Global Crisis

There is new video of the death of Linwood Lambert.

If police want to have TASERs, which they do and they should, then the people who abuse them have to be held accountable.

When three Virginia police officers put Linwood Lambert in a squad car around 5 a.m. on May 4, 2013, they said they were taking him to the ER for medical attention because he was speaking delusionally. Just over an hour later, Lambert died in police custody.

He was never given medical care, though the officers of South Boston, Va. did drive him to the hospital. He was not initially put under arrest, though the officers ultimately arrested him, shackled his hands and legs, and tased him repeatedly. While in custody he was agitated and ran from the officers. Ambulance workers say police later claimed he fought them at a time when videos show he was actually unconscious. Police dispute that account and deny allegations of excessive force.

Repeated tasers are often the pattern in these deaths. Repeated tasering of a restrained individual may be excessive force. We need better protocols and accountability.

This is pretty much as bad as it gets. It's like a scene from a dystopian novel, as bio-hazard suit clad officers take a schizophrenic woman, one who they have already handcuffed, and tase her to death, killing her as she screams in horror.

Except that it happened.

A mentally ill woman who died after a stun gun was used on her at the Fairfax County jail in February was restrained with handcuffs behind her back, leg shackles and a mask when a sheriff’s deputy shocked her four times, incident reports obtained by The Washington Post show.
Natasha McKenna initially cooperated with deputies, placed her hands through her cell door food slot and agreed to be handcuffed, the reports show. But McKenna, whose deteriorating mental state had caused Fairfax to seek help for her, then began trying to fight her way out of the cuffs, repeatedly screaming, “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me!” the reports show.
Then, six members of the Sheriff’s Emergency Response Team, dressed in white full-body biohazard suits and gas masks, arrived and placed a wildly struggling 130-pound McKenna into full restraints, their reports state. But when McKenna wouldn’t bend her knees so she could be placed into a wheeled restraint chair, a lieutenant delivered four 50,000-volt shocks from the Taser, enabling the other deputies to strap her into the chair, the reports show.

And here's the defense:

Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid declined to comment on the case but defended the use of a stun gun on a restrained prisoner, saying it was “a means that is often useful to ensure the safety of a person” rather than using physical force to gain compliance. She said stun guns were used “occasionally” on prisoners who are already restrained.

I know there are cases in which this is true. However, I'd like to know how often these officers try de-escalation and patience before tasing restrained prisoners into compliance. My guess - almost never.

And experts agree.

Numerous experts said the use of a stun gun on a fully restrained prisoner was an unreasonable use of force, particularly in a jail setting where a person is unlikely to flee. They also said Tasers are not recommended for use on the mentally ill, that even the Taser manufacturer warns against using them on people in a state of “excited delirium,” and that using a stun gun more than three times is thought to be above the threshold for use on a single person.

The piece continues to describe a very troubling series of events that, undoubtedly, presented the officers with many difficult choices. They made the wrong ones.

And here's the meta story - we need a mental heath system that does not place people like McKenna in prisons.

I've been busy researching several new pieces this week so the blogging has been a bit light. That's likely to continue next week as well. Bear with me! Good stuff is coming.

Everybody pay attention to these next two sentences, ok?

The report urges a pilot project to study whether first responders – the front-line officers most likely to encounter people in crisis – should have tasers, which advocates say allow police to gain control of difficult situations without drawing their guns. Currently, only Toronto Police supervisors and tactical officers carry the devices.

However, in treading cautiously on the issue, Mr. Iacobucci recommended that officers who use tasers also be issued monitoring technology such as body-worn cameras. He also urged Toronto Police to advocate for studies on the medical effects of tasers, which detractors warn can be unsafe in certain circumstances, and help create a national database on their use.

There's a lot of good things in the report. The "zero death" goal is excellent, as that, indeed, should be the goal of our police forces.

And TASERs are fine as a tool for the police. U.S. experience shows, though, that when you give cops TASERs, they use them all the time. If you make the ubiquitous in Canada, unless you also build rigorous guidelines and prosecute those who break the guidelines, they will become the low-stakes default, as if shooting something with 40,000 volts of screaming agony isn't serious.

Good luck Canada. I hope you handle this better than we have.

From Digby, we have another example of what I call the cult of compliance.

In Springfield, MO, a panhandler in a Walmart parking lot, Eric David Butts, was confronted by a police officer, Jason Schuck. Butts turned to run away and Schuck drew his weapon and shot him in the back. Later, he claimed that he was reaching for his taser, which may in fact be true. In America, it's normal to send tens of thousands of volts through a non-violent man running away from confrontation.

Here's what Digby says:

Honestly, the shooting in the back is a terrible thing. But from the sound of it it actually was an accident --- the cop was negligent, but it doesn't appear he meant to shoot him. But the fact that nobody questions the officer's decision to taser a mentally ill panhandler who was leaving the scene is even worse. Yes, he had failed to appear in court and had a warrant. So what? He's schizophrenic, known to the cop, and pumping him full of electricity for failing to comply in a situation like this is as cruel as beating him with a nightstick. Unless someone's life is at stake, there's just no excuse for it.

This is the right interpretation of the event. Non-compliance is a justification for violence, whether taser, nightstick, pepper-spray, boot, or gun.

The man had mental illness, and yes, he may have been involved in various kinds of petty non-violent crime, and he was running away. It reminds me of the death of Israel Hernandez, a wonderful artist whose medium, graffiti, did indeed mean he was breaking the law. The police caught him, he ran, they tasered, he died. The local police chief said, "The officers were forced to use the Taser to avoid a physical incident."

Let's be clear. A non-violent suspect of non-violent crimes who is running away is not a threat. The officers are not forced to tase them, but choose to, perhaps even are trained to do so.

We, as a society, have to choose what we value.