Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Arlington Man Dies after Police Taser Shock
Second Taser-Related Death in County This Year (Out of Four Taser Deployments)
An Arlington County man who was apparently in psychiatric distress died early Friday after a police officer used a Taser in an attempt to subdue him, police said.
An Arlington County man who was apparently in psychiatric distress died early Friday after a police officer used a Taser in an attempt to subdue him, police said. It was the second death in a total of four incidents involving a Taser in the county this year. (File)
It was the second death in an incident involving a Taser in the county this year.
Lt. William Griffith, an Arlington police spokesman, said officers and medics were called to an apartment building in the 5500 block of Columbia Pike about 12:30 a.m. for a "psychiatric emergency."
They found a man who was "unclothed and uncooperative. . . . He refused all verbal commands and was combative with the officers attempting to assist him," Griffith said.
A few minutes after an officer deployed a Taser device to try and bring the man under control, Griffith said, police saw that the man did not appear to be breathing. Medics began trying to resuscitate him and took him to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The man's name and age were not immediately available. Police said he did not live in the apartment but was visiting family there. It was a relative who called police after the man became distressed, Griffith said.
Both the internal affairs division and the homicide/robbery division are investigating the incident, Griffith said. Detectives remained at the scene of the apartment for several hours overnight, taking photographs and collecting evidence.
The officer who deployed the Taser remains on active duty but could be placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation if the man's death is determined to have been caused by the Taser.
The incident was the fourth time this year that Arlington police have deployed Tasers, which administer an electric jolt and are designed to be safer than firearms. Two of those confrontations did not involve death or injury, Griffith said.
But on Jan. 17, a 36-year-old District man died after being Tasered during a confrontation with police on the Pentagon City Metro platform.
William R. Bumbrey III allegedly became aggressive when an officer
approached him on the Metro platform to question him about a recent
theft from a nearby pharmacy, police said. After the officer used his
Taser, Bumbrey continued to struggle, police said at the time, but
eventually was restrained and handcuffed.
Soon after, officers saw that Bumbrey was in medical distress. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.
At the time, Detective Crystal Nosal, a county police spokeswoman, said Tasers have been in the department's arsenal since 2004. Nosal said police officers receive special training on use of the devices. Tasers are used in the county, on average, fewer than 20 times each year.
28 Comments so far
Show AllWow, love it! They call the police for help, and the police kill the guy - I hope his family enjoys the irony.
Although not related to taser abuse by police, look up Hope Steffey and prepare to be enraged.
The incident was the fourth time this year that Arlington police have deployed Tasers, which administer an electric jolt and are designed to be safer than firearms. Two of those confrontations did not involve death or injury, Griffith said.
A 50% mortality rate??? Yes, much safer than the old bullet guns or yesteryear. What a joke. Taser has cornered the market and is making a killing. Literally....
Outlaw these torture-death devices now.
yes...if they kill every other time, they can't really be declared non-lethal, can they?
is this like Two-Face, in Batman? flip a coin and fire the taser...
heads, you live...tails, you die...I don't know which when I fire...
And if they had used physical force they would have been pilloried for beating someone to death.
The automatiic assumption of wrong doing in these cases is becoming tedious. What exactly would you do if you were chareged wirth bringing someone under control that was fighting you and resisting restraint? Take out your nightstick? Use a sap? Four of you jump on him so they can show a video on the news that night and show police brutality?
Take a look at the circumstances unless you just enjoy portraying an "enlightened" stance. From a very safe distance and with no responsibility of course.
Why we automatically jump on the police is that the governemnt automatically assumes the police to be pure as driven snow in an incident such as this. Not only do they assume innocence, the system actively protects the criminal acts of their own. No meanigful internal investigations are ever done. Only bystander cameras ever seem to be what hangs bad cops and that is rare. Until our government starts approaching police abuse of citizens as a real crime, I use the same standard of judgement on them. Guilty until proven innocent! If you are one of the majority of the good cops out there, purge the thugs from your ranks and the citizens will begin to trust you again. You have placed the citizens into an us vs them situation which is guarenteed to produce continual tension and violence.
Poor homicidal cops, always getting abuse from the Peanut Gallery! My heart bleeds for them-- metaphorically, of course, since I'm at a "safe distance".
