When Mom is arrested, assault by Tazer, and other stories

Having just returned from a brief if much-needed vacation, let's round up a few items that popped up in the last week while Grits was gone:

What happens to kids when Mom is arrested?
The Dallas Morning News published an excellent feature on what happens to kids when Mom gets arrested. Nobody tracks them in the system and neither police or jails ask arrestees about dependent children upon intake. The article included this short video:


Litigation over weather-related deaths at TDCJ heats up
After years of anticipation, TDCJ finds itself in trial this week to determine whether their un-air conditioned prisons which have caused numerous heat-related deaths constitute unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.

Straight ticket voting ends for Texas judges in 2020
The Legislature this year eliminated straight ticket voting for judicial elections beginning in 2020. This should help, but the SA Express News is right it would be better if they were entirely non-partisan. There aren't Democratic or Republican positions on most questions judges must answer and forcing them to pander to their parties primary voters leads to some strange outcomes, like the guy in 2016 who made it into a runoff for the Court of Criminal Appeals running on an anti-abortion, pro-Second Amendment platform unrelated to the duties of the court.

Good legislation still didn't 'end' debtors prison practices
Grits remains exceedingly pleased that Texas' debtors-prison reform legislation (HB 351/SB 1913) passed this year, but to my friends in the MSM: Let's please stop claiming that this will "end" debtors prison practices. It will at best ameliorate them. Texas has improved the situation. It has not solved the problem. People will still be jailed because they can't afford to pay traffic tickets, we just don't know yet what the reduction in jail sentences will be. For that matter, barring intervention by the federal courts, Texas will continue its pay-or-stay bail practices, which in Grits' view also constitute "debtors prison" policies.

Are bodycams effective even with terrible public policies?
A big debate over bodycams is coming and it's going to be a mess. The rollout in Texas came with terrible legislation by Democratic state Sen. Royce West making it secret in many instances and difficult to get in all others, even though dashcam video from police cars has been effectively governed by the Public Information Act with no negative consequences. In practice, bodycams are used far more often to accuse defendants than to hold officers accountable. Indeed, Texas law says officers can view the video with their lawyers before talking to their supervisors about what happened when they're accused of misconduct so that they can craft their story to fit the facts. Criminal defendants, of course, would never be afforded such a privilege. And yet, police officers knowing their actions are being recorded still appears to be having an effect. A new study from the Urban Institute found that people expressed greater satisfaction in encounters with officers who wore body cameras, even when they were unaware of the cameras! So is it worth it despite the one-sided secrecy? Maybe, with caveats. But the secrecy still sucks.

When does Tazing become assault?
An Austin police officer was given a 20-day suspension for Tazing a suspect after the man was handcuffed and not resisting. The officer will undergo a psychological assessment and be placed on probation for a year. A question for the peanut gallery: Is there any good reason why the officer should not have been charged with assault in addition to the department's administrative punishment?

Will more training get Houston lawyers to take indigent criminal cases?
The South Texas College of Law in Houston received a fat $1.27 million grant to train local criminal defense lawyers. From Texas Lawyer:

The school said that in 2016, 451 attorneys accepted about 70,000 indigent appointments of counsel in the district and county courts in Harris County. The top 10 percent of these attorneys accepted indigent court appointments for more than 375 cases each over the course of the year. A report issued by the Texas Indigent Defense Commission in January 2015, "Guidelines for Indigent Defense Caseloads," suggests an indigent defender's annual caseload should be closer to between 77 and 236 cases, depending on the level of offenses handled. 

To join Harris County's list for indigent appointments in criminal court, an attorney must have at least four years of practice experience in criminal law, with at least four felony jury trials acting as lead attorney, that are tried all the way to verdict, the school said. The experience requirements have led to the creation of an exclusive list of older attorneys, with younger one disillusioned with the process, the school said. "Clearly, the system is broken," said [Catherine Greene Burnett, vice president, associate dean and professor of law at the school], noting that the Harris County Public Defender's Office can only reasonably handle about 9 percent of indigent cases.

Advocate: Police bodycam prices all over the map, Austin about to overpay

Longtime grassroots advocate Debbie Russell cc'd me on an email to the Austin City Council about the cost of bodycams the city is proposing to purchase from Taser International. The council postponed the decision to consider beefing up the APD policy governing camera use. But Debbie remains focused on the economics of the decision. Here's an excerpt from her letter:

I've been researching what Taser charged other cities for body cams, and we are NOT getting a good deal--in fact, with the additional phones -- I still can't believe this is the best solution: I bet Panasonic's app will work on their current phones (has anyone asked?) -- we are getting seriously ripped off.

