The Texas Taser Terror: Coming To A Town Near You

Word to the wise: don’t be a diabetic in Texas and call for an ambulance.

Lester Haines in The Register:

Texas cops taser diabetic seizure man

‘We just took care of him’

By Lester Haines

A Texas man who called 911 to request medical assistance for a diabetic seizure earned a tasering from local cops for his trouble, the Waxahachie Daily Light reports.

Allen Nelms, 52, was suffering said seizure “during the early morning hours of April 28 when his girlfriend, Josie Edwards, called 911 to request paramedics”.

A police officer duly turned up at the house on Waxahachie’s east side, “inquired as to what was going on”, then called for back-up. Shortly after, and as Nelms was “in his bed in the couple’s bedroom”, cops “burst in with their guns drawn and yelling at him to get on the floor”.

Edwards recalled “about six or seven police officers kicked the front door in and stormed the back bedroom where she said she could hear one telling Nelms to get on the floor”. Her statement, which forms part of an written complaint made by Nelms to the Waxahachie police department, says: “Allen was shouting, ‘Please don’t do me like this. I just need help.’ Next thing I heard some ‘zing’ noise and Allen was shouting. I asked what were they doing to him. One policeman replied, ‘We just took care of him.’ … After they did their shooting and laughing, they came out [of] the rooms. The paramedics had to pull out the Tasers.”

Nelms claims he was “struck by Taser barbs on his left side, his back and his shoulder” as he went to roll over, and subsequently handcuffed, with “paramedics intervening when the officers began trying to yank the Taser barbs from his skin”. The paramedics removed the barbs, checked Nelms’ blood sugar level, and the cuffs came off. He was neither arrested nor charged.

They called for medical help and got paramilitaries? WTF?

Nelms has contacted Waxahachie attorney Rodney Ramsey, who told the Daily Light he has “filed notice with the city on Nelms’ behalf to preserve all documentation and evidence relating to the incident”. Ramsey said: “This police department has a bad history of disparate treatment on the east side. They’re not treated fairly. They’re not treated justly. I bet the police wouldn’t kick in a white man’s door on Spring Creek at 4:30am and Taser him three or four times.”

Ah, OK, I see what’s happening here: he was guilty of the crime of existing in Texas while black. Oh well, that’s all right then. As you were, officers:

The Waxahachie police department conducted an internal investigation into the matter, and informed Nelms: “A review regarding your written complaint dated May 3, 2007, was conducted. After careful consideration of your allegations we have found that the officers were within our departmental policies regarding the use of a less than lethal force option (TASER) on you during an event at your residence on April 28, 2007.”

And with that he’s supposed to shut up and just suck it up? Attorney Ramsay isn’t letting this one go, though:

Ramsey declared: “I don’t care if I make a dime on this case. I don’t care if this costs me money. I want to know what policy says you can kick somebody’s door down and Taser them for asking for medical help. This is not going to happen in this town anymore.”

Ramsey added that he “wants the names of the officers involved in the incident and that he will renew his efforts to see a citizens review board of police established in the city of Waxahachie, saying that while the majority of the department’s officers are good officers, there are some whose actions are questionable”.

[…]

Ramsey warned: “They better have everything they have on this. There had better not be one piece of evidence that is shredded in this case.”

More lawyers like this, please.

There’s a screaming need for specialist taser lawyers in Texas if the news is any guide; this sickening incident wasn’t the only tragic Texas taser news this week. Lubbock police also managed to apparently set a man on fire with a taser:

Police investigate fiery death of Texan man struck by their taser gun
Last updated at 12:23pm on 20th June 2007

Police in Texas are investigating whether a Taser stun gun that police used to subdue a man ignited gasoline he had poured over himself.

Juan Flores Lopez, 47, died Tuesday at a hospital in Lubbock, Texas.

Police initially used pepper spray when they tried to take Lopez into custody Monday evening.

Then they used the Taser. Some stun guns emit an electric spark when they deliver the jolt of electricity.

The Texas Rangers were also investigating whether a lighter that was on the porch could have contributed to the fire, Lt Bob Bullock said.

“We don’t know what ignited the fire,” police Lt Curtis Milbourn said.

No one else was injured in the confrontation. It was unclear whether Lopez had been charged with anything.

Two of his sons who live nearby said their father had been threatening for months to burn himself and his house.

His wife was seeking a divorce, and he did not want to have to leave the house, the sons said.

‘Neofascist police state’ is a pretty hackneyed phrase, but sometimes those are the only appropriate ones to use – and Texas appears to be a neofascist police state, if ever there was one.

