CLEVELAND, Tenn. (AP) — The Bradley County sheriff has asked for a federal investigation because an inmate fell into a coma after he was shocked with a Taser by jailers who then couldn’t retrieve the jail video of the incident.
Sheriff Dan Gilley said in a statement that he asked the Justice Department to investigate after questions arose about the Feb. 24 arrest of Christopher Levert McCargo, 42, on a public intoxication charge.
Arrest reports show McCargo told Cleveland police he had been drinking and smoking crack cocaine and marijuana. The Taser manufacturer has warned that its weapons shouldn’t be used on people who may have a drug-induced condition known as excited delirium.
John Wolfe, a Chattanooga attorney acting as a spokesman for McCargo’s family, said Friday that the man is in serious condition at Cleveland Community Hospital.
“He is still comatose,” Wolfe said.
He said family members “have questions with respect to a video of Chris when he was in the jail and how that video was treated.”
Bradley County Chief Deputy Bill Griffith said other video overlapped the sequence that would have shown what happened when officers used the M26 Taser on McCargo by holding it to his body.
Griffith said Friday that McCargo “became combative” at the jail while officers were attempting to book him about 30 minutes after his 5 p.m. arrest.
He said McCargo was shocked “enough to get his attention, to get him seated.”
Griffith said the Taser probes had been removed so its shock was “greatly minimized.” The probes are used when the Taser is fired at a distance but a surface shock can be applied without them.
The chief deputy said McCargo was seen walking around and eating a sandwich up to 31/2 hours after he was shocked. Officers monitoring him on the jail video called emergency medical workers when they later saw him slump and go into a seizure.
Griffith said the video recorder cycle restarted between the time the Taser was used and the seizure started. Officers retrieved tape of him eating the sandwich and going into the seizure but couldn’t get the earlier footage, he said.
The sheriff’s statement said an internal investigation found that the officers followed department policy.
The statement also said there “have been no documented cases of stun devices causing death or serious injury, however, the ingestion of cocaine can certainly bring on all kinds of medical problems and I believe this will be the conclusion of the inquiry into this incident.”
Bonnie O’Malley, a media relations assistant for Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Taser International, Inc., said a bulletin about not using the gun on people with excited delirium was sent last year to “all law enforcement agencies that carry the Tasers.”
O’Malley said she couldn’t determine the exact date it was sent because “they have already wiped out the bulletins.”
Griffith said he was unsure if Bradley County officers received that warning.
“It seems to me that is something they should have known,” Wolfe said.
Nashville authorities have established a new Taser policy in response to the September death of a 21-year-old man shocked 19 times by officers trying to arrest him when he was acting strangely outside a nightclub.
He told police he had been using drugs, and an autopsy showed he died of excited delirium.
The Nashville policy directs that suspects thought to have excited delirium will be restrained by officers until paramedics can administer a shot of tranquilizer. Nashville police got their warning from Taser about excited delirium before that death.
9.20.2007
Inmate fell into a coma after he was shocked with a Taser
9.19.2007
Officer's Taser is used on girl, 9
May 25, 2004:
Officer's Taser is used on girl, 9
09:17 AM MST on Tuesday, May 25, 2004
By C.J. Karamargin / Arizona Daily Star
A veteran South Tucson police sergeant is under investigation for firing his stun gun to subdue a handcuffed 9-year-old girl.
At the request of Chief Sixto Molina, the Pima County Sheriff's Department is trying to determine if the sergeant committed a crime when he sent a jolt through the child's body.
The police officer used a Taser on the girl at about 5:30 p.m. May 8, Molina said. The nonlethal weapon uses a pulsating electrical charge to immobilize a person for several seconds.
"I'll be the first to admit, you've got a veteran sergeant Tasing a 9-year-old girl, it doesn't look good," said Molina.
The sergeant was one of at least two officers who responded to a call from the Arizona Children's Home, a school for special needs children, on South Eighth Avenue, he said.
"It had to do with a runaway from the institution," the chief said. He declined to provide further details.
The school could not be reached for comment late Monday. But Molina said that the facility is the source of frequent calls to his 25-person department.
Molina said one officer initially responded to the call from the school. That officer requested assistance from another officer and specifically asked that the second officer bring a Taser.
He said the girl was handcuffed at the time the weapon was used.
The sergeant who used the hand-held Taser remains on duty. His name is not being released while the investigation is under way.
"It didn't involve an integrity issue," Molina said. "The officer made a decision to do what he thought he needed to do."
Deputy Dawn Barkman, a spokeswoman with the Sheriff's Department, confirmed a review of the incident is under way but said she had no further details.
The results of the probe will be forwarded to the Pima County Attorney's Office.
"They'll have to present it to us to see if any criminal charges are warranted," said County Attorney's Office spokesman Dan Benavides.
Sgt. Dan Snyder, a South Tucson police spokesman, said the investigation could be complete by the end of the week.
Link: Fox 11 Arizona
Wheelchair-Bound Woman Dies After Being Shocked With Taser 10 Times
Wed Sep 19, 9:38 AM ET:
A Clay County woman's family said it's seeking justice after their loved one died shortly after being shocked 10 times with Taser guns during a confrontation with police.
The family of 56-year-old Emily Delafield said it would take the Green Cove Springs Police Department to court, according to a WJXT-TV report.
In April 2006, officers with the police department said they were called to a disturbance at a home in the 400 block of Harrison Street just before 5 p.m.
In a 911 call made to the Green Cove Springs, Delafield can be heard telling a dispatcher that she believed she was in danger:
Dispatcher: And what's the problem?
Delafield: My sister is waiting on my property.
Dispatcher: Your what?
Delafield: My sister (inaudible) is on my property trying to harm me.
Officers said they arrived to find Delafield in a wheelchair, armed with two knives and a hammer. Police said the woman was swinging the weapons at family members and police.
Within an hour of her call to 911, Delafield, a wheelchair-bound woman documented to have mental illness, was dead.
Family attorney Rick Alexander said Delafield's death could have been prevented and that there are four things that jump out at him about the case.
"One, she's in a wheelchair. Two, she's schizophrenic. Three, they're using a Taser on a person that's in a wheelchair, and then four is that they tasered her 10 times for a period of like two minutes," Alexander said.
According to a police report, one of the officers used her Taser gun nine times for a total of 160 seconds and the other officer discharged his Taser gun once for a total of no more than five seconds.
A medical examiner found Delafield died from hypertensive heart disease and cited the Taser gun shock as a contributing factor, the report said. On her death certificate, the medical examiner ruled Delafield's death a homicide.
The family said it plans to sue the Green Coves Springs Police Department now that it has all the reports regarding their loved one's death.
"We're going to try to compensate the estate and the family and try to get justice," Alexander said.
He said he believes the evidence weighs heavily in favor of Delafield's family and that justice will be served.
"I think that this evidence is going to show, along with some of the evidence we've collected outside of here, that there is no reason Emily Delafield should have died that day," Alexander said.
He said he plans to file a notice to sue sometime before the end of the year.
Link
TASER Device Saves Suicidal Woman's Life
May 30, 2007:
According to reports from the Times Colonist in Victoria, Canada, a distraught woman found by police cutting her legs with shards of glass was subdued by a TASER electronic control device. Link