The contract comes out to $7,177 per camera. WOW. Ft. Worth paid $3,333 per camera on their 2013 contract; and $6,750 per camera on their 2014 contract (tech prices are supposed to go DOWN, not up - as well as storage - which is built into all the contracts).  San Antonio paid $4,260 per camera. Dallas: $3,700. New Orleans paid $3,333 per camera. Taser's proposal to Houston was for $475 per camera - although they turned it down and went with a more expensive vendor ... 

Taser proposed a $57.6 million contract to Los Angeles for 7000 bodycams; putting it at $8,228 per camera. Negotiations shut down in April of this year because of the sticker shock. It was found that the chief there had ties to Taser (as did the Ft. Worth chief) - reminiscent of days when such ties were exposed when chiefs where selling city councils on the "amazing/must-have" Tasers.

So if we're getting another 2 week delay to work on the policy portion--I hope you'll also use that time to also find out why APD thinks Taser, Int. is so special (other than their 2 full-time lobbyists living in Austin to wine and dine them); why the other 9 vendors were turned down/what their prices were and why the heck we aren't considering going with the state data storage solution - which will save us tons of money. 

In a followup email, Russell noted the Austin City Council has also suggested outfitting officers with smart phones what would work in conduit with the bodycam equipment and Taser's evidence-storage services, calculating that, "if you add in the $5,029,200 for the phones, it actually comes to $10,135 per camera/system." Yowza! Good job, Debbie.

Check out the website from Open Austin promoting an opt-in process for making police bodycam footage public.

'I'm physically disabled" ... Zap!

Last week, Grits published video of a man tazed because he would not get up. Here is one of a man Tazed because he would/could not get down. James Sizer dropped like a stone when Austin PD officer Martha Cameron zapped him. He died a week later from the blow to the head sustained when he hit the concrete.

Sizer had fired a gun into the ground in his backyard and threatened a family member - he did not sound like a particularly pleasant or sympathetic person - but he put the weapon away before officers came and told the 911 operator he would meet officers in the driveway unarmed, which he did.

Amanda Woog forwarded me this detail from the APD death-in-custody narrative reported to the Attorney General, which was unusually tardy as such things go:

On March 6, 2015, Sizer called 911 and stated he discharged his firearm at his residence and threatened to shoot his son.  When officers arrived, Sizer refused to comply with officers' orders to get on the ground.  A Taser was deployed and Sizer struck his head when he fell on the driveway.  After receiving treatment at the hospital that night he was booked in to jail on March 7, 2015, for Discharge of Firearm in Certain Municipalities.  On March 9, 2015, Sizer was released from jail after posting bond.

On March 14, 2015, Sizer was found deceased at his residence.  On May 8, 2015, the Travis County Medical Examiners Office finalized the autopsy results and ruled the death a Homicide; citing complications of blunt force trauma to the head and listed a contributing factor of acute and chronic ethanol abuse.

See an offense report and autopsy results. The Statesman offered brief coverage when the officers were cleared by the grand jury and when the family filed suit.

MORE: There's no record either officer was disciplined for the event, even though the Statesman reported that the "arrest affidavit made no mention of Sizer indicating he had a disability and says Cameron believed he could be armed, despite not seeing a weapon in his hands." One wonders if the department has been reticent to punish the two officers because of the risk of successful civil litigation?

AND MORE: According to his obituary, Sizer was a 20-year US Air Force veteran. No word whether his disability related to his service.

What does an Austin cop have to do to get charged with official oppression? (Hint: More than tazing a confused, supine homeless man)

While it's true that a small percentage of police officers are responsible for a disproportionate amount of misconduct, it's also true that, before video cameras proliferated in the last 10 years or so, such misconduct was both common as dirt and just as commonly ignored. Now, with the rise of dashcams, bodycams, ubiquitous surveillance and personal cell phone cameras, police misconduct can be harder to conceal.

Take the example of Austin PD rookie Ofc. Christopher Van Buren, suspended for his failure to determine the "objective reasonableness," or lack thereof, of force he used against a homeless man sitting on the ground. Van Buren tazed the guy within just a few seconds of getting out of his car and confronting him, because the fellow, who was reclining under a tree, didn't follow orders quickly enough.

The Statesman ran short items when the officer received a 90 day suspension and when a grand jury declined to indict him for anything, and the Chronicle covered his suspension, but neither chose to publish the video. See APD's suspension memorandum, which contains more detail than the news accounts.

