks is high-profile, a staff member at the African-American Chamber of Commerce of Western Pennsylvania. Once again two cops have set up taxpayers for a huge expense, thanks to the use and abuse of Tasers.

The term appears in an article in the Columbus Dispatch describing the 2006 death of Briant Parks after being set upon by three officers, one of whom tasered him twice. A second tasered him eight times for a period of 45 seconds. There were no drugs or alcohol in his system. An investigation by the division’s critical-incident response team, made up of veteran homicide detectives, found that the officers acted within division policy. A Franklin County grand jury cleared them of criminal wrongdoing. The system works.

Excited delirium is a catch-all term invented by cops, coroners, and taser salesmen to refer to the state you’re in when you’ve been terrified, chased, tackled, beat up, sat on, electroshocked, and die in police custody. The condition can’t be found in an autopsy. It’s solely an operational definition for what you die from if you die after you’ve been tasered. Without witnesses, only the police can describe what happened, and civil liberties groups fear the diagnosis is used to cover up police abuse and prevent lawsuits from cutting into taser manufacturer’s profits.

Both NPR and Wikipedia report this statement by Eric Balaban of the American Civil Liberties Union: “I know of no reputable medical organization — certainly not the AMA [American Medical Association] or the APA [American Psychological Association] — that recognizes excited delirium as a medical or mental-health condition.” Balaban charges that police use the diagnosis “as a means of white-washing what may be excessive use of force and inappropriate use of control techniques by officers during an arrest.”

Next time you’re tasered, don’t get excited, don’t get delirious- you might kill yourself despite the peace officers’ best efforts on your behalf.

Police like tasers. Tasers intimidate, incapacitate, and force compliant behavior without a lot of physical effort and without always causing death. Criminals like them for exactly the same reasons. I’ve wondered aloud how long it would be before we learned of tasers used by someone other than law enforcement or military for these purposes.

I guess I haven’t been paying much attention. Here’s a short list I found with a very quick web search using the phrase “taser crime”. It’s important to note whether these crimes involve Tasers or mere stun guns. News outlets are careful to note the difference.

• Taser Robbery at Tavern 30 January 2006 (Iowa City, IA)
• Stun Gun Home Invasion 12 January 2007 (Merrick, NY)
• Taser Home Invasion 6 February 2007 (La Jolla, CA)
• Stun Gun Robbery, theft of i-Phone 15 October 2007 (El Cajon, CA)
• Taser Robbery at ATM 11 November 2007 (Murietta, CA)
• Stun Gun Rape 10 December 2007 (Alpharetta, GA)
• Taser Tourist Robbery 14 December 2007 (Saipan)
• Taser Tourist Robbery 12 January 2008 (Saipan)

None of the reports include descriptions of criminals tasering a victim repeatedly, or for a prolonged period of time. Maybe they’re too goal oriented to waste time making their victims squirm, scream and dance. Maybe they don’t get off on it the way some cops seem to. Maybe they just haven’t learned those tricks from the police, or from YouTube, yet. I have found no news of a taser being used in organized crime, drug deals, gang violence, rape, or kidnapping. Be patient; with the proliferation of police tasers and the introduction of toy “lady tasers” perfect for personalizing with added bling, there are more and more tasers on the street every day.

“The Taser is a single shot weapon.” It is not. The barbs are discharged from a single-use canister, but once the darts are embedded, the shooter can shock the victim continuously and repeatedly until the weapon’s charge is exhausted. The used canister can be quickly exchanged for a fresh one and the weapon can be fired again. The default discharge period built into the gun is five seconds, but it is not uncommon for police to deliver multiple shocks lasting more than a minute. The taser can also be used in “drive stun” mode by pressing it against exposed flesh and delivering shocks at will.

“The normal reaction of a person exposed to the discharge of the taser is the loss of some voluntary muscle control resulting in the subject falling to the ground or freezing on the spot.” This is not true. Tasering causes complete and instantaneous loss of voluntary and some involuntary muscle control. The victim falls to the ground unable to break his fall, at risk of concussion and fracture. Records include cases of these injuries. Victims report inability to breathe. Psychological and emotional responses include disorientation, loss of sense of time, panic, and humiliation.

“The barbs are intended to attach to the skin or clothing…” Not true. They are designed and intended to pierce flesh and embed themselves deeply and firmly enough that you cannot quickly pull them free by hand or by rolling your body to tug on their attached wires. Strikes on clothing have little impact. Penetration of the skin is required for the full debilitating effect of electroshock. The barbs are aluminum projectiles equipped with 1 or 2cm needles barbed like a large fish hook and can require surgical removal.

“…on the torso and/or lower limbs.” Not true. Barbs stick where they strike you; the shooter may aim at thighs or torso but records include strikes in the eyes, groin, genitals, head, neck, hands, feet, and breasts. Even giving officers the benefit of the doubt the weapon’s accuracy is inferior and decreases with distance. They’re used in scuffles, not aimed by marksmen.

“Taser will not be used as a compliance tool or in public order situations.” They always are, eventually. Tasers are touted as an alternative to lethal force but soon become the first option to compel obedience. Firearms produce great bleeding holes and a corpse, difficult to hide or explain away. Tasers can be less damaging and ignored by a sleeping public as they are used more and more frequently, finally not only against felons but women, children, the mentally ill, the blind, and the deaf. One would think, given Ireland’s history, that the People would be more wary.

Hugh Orde stalled the release of the final Assessment to suit his schedule and meanwhile released the tasers against the wishes of the Policing Board. Taking a lesson from law enforcement in the United States, he intends to do as he wants when he wants to do it. He knows that once the PSNI has tasers in hand they will be used by as many officers of whatever qualification as they like, however they wish to use them. Unless the Assessment is printed on soft, absorbent paper it is unlikely to be of any use to the People of Ireland, North or South.