You'd feel right at home in Philadelphia, where police have so far eschewed the use of Tasers and instead generally summarily execute the sick person by impromptu firing squad.
This includes cases where family members frantically contact police for "help" with an out-of-control relative KNOWN to be mentally ill.
Mentally ill-- not criminal. Not even, how you say: "illegal"!
Not to make any automatic assumptions of wrongdoing or anything. After all, cops don't take a Hippocratic oath to "first do no harm". In these parts, cops have a License to Kill and they're not shy about using it. Now, THAT's "tedious"!
"And if they had used physical force they would have been pilloried for beating someone to death."
Are you an idiot or are you taking us for idiots?
"Physical force" in this case would obviously take the form of 2-4 policemen (thay always come to such situations with backups) wrestling the person to the ground then restraining him with cuffs. It would not involve "beating" anyone??? Get it Einstein? That didn't occir to you didn't it???
The procedure described above - not shooting or beating, is how cops handled such situations before the tazer - why can't they do this now? Are they too fat and out of shape?
Wrestle him to the ground and shoot him up with diazepam. Nah... too much fun to shoot first and ask questions later.
"To Serve and Protect' should be changed to "Get on the Ground"
These are lethal weapons. Yet they are often used on people who cannot obey a verbal command. The phrase Murder Most Foul comes to mind.
By mid June we will probably reach 500 deaths in the USA from Tasers.
The report by Ms Wilgoren is premature. There are not enough details to form an informed opinion.
But of one thing we can be sure, this will be another case of so-called "excited delirium" that will exonerate the police officer. In all probability, what this case needed was cop POW defense, PAIL OF WATER, but this is low tech and does not cause sufficient priapism, which IMO is the main point of using Tasers.
Trylon
What used to happen when these type of situations occurred before cops got tasers. I'll tell you what, they would jumped on him, subdued him, and taken him to a psychiatric lock down, alive, where he would be recognized as being impaired. The reason that no longer happens is because tasers allow lazy cops to electrocute people because they don't want to get their uniforms sweaty and their hands dirty. They don't have to worry anymore about confused people not acknowledging their verbal commands and start talking back to them. If you don't comply immediately, even when it is apparent to most civilians that people in altered states, whether from drug abuse or mental illness, can't respond cause their minds are elsewhere, making themselves into targets of opportunity.
It's all about their authoritarian ego and the thrill of legal murder in the taser lottery shooting galleries of Amerika.
the fitness test must be much easier to pass now...
can you unholster and aim this taser?
I guess weight could be a hindrance here, if one's waist covers one's holster...or if one has trouble rising from a sitting position...maybe the shoulder holster...
can you pull the trigger?
again, the finger must be slender enough to be able to get into the trigger enclosure and on top of the actual trigger...
'fat finger' could be a problem...
do these things have multiple settings, like Star Trek and Star Wars shooters do? A dial that says 'Stun', or 'Fry', or 'Just Messin' Witcha'...
In small town in central Indiana two city policemen recently were called because a 10 year old boy was being disruptive. They could not calm him down, so one of them slapped him in the face. That did nothing, so the other zapped the kid with a Taser. That worked.
It sounds terrible, and the policemen have been suspended with pay, pending an invesstigation by the Sheriff's department.
But, people who know the family say that the kid literally cannot be restrained when he gets like that. Two men have trouble holding him down. I guess the cops could have used a nightstick and broken a few bones, or called for backup and had a couple of more cops there to pin the kind down until they could put the cuffs on him. Who knows how much damage he would have done before the backup got there?
I don't know how to respond to this one.
you're saying that two cops can't restrain a 10 year old? wonder what they did before there were tasers when this kind of problem popped up? cops used to be trained as negotiators, peacemakers who the only used lethal weapons when they were facing an armed opponent; nowadays they can't be bothered because this country has been militarizing our police, starting with the Reagan administration, and it continues at an ever rising pace under Obama.
No, they started militarizing cops when Nixon demonized men who didn't want to die in Vietnam for repug war profiteers and Gov Raygoon blamed pot smoking demonstrators for his shitty ratings.