The missus asked for and received video of the incident under the Public Information Act and it tells quite a story. Meanwhile, thanks to the generosity of Grits' contributors, I recently acquired some video editing software and have begun teaching myself the basics. So here's another example of what police misconduct looks like in Austin -- harsh enough to warrant a 3-month suspension without pay, but still not, apparently, rising to level of "official oppression." Watch for yourself and judge:

What does qualify as "official oppression" if that does not? If criminal laws don't forbid such an obvious abuse of power, what's the point of having official oppression charges on the books?

Regardless, video is crucial. If this fellow showed up in court without it and alleged this sequence of events had occurred, in the face of two police officers saying otherwise, he might well have been handed additional charges for filing false reports, etc.. But seeing is believing. And it's hard to justify what you see on that video.

Looking forward, dreaming big: Bodycams are TASER's loss leader

Taser International, the middling military and police contractor most famous for its eponymous product, has big dreams: to supply equipment and services to every single police officer in America and abroad. Beyond just stun-gun tech, they plan to hold and manage data from body cameras and charge cities for the service. Austin gave Taser a boost toward that goal last week with the announcement that Taser will supply APD officers with body cameras.

The company's 10-K report for 2015 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this month lays out their vision in some detail.

According to the company, "approximately one out of every fifty eligible law enforcement officers carries a TASER CEW [a Taser-brand stun gun]." However, they continued, "Our goal is to have our CEWs be standard issue equipment for all domestic and international law agencies."

Meanwhile, the company's fastest growing business is body cameras and camera data services. "We are building out our Axon platform with body cameras and video management, which are driving rapid growth and market penetration today. However, the real opportunity is to leverage this connected platform to enable a broad suite of mobile, wearable, and data management capabilities to bring modern information technology capabilities to every law enforcement officer." According to the financials, Taser's sales grew 12% last year, but their body camera and data segment grew by 88%.

In a footnote, the company frankly admits its data-business model: sell cameras cheap as a loss-leader and make their money long-term on the data contracts. (For background, Axon is Taser's body camera brand and Evidence.com is their back-end site managing data from the cameras.) As they explained, in the footnote:

Evidence.com, Axon cameras and related accessories are sometimes sold separately, but in most instances are sold together. In these instances, customers typically purchase and pay for the equipment and one year of Evidence.com in advance. Additional years of service are generally billed annually over a specified service term, which has typically ranged from one to five years. Axon equipment represents a deliverable that is provided to the customer at the time of sale, while Evidence.com services are provided over the specified term of the contract. ... At times the Company subsidizes the cost of Axon devices provided to customers to secure long-term Evidence.com service contracts.

The Legislature authorized $10 million for matching grants to purchase body cameras, but I don't know if anybody considered whether or not that money is supposed to pay for back-end data storage as well. The state Department of Information resources is developing a service departments can use for a fee of around $50 per officer per month, their COO told a legislative committee last week.

At least for a while, Taser may be able to get around such problems where police agencies use asset forfeiture money to buy stun guns or body cameras. But critics from both sides of the aisle may be mucking up that revenue source, too. Taser admits in its 10-K that, "Changes in civil forfeiture laws may affect our customers’ ability to purchase our products."

Meanwhile, Grits thoroughly enjoyed TASER's remarkably long list of "forward looking statements," each of which is "qualified by important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those reflected by the forward-looking statements." In other words, some or all of Taser's claims on the following topics about Tasers, body cams and data services may not be true -- the jury is still out:

• the benefits of our CEW [stun guns] products compared to other lethal and less-lethal alternatives;
• the benefits of our Axon products compared to our competitors';
• our ability to maintain secure and consistent customer data access and storage, including the use of third party data storage providers, and the impact of a loss of customer data, a breach of security or an extended outage;
• that the complaint filed by Digital Ally [related to unfair trade practices including bribing public officials] is frivolous;
• that Axon Fleet will ship during fiscal 2016

So, just some small stuff they aren't quite as sure about as they would like! There's a lot more.

Finally, going through their 10-K, Grits noticed a few angles some intrepid reporter or activist may find useful as a followup. If you research them, let me know:

If anyone wanted to research TASER's foreign sales, the company "must obtain export licenses from the Department of Commerce for all shipments to foreign countries other than Canada." They mentioned that "Most of our requests for export licenses have been granted," but it'd be particularly interesting to examine the license requests that were denied.