These are just the latest in a whole slew of cases in which various Texas police departments and sherriffs are alleged to have used tasers as the first line of policing. They’re hardly the only state to do this, but they do seem to be producing the most egregious examples of meatheads using weapons first and asking questions afterwards – with predictably fatal results.

But it’s not just Texas and not just America. It’s a British issue too, UK Indymedia alleges:

A 15-year-old boy has been shot with a Taser gun during a police raid in Moss side Manchester.

Police “”claim”” the teenager began threatening officers during the search of a property on Broadoak Road in Moss Side on Monday the 15 year old child had to have a ambulance called after police appear to have used the Tazer on the unarmed child because he was dis-obeying officers after he became concerned at having the front door smashed in.

And Amnesty International reports:

Amnesty International today (16 October) expressed concern after a man died in County Durham, three days after he was shot with a Taser electro-shock weapon and a baton round. Brian Loan, 47, is believed to be the first person in the UK to die after being shocked with a Taser. A Home Office post-mortem reportedly found that he had died of natural causes.

It doesn’t take a degree in jurisprudence, criminology or psychology to realise that if you give people (and people inclined towards militarism and authoritarianism at that) weapons, tell them they are the less-lethal option and then put those people in stressful situations, that they’ll use them.

If it were just the stupidity, perhaps it could be dealt with by legislation banning the sale and use of the device.

Fat chance.

Taser has made multiple millions from producing and marketing cattle prods for controlling the populace and it’s had the help of many prominent government figures to do so: not least the horribly corrupt Bernie Kerik, (who Bush tried to make director of Homeland Security before his exposure) as have a host of other Republican worthies.

WASHINGTON – Bernard Kerik, President Bush’s choice to run the Homeland Security Department, made $6.2 million by exercising stock options he received from a company that sold stun guns to the department — and seeks more business with it.

Taser International was one of many companies that received consulting advice from Kerik after he left his job as New York City police commissioner in 2001, when he was earning $150,500 a year. Kerik remains on Taser’s board of directors, although the company and the White House said he planned to sever the relationship.

Partnering with former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and also operating independently, Kerik has had business arrangements with manufacturers of prescription drugs, computer software and bulletproof materials, as well as companies selling nuclear power, telephone service, insurance and security advice for Americans working abroad.

Even the UK police have made money from coercive technology:

THE American manufacturer of Taser, the controversial stun gun, gave the exclusive British distribution rights to a senior serving police officer who helped win Home Office approval for the weapon.

Inspector Peter Boatman had a 50% share in a company that sold Tasers at the same time as devising Britain’s first police training programme for the use of weapons.

Boatman was in charge of assessing the merits of Taser as head of operational training for Northamptonshire police and was regarded as an impartial expert on the weapon.

Since he left the force a little more than three years ago, his firm has provided 1,500 Tasers worth about £1m to 20 British police forces. It is the exclusive UK distributor for the US company, Taser International.

Disclosure of the apparent conflict of interest comes after Taser International, the US manufacturer, was accused of providing American police officers with share options potentially worth $1m.

Police repression is a dirty business all right:

Companies House records show that Boatman took a 50% stake in a start-up company, Pro-Tect Systems, in December 2000. He became a director of the firm on December 5 and resigned three weeks later, on December 27, but held on to his stake in the company.

In February 2001, Pro-Tect received the Taser contract for the UK. Within two months Boatman was acting as an adviser to the Home Office on whether to issue Tasers to British officers. He was “regarded as a national and international expert” on Tasers, Chris Fox, the former chief constable of Northamptonshire, said yesterday.

In December 2001, three months after the Home Office approved trial imports, Boatman publicly rebutted claims by Police Federation officers that Tasers could be dangerous. Boatman wrote “with sadness” to Police Review that “this technology is very effective — more than any other technique, device or equipment for establishing control over violent and dangerous subjects”.

He retired from the police on April 16, 2002. Two days later he was installed as chairman of Pro-Tect Systems. His fellow founding director and friend, Kevin Coles, had been running the firm in the meantime.

More…

The development sale and use of coercive technologies for controlling rebeliious civilians is a big business and a dirty business. If this were just an issue of a a few rogue cops acting outside their remit, then the problem could be solved by better training, legislation and codes of practice.

But there is just so much money involved and there’s so many vested interests in the sale and use of these torture gadgets, that their use will only proliferate.

When shooting an innocent man seven times in the head on a tube train while he’s going about his lawful, innocent private business attracts no opprobrium whatsoever for the guilty officers, then I don’t hold out much hope for any redress against an illegal police tasering.

Much more on police taser incidents at Bad Cop. No Donut!