Sounds like the kid could benefit from medical or psych care. But, alas, boys who are disturbed often remain untreated until their malady lands them in prison, or worse. It's convenient to place the blame solely on the police officers, and I do not think it is right to slap and tase kids, but what follow up are we giving the child?
Joe
In either circumstance that resulted in fatality was any other person's life endangered because of the uncooperation by the deceased? Were the deceased even breaking any laws? It seems that using any device like a Taser when no other person's life is in danger is abusive. If everyone were to walk away and leave the uncooperative persons, perhaps they'd eventually run out of energy and become controllable..? Am I simplifying too much or missing something? Granted, one person was being "questioned" about a theft, but was he under suspicion? Was this the officer's only chance to get a true suspect in their custody?
Let me see if I've got the math right...the police department spokesperson, Det. Nosal, is quoted as claiming that tasers are used less than 20 times per year in the county. Having caused 2 deaths in the county this year, that would be a resulting death rate for the use of the taser of higher than 10%. I suppose this is an acceptable rate of death if you are a supporter of the sadistic goons in blue.
There have been many instances of excessive force causing death of upset or totally innocent people in NYC. The Eleanor Bumpurs, Sean Bell, Gidone Busch and Ahmadou Diallou cases are among the most famous. All of these deaths should not have happened. Sean Bell and Ahmadou Diallou were just going about their lives. Gidone Busch, a retarded man, was armed with a hammer. Eleanor Bumpers was an elderly woman with known psych problems who was about to be evicted for owing less than $400 back rent.
Why is the policy not to withdraw and defuse before using force? Why is the policy not to isolate or restrain or weaken rather than kill a person who is not armed with a gun? If force absolutely must be used, what about shooting in the leg or using a milder setting on the taser? I believe the policies of the police, the training and temperament of officers are at fault.
Joe
Abbie Hoffman once said "If people were forced to eat what they killed,there would be no more wars" Consider this; if a law forced police to attempt to revive a tasing victim with C.P.R.. Anyone who had a M.I. or fibrillation,and carry a defibrillator trained to use it.C.P.R. would have to continue until paramedics arrived on the scene.Failure to comply with the law would result in Manslaughter charges at the least!With suspension pending a full review in all cases.
Maybe a little more liability would slow police down!Please don't shoot me,Taze me,stun me ,gas me ,mace me or pepper spray me.Brudder sista offisa!
I remember those days.... You know, back in the 60's the use of cattle prods by police on horseback was a common sight. I do not believe the cattle prod produced as many volt-amps as the present day tazer, yet back then it was eventually deemed to be 'cruel and inhumane' by the courts..... it must be a matter of which company supplies the electrical shock device....
Heard the new taser guns are 100,000 volts.....up from
10,000 volts. Interesting that this report never mentioned how much voltage the cop's taser gun was putting out!!
Tasers are not suitable for 'uncooperative'. The cops seemed to have him contained and could have gotten more help or a doctor or shrink. It seems to be a big hurry these days to deal violently with a sick person. This person, apparently, COMMITTED NO CRIME. If this stands we have just condoned the death penalty for being inconveniently ill.
I suppose if a person falls on the street unconscious the most efficient thing would be to run them over then take them to the morgue. Police cars could be equipped with the right device do do this efficiently.
Unless some very compelling evidence comes forth, the police should be charged with assault with a deadly weapon, and second degree murder.
The city should pay a massive award to the family in a wrongful death settlement or lawsuit.
Tasers should be relegated to the scrap heap or a tiny selected set of circumstances for use. Each firing should have as much paperwork as firing the service weapon.
This is so sad.
I hope the victim's family will sue the pants off the Arlington County PD.
this story - and the police report - left out two important details: 1) the victim was foreign (morrocan) and the bullshit "psychiatric emergency" was nothing of the sort; the victim was drunk and involved in a domestic dispute.
police departments everywhere need to be answerable to AUTONOMOUS CIVILIAN REVIEW, not just to themselves, as most are now. this sort of thing is common all over, particularly in virginia, where the commonwealth attorneys rarely, if ever, prosecute police even when theY commit murder, as this example demonstrates...
http://www.justiceforsal.com/index.html
I know this man personally. He wasn't drunk as you claim, how do you know he was drunk, shut up if you don't know the truth.