There was also a reference to risks related to possible changes in regulations that probably few reformers have ever considered: "We rely on the opinions of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, including the determination that a device that has projectiles propelled by the release of compressed gas in place of the expanding gases from ignited gunpowder, are not classified as firearms. Changes in statutes, regulations, and interpretation outside of our control may result in our products being classified or reclassified as firearms." The City of Austin recently, it should be noted, adopted "a new policy that would treat Taser stun guns as a more serious weapon capable of inflicting harm and subject its use by city police officers to greater scrutiny each time the guns are fired," so how to categorize Taser weapons remains an active, open issue on which departments differ.

In addition, the company's "consumer products are regulated by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission." And their 10-K mentioned that "our private citizen market could be substantially reduced if consumers are required to obtain a registration to own a firearm prior to purchasing our products."

For more background on Taser and its eight board-of-directors members, which includes a former Governor of Montana and a young tech entrepreneur who founded Code.org, see the company's most recent proxy statement.

RELATED:  Taser's business model on bodycams. ALSO: The federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals recently found that police officers "could lose on-the-job immunity from civil lawsuits if they use a Taser to shock suspects in the face of nonviolent resistance," reported the Baltimore Sun (3/26). The suit alleges that "police are too often turning to Tasers before exhausting other options." WHILE I HAVE YOU: From today's McAllen Monitor: "Edinburg man says police used Taser on genitals." Ouch!

City councilman tased for contempt of cop

When Tasers were first introduced, proponents pitched them as an alternative to deadly force. In practice, though, use of deadly force by police remained prevalent and instead law enforcement tends to use Tasers to gain compliance, as evidenced last week by the tasing of a Prairie View city councilman. The councilman approached police who were questioning three of his friends outside his home. He was "not combative" and backed away from the immediate scene when told, but did not go as far away as the officer wanted. Before he was tased, he repeatedly declared "I live here," asking "What's the issue? What did I do?" He was arrested for interfering with public duties and resisting arrest.

Viewing the video, this had nothing to do with officer safety, the councilman was tased and arrested for "contempt of cop."

Reported the New York Times, "Taser International, the manufacturer of the electrical weapons, said in May that more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies had purchased the devices, which are used about 900 times a day."

Taser's business model on police body cams

Grits observed earlier this month that the most successful wearable tech businesses so far have been in the corrections industry - e.g., police body cams, GPS trackers, and alcohol monitors - and dominated by a few companies narrowly focused on law enforcement tech. I'd argued that in the wearables market, "The more significant profit potential comes when you can find ongoing, real-world uses for wearable-generated data." So I was interested to see a recent New York Times piece ("Police cameras can shed light but raise privacy concerns," Aug. 20) describing Taser International's services and fee schedule for its (relatively) new police body cam service:

In 2012, Taser began selling its most advanced body camera, the Axon Flex, which can be clipped to an officer’s sunglasses, hat, helmet or epaulets. The Flex, which sells for $599 a unit, captures a wide-angle view that is close to what an officer sees while on patrol. Other cameras, including those made by Vievu, Taser’s largest competitor, clip to an officer’s shirt or belt. Because on-body cameras also capture high-fidelity audio, watching their videos offers a strangely intimate view of police work, as if you’re playing a video game.

Throughout an officer’s shift, Taser’s camera is constantly recording what it sees. But most of its images are kept in a 30-second buffer, after which they’re discarded. The unit begins saving longer segments of video — and begins capturing audio — only when an officer double-taps a control switch.

The 30-second buffer is a way of allowing officers to essentially record events that began in the past. “Say the officer sees someone run a red light — obviously the officer didn’t know that was going to happen,” Mr. Smith said. “But once he starts recording, we go back and grab that 30 seconds before that.”

The buffer includes just video, not audio, which is saved after the officer hits Record. The video-only buffer is meant to protect officers’ privacy.

Taser’s Axon cameras are paired with the company’s online storage service, Evidence.com, for which police departments pay a monthly fee of $15 to $55 per officer, depending on how much storage space they use.

At the end of each shift, an officer plugs the camera into a charging dock, and all videos are uploaded to Evidence.com. Police departments determine how long videos are retained; often retention times are related to the statute of limitations for the episodes the videos depict. Departments also set policies on who can watch the videos, and Evidence.com keeps an audit trail of all views.

Here's an example of what I was talking about: Not only is Taser charging a substantial sum for the camera itself, the per-officer fee generates ongoing revenue over time. Most corrections oriented "wearables" share that trait, which is why I think we'll continue to see greater market growth there in the near term than in the much-more ballyhooed wearable-tech fashion field. Many wearable apps struggle to find useful things or interesting things to do with data they generate, while corrections folks know what to do with data about their subjects - whether it's video, their location, blood-alcohol levels, etc. - and exhibit a voracious appetite for it.

In related news, Houston police chief Charles McLelland asked city hall this week "for $8 million to equip 3,500 police officers over three years with small body cameras to record encounters between law enforcement and residents as a way of improving accountability and transparency," reported the Houston Chronicle (Aug. 28). HPD had piloted the idea with 100 officers and now wants to take it department-wide.

Capt. Mike Skillern, who heads HPD's gang unit and is involved in testing the cameras, said his fellow officers act "a little more professionally" when wearing the devices.

A recent Cambridge University study of the small police department in Rialto, Calif. reported a more than 50 percent reduction of use of force incidents with officers wearing cameras and an 89 percent decline in the number of complaints against officers during the yearlong trial. 

See also a recent blog post from Paul Cassell at the Volokh Conspiracy favoring police body cams and a report published this year (pdf) sponsored by the US Department of Justice assessing research so far on their use in the field. (It concludes with a call for more research, finding that "Most of the claims made by advocates and critics of the technology remain untested.") MORE: From Ars Technica.

Austin PD arrest, use of force rates much higher than comparably sized towns

The Statesman on Sunday published a lengthy feature with several interesting sidebars related to use of force by Austin PD officers, which has increased in frequency over the last three years even as the number of arrests declined.

• Austin police department's use of force climbing
• Citizen videotaping adds force to the debate
• A week's worth of police force
• Use of force when subjects are under influence of alcohol or drugs

The number of arrests "dropped 15 percent between 2009 and 2011," reported the paper, from around 69,000 to under 59,000, while the number of use of force incidents increased. The result, as depicted in the graph on the right, is that the percentage of arrests involving use of force has increased.

By contrast, reported the paper, "In Portland, Ore., police use of force incidents have plunged steeply in recent years. In Sacramento, Calif., the number of such incidents by police has remained steady the past three years. In Charlotte, N.C., Seattle and Fort Worth, incidents of force use by police have either stayed steady or dropped."

Indeed, Austin's high use of force rates appear to be an outlier compared to similarly sized cities. "In 2011, with a population roughly comparable to Austin, Fort Worth’s police department reported 288 uses of force; Sacramento showed 216 and Charlotte had 471. Austin police reported nearly 1,700 incidents over the same period." As is typical, a small number of officers accounted for a disproportionate share of use of force incidents:

the paper’s review showed a handful of Austin police officers consistently use force at a rate considerably higher than most. Officers who used force between 2009 and 2011 filed an average of three such reports per year.

But 21 Austin police officers each reported using force 40 or more times in the past 3½ years. Six of the officers had single years during which they reported 30 or more force incidents; one filed 71 use of force reports from the beginning of 2009 to mid-2012. Each worked primarily in the entertainment district.

So if 21 (out of 1,718 sworn) officers used force 40 or more times, that's (at least) 840 out of roughly 4,600 incidents, or 1.2% of officers accounting for around one in five use of force incidents. In 2011, according to the paper, 165 officers, nearly 10% of sworn members of the department, used force six or more times. The majority of APD officers filed no use of force reports that year at all.

Another anomaly that one expert said could raise a "red flag": "Of the 4,600 subjects who had force used against them by Austin police since 2009, 699 — about 1 in 7 — weren’t subsequently arrested."

Taser use accounts for a significant proportion of the increase: "While police use of stun guns is up 80 percent since 2009, officers’ use of batons, pepper spray and dogs have remained relatively steady. Together, the weapons are used in about one-third of all force incidents."

The feature story also included an interesting tidbit related to eye-poppingly high numbers of arrests by Austin PD compared to similarly sized cities.

Austin police report arresting people far more often than officers in similarly sized cities. In Portland, police make about 30,000 arrests every year; Fort Worth’s officers arrest about 38,000 annually, Charlotte about 27,000.

Last year, by comparison, Austin police reported nearly 59,000 arrests — 160 every day. In 2009, the number was 69,000.

Put another way, Austin arrests equal about 7.5 percent of its total population — double the ratio in Charlotte and 50 percent higher than in Portland and Sacramento. The rate is higher even than Dallas’s 5.9 percent.

A subset of those arrests are of frequent flyers, but then that's true in the other towns as well. I was aware APD made many more DWI arrests based on unsubstantiated charges than other Texas jurisdictions, but I'm surprised the overall arrest numbers are that much higher than elsewhere. APD files about 7,000 DWI cases per year, the Statesman reported in 2011, with roughly 30% of them dismissed compared to less than 5% in Fort Worth. APD also makes around 6,000 public intoxication arrests each year, said the paper, which former District Attorney candidate Mindy Montford said is improperly used as "a crowd control technique." (There was no information in the report regarding how many of those cases are dismissed.) "Citywide, the number of intoxicated subjects on whom officers used force doubled between 2009 and 2011."

These data in general raise more questions than they answer: Why does APD arrest Austinites at greater rates than other jurisdictions? Why have arrest numbers declined even as the population grew? How does the ratio of arrests to dismissals compare to those other jurisdictions? Why has the proportion of use of force incidents increased and why is it so much higher than other, comparable jurisdictions? Are drunks becoming  more aggressive or has departmental culture about how to handle them changed? Are Tasers being used in episodes (like this one) where the suspect posed no threat? These data invite speculation on such questions but cannot supply answers. They're certainly interesting questions, though.

$2 million settlement in Cowtown Taser-death case

Reports the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

The city of Fort Worth has offered a record $2 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of a man who was killed with a Taser during a confrontation with police last year.

The City Council is scheduled to vote on the settlement Tuesday, according to an agenda posted online Friday.

It's the biggest lawsuit settlement Fort Worth has ever offered in a case involving death or injury, Assistant City Attorney Gerald Pruitt said.

The city paid $750,000 to the families of four people who drowned in the Water Gardens in 2004, but that case was in state court, where there's a limit on damages that plaintiffs can win from a government entity.

"This is a civil-rights case; there's no cap," Pruitt said. The city is not admitting liability.

Brian Eberstein, an attorney for the slain man's family, said the size of the settlement shows that the city understands it has a problem.

In this case, the officer who fired the Taser said she forgot to take her finger off the trigger, shocking the suspect for 49 straight seconds, then 5 second more after that. In police jargon that's known as "riding the lightning" and it's tantamount to torture, though in this deadly case it was supposedly inadvertent. As was the case with a 72-year old great-grandma tazed by a deputy constable in Austin, the officer in this case tased the suspect essentially because he dared her to do so: "An investigation showed that Jacobs was unarmed and did not strike any of the officers. When one of the officers warned him that he would be Tasered, Jacobs started moving toward the officers, saying, 'Go ahead, I've always wanted to see what that feels like anyway.'"

Because of the risk of death, last year Taser advised agencies using their product to train officers not to shoot suspects in the chest.

How low can you go? Taser tells police don't aim at chest

Taser International yesterday issued an advisory to police agencies using their product not to shoot suspects in the chest (which of course is where they're taught to aim because it provides the largest target) but to "aim a little lower." (!)

Uh, exactly how much lower? This advice immediately made me think of a video from a police training session I saw awhile back depicting an officer accidentally tasered in the groin. The trainer who shot him was laughing so hard he fell to his knees and forgot to shut off the switch, something he said is known in law enforcement circles as "riding the lightning." But hey, what's 50,000 volts to the balls among friends? (If nothing else, one supposes this new advice will generate more such videos for humor sites.)

According to CBS News:

The bulletin from Taser says there is a slight risk of their device causing cardiac arrest. And it states 'We believe this recommendation will improve the effective use of taser ECD's while also further increasing safety margins and enhancing the ability to defend such cases in post event legal proceedings.'

"The information they're sending us simply states if you want to avoid controversy than you might want to avoid that target area," said Lt. Henderson. "And we take that very seriously in light of recent events".

Opponents of the Taser use say the company is admitting for the first time its product is dangerous.

Taser death in Laredo

When Tasers first came out they were billed as a non-lethal alternative to firearms.

In reality, both parts of that claim were false. People have died from Taser shocks, and far from being an "alternative" to firearms, most police Taser discharges occur in situations where shooting the suspect with a gun would not be justified under standard police policies. Today Taser has backed of the "non-lethal" claim and now markets the weapon as "less lethal," which is certainly a more accurate portrayal.

The latest Taser-caused death in Texas occurred Monday in Laredo, according to the Houston Chronicle:

Three Laredo police officers are on administrative duty pending investigation of the death of a man they shocked with a Taser gun.

Police spokesman Alberto Escobedo says the three officers answered a pre-dawn criminal mischief report Monday and confronted 44-year-old Richard Battistata. That's after the man allegedly had broken a bedroom window and entered an apartment.

Escobedo says that during the confrontation Battistata turned combative and one officer used the Taser to subdue him.

Instead, Battistata became unresponsive and police called an ambulance. He died soon after arriving at Doctors Hospital.

I generally support deployment of Tasers but I also think most departments' use of force policies allow them to be used WAAAAY too early on the so-called "use of force continuum." Tasers should never be used merely to force compliance with officer commands, particularly in a case like this where three officers were on hand to subdue the unarmed suspect. But from what I can tell, forcing compliance appears to be a primary way officers use the weapon in a large number of the reported incidents.

Stephen Colbert on Tazing Great Grandma

Stephen Colbert last night had an hilarious segment on the Travis County Deputy Constable who tazed a 72-year old great grandmother at a traffic stop. The whole piece is funny but the schtick about the Austin great grandmother kicks in about at about 2.5 minutes:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Current Events - Tasers
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Tasers and gasoline don't mix

Note to police officers: If you just saw a man pour gasoline on himself and splash it onto your partner, don't Taser him or you'll turn the scene into a bonfire. That's what happened in San Angelo where a suspect who'd doused himself with gas was burned alive.

This seems pretty basic: Sparks and gasoline don't mix. Uh ... Duh!

I'm not for banning Tasers, as some have proposed, but let's use some common sense, folks.

Student-Generated Data for Texas Taser Use by Police Online

This kind of experience might almost make going to journalism school in college seem worthwhile ... almost.

The Distributed Reporting Project at the University of North Texas' Mayborn Institute has placed online pdf versions of the results of public information act requests by journalism students from four Texas universities - UT Arlington, TCU, Tarleton State, and UNT - to Texas police and Sheriff's departments regarding their use of Tasers and stun guns. See the results for your jurisdiction here. The article from Fort Worth Weekly referenced in this Grits post used data from these student researchers.

The project is collaborating with the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, a nonprofit supported by many of the the state's daily newspapers. Students from UT Austin and SMU participated in the project during the Spring '06 semester, the website reports. I hope they were researching something cool.

Texas cops use tasers as 'high tech batons,' not substitute for guns

According to an article published (March 8) in Fort Worth Weekly:

in many of [Texas'] law enforcement agencies, officers aren’t waiting for a possible life-or-death crisis before they unholster the Taser. Many law enforcement officers are using the yellow-and-black, pistol-gripped weapon as a first-choice persuader — like a high-tech baton. The president of TASER International told Fort Worth Weekly last month that the stun weapons his company manufactures are “not a disciplinary tool” and shouldn’t be used that way. Nonetheless, records reveal that the weapons, marketed as an alternative to lethal force, are being used in situations where lethal force would almost never be used — as a routine way of gaining compliance from people who are offering no violence or threat.

The Weekly examined thousands of pages of records about Taser use in Texas, discovering sometimes extreme examples like in Wichita County where jail inmates routinely are tasered for having their hands outside their cells. “If Tasers are supposed to replace guns,” asked a man in Austin who received multiple shocks for playing music on the sidewalk, then if the officers hadn’t had Tasers, “would I have been shot for playing classical guitar?” Good question.

Austin Taser death result of bad policy

See ACLU of Texas' Liberty Blog for details. Greg Moses has more.

Medical Examiner: Strangulation, not TASER, killed Houston's Joel Casey in struggle with cops

The Harris County medical examiner ruled this week that a heart attack suffered by 52-year old Joel Casey in February after officers administered three, 50,000 volt TASER shocks was caused by his struggle with officers, not the electricity surging through his body. Instead he was probably strangled to death; they're ruling it a "homicide," which, to have said it, is not the same as murder. The District Attorney has not yet presented the case to the grand jury to decide whether the officers will be charged with a crime. Don't count on it, though.

Casey's mother had called police to request help taking her son to the hospital to receive treatment for schizophrenia, a severe mental illness. He never made it there alive.

Taser death a "temporal" connection

Sleepless in Midland decries the death of Midland's own Eric Jay Hammock, who was Tasered until he died this spring by the Fort Worth Police Department. (The coroner said there was a "temporal," but not a conclusive connection between the mulitiple Taser shocks and the man's resulting death.) Hammock's family has sued Taser International over his death. Sleepless deplores drug use, but says it shouldn't be a death sentence so if Tasering a drug user could kill him, Taser use should be reconsidered.

Good stuff from out west. Given Hammock's disturbing story, I can see why he's sleepless!

Tasers 41% of Use-of-Force Cases at APD

Austin police use Tasers in 41% of all use of force incidents engaged in by their officers, with a small handful of officers accounting for the lion's share of the cases. That figure has risen from 23% last year, Tony Plohetski at the Austin Statesman reported this morning. Overall, the number of minor use of force incidents declined, but Chief Knee told the city council only five Tasering incidents occurred last year when an officer would have otherwise been justified in using deadly force. The rest were in situations where no one's life was in danger.

In other words, Austin police are WAY overusing Tasers in confrontations with the public, and not only in cases where they let officers avoid shooting people. Tasers have become officers' first resort instead of their last. That's evidence, IMO, of inadequate policies and training.

Tasers have only ever been tested on healthy people, but more than 100 folks nationally have died after being attacked with one, often when they have pre-existing medical conditions or have been using amphetamines. A large number of Tasering incidents occur in Austin because of mere "verbal noncompliance," meaning the officer issued an order and someone didn't immediately comply. Elsewhere Tasers' problems are bubbling to the surface despite the company's claims that pumping 50,000 volts through the human body is perfectly safe. Wrote Plohetski:

Last month, the U.S. bureaus of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection adopted a ban on stun guns for their 20,000 agents and officers, largely because of questions about their safety.

Amnesty International says that at least 100 people have died after they were shocked by Tasers.

Suspects in other Texas cities have died in recent months after receiving Taser shocks.

A Midland man died last week after police in Fort Worth shocked him after he trespassed, resisted police and tried to punch an off-duty officer who was assisting in his arrest.

According to published reports, officers did not summon an ambulance after the man said he was having trouble breathing, but called for one after his problems continued.

Facing growing criticism over implementing unproven technology on a grand scale, Austin Police Chief Stan Knee unveiled new restrictions on officers' Taser use:

• Tasers can't be used on misdemeanor suspects.
• Handcuffed prisoners can't be Tasered (something officers resisted)
• Officers can no longer Taser fleeing suspects unless they're armed.

That's better than a sharp Taser prong in the eye, but it's not enough. Tasers are potentially lethal force and should be treated that way. They should only be used when lethal force is justified, and the only alternative is for the officer to shoot the suspect. Instead, Austin officers Taser suspects, or threaten to Taser them, as a first resort rather than t last one.

The Central Texas chapter of the ACLU, Amnesty International and Austin Spokes, a community group concerned with Tasers, held a press conference after Knee's briefing to air concerns.

"People could be on some kind heart medication that raises their heartbeat rate, and being Tased would be all it takes to put them over," said Debbie Russell, an ACLU board member. "There is a lack of medical information, and there is a lack of information on how they are being used and who they are using them on."

Ed Jackson, a spokesman for Amnesty International who was at the council meeting, said, "It is a patently bad idea to use the public as guinea pigs for unproven technology."

At the end of the day I think Tasers have a place on the police use of force continuum, but once the real dangers of the technology are sorted out, I think that place will be just before officers fire their service weapon, not the first time a suspect gives them any backtalk, which appears to be the current Tasering standard at APD.

Baytown PD's Taser Use Questioned by Amnesty

Amnesty International this week issued a report on police use of Tasers, arguing that 70 documented deaths justify their complete ban until the weapon's safety can be evaluated. Baytown, Texas PD was one of their prime examples. Here's what they had to say:

"Several lawsuits have been filed against officers from the Baytown Police Department, Texas, for alleged abusive use of Tasers. Naomi Autin, a 59-year-old disabled Latina woman, was reportedly tasered three times by police officer Micah Aldred in July 2003 for banging on her brother's door with a brick. According to a lawsuit filed by Autin, she had gone to her brother's house to collect mail while he was away, and became worried after failing to get an answer from the house-sitter and seeing a truck parked in the driveway. She called the police and officer Aldred arrived on the scene. Autin, who is 5 feet 2 inches tall and suffers from severe arthritis, was allegedly tasered in the back by Aldred after she continued to try to gain entry to the house; the officer also allegedly threw her against a post, causing a severe cut to her head. A grand jury indicted the officer on charges of using excessive force, but he was acquitted at trial. Reportedly, police officers corroborated his account that the use of force was justified. Amnesty International understands that no disciplinary action has been taken against the officer.

"The same officer is a defendant in another lawsuit in which an unarmed woman wanted on an outstanding arrest warrant was allegedly 'shocked numerous times about the back, face, neck, shoulders and groin'.

"A lawsuit is pending against another Baytown officer for alleged excessive force during an incident in July 2003, in which the officer used a taser as a stun gun on a man who had just suffered epileptic seizures. The officer reportedly stunned 30-year-old Robert Stanley Jr at close range in an ambulance as medical personnel struggled to strap him down as he struggled in the throes of post-seizure confusion. An Internal Affairs investigation into the incident found that the officer had not violated any policies, and a grand jury investigation reportedly supported police accounts that Stanley had been sufficiently combative to warrant use of the taser."

Grits doesn't agree with Amnesty's call to completely ban Tasers, which are still less frequently lethal than firearms, but strict protocols should limit their use to instances that justify using deadly force.

Via Talk Left