Police have killed yet another person by shocking him to death with a taser.
Dazed and confused after more than 15 hours of travel, unable to communicate in English and scared because he couldn't find his mother, Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski was jolted by a taser just 24 seconds after being confronted by police in Vancouver International Airport.
...
"He made his way to primary customs in the ordinary fashion ... he went through there in the normal time frame ... he then proceeded through and was directed to secondary customs, which is normal for someone who doesn't speak English and is immigrating to the country," Mr. Kosteckyj [a lawyer for Mr. Dziekanski's family] said. His papers were in order and he proceeded without difficulty.
But what happened after that was far from normal. For nearly 10 hours, Mr. Dziekanski stayed in the Arrivals Hall, growing increasingly frustrated and eventually becoming frantic.
Outside, in the public area, his mother spent nearly six hours pacing the corridors and, in broken English, asking airport officials for help in locating her son.
Mr. Kosteckyj said she visited one booth in international arrivals "at least three to four times and conveyed to them that she was concerned about her son being in the area and she wanted to get a message to him and how could she do that? They wrote her name down and said that they would make inquiries."
At about 10 p.m., she was told he wasn't there. She made the long drive home, only to find a phone message waiting, saying her son had been found.
"She called back to immigration when she got in, which would have been around 2 a.m., and spoke to someone there and was advised that her son was somewhere in the area and was fine. And she advised, you know, 'Please take care of him because he can't speak English and I'll get there as soon as I can.' And of course he had died, been killed really, some time on or about 1 or 1:30," Mr. Kosteckyj said.
Pretty outrageous. Unfortunately, it is more and more common for police to tase people who are not a threat to anyone, and frequently over extremely minor incidents. Often, those people die as a result.
On Aug. 4, in Lafayette, Colo., policemen on a stakeout approached Jack's son Ryan as he entered a field of a dozen young marijuana plants. When Ryan took off running, officer John Harris pursued the 22-year-old for a half-mile and then shot him once with an X-26 Taser. Ryan fell to the ground and began to convulse. The officer attempted cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but Ryan died.
According to his family and friends, Ryan was in very good physical shape. The county coroner found no evidence of alcohol or drugs in his system and ruled that Ryan's death could be attributed to the Taser shock, physical exertion from the chase and the fact that one of his heart arteries was unusually small.
In October, an internal investigation cleared Officer Harris of any wrongdoing and concluded that he had used appropriate force.
Ryan is one of nearly 200 people who have died in the last five years after being shot by a Taser stun gun.
If cops werent so often fat, lazy, and out of shape, they could probably run further than half a mile without having to resort to shocking the shit out someone. Of course, as is the case nearly every time a cop kills an innocent person, or commits any kind of brutality or misconduct, there are no repercussions. Police officers are almost never held accountable for their actions, even crimes. There is a different standard for them due to the line of work they have chosen.
Many of you may have seen this video of a student being brutally tased in a university library for no reason whatsoever.
Horrific.
Whether there is video evidence or not, the stories just keep coming. There is a pretty consistent theme. Police show up, and with little or no justification, they shock the shit out of people. Sometimes when handcuffed [as in the above video], and often repeatedly. The victim is traumatized, has no recourse, and frequently ends up dead.
In Glendale, Colo., Glen Leyba was on his apartment floor, thrashing violently. A police officer, hoping to control him, stunned him three times, before he died. While the coroner blamed a drug overdose, the family blames multiple, unnecessary electric shocks, Andrews reports.
Shelly Leyba, Glen's sister, says, "Glen was in a medical emergency, down on the ground, no threat."
In Indiana, inmate James Borden was stunned six times by an officer, then died on the jailhouse floor. Borden was also high on drugs, and again his family blames overuse of the TASER. "They juiced him to death," charges Steve Borden, James' brother.
On Long Island, David Glowczenski was suffering a mental breakdown, so his family called police for help.
His sister, Jean Griffin, says, "We called them for safety because he was disoriented. ...And an hour later he was dead."
Glowzenski died after a confrontation in which an officer stunned him nine times with a TASER, and he wasn't on drugs or alcohol, Andrews notes. "He committed no crime; he didn't do anything wrong," Griffin says.
And another inmate was killed in the much the same way as poor Mr. Borden in indiana. Bound hand and foot, held down by eleven men and tased five times. As is typical, no charges were filed. In fact, the grand jury refused even to view the video.
Eleven deputies and a video camera were there when he arrived at the Gwinnett County Jail in handcuffs, and his feet bound, but still fighting.
A deputy then uses a Taser on Williams. A deputy is shown placing the Taser against Williams’ chest a total of five times. Eventually, he passes out.
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District Attorney Danny Porter provided details of the investigations to a grand jury and that grand jury decided not to pursue an investigation of their own. They, however, chose not to view the videotape taken at the jail.
"They were aware of the tape and the disturbing aspects of it, but chose not to view it," Porter said. "They chose not to see it and chose not to go any farther."
Knowing there are never any consequences certainly isnt any incentive for police to obey the law, or to look out for the safety of individual citizens.
There is seemingly no perceived offense too small to require shocking the shit out of people. From being suspected of trying to hook up illegal electrical service...
Officers were called to the complex where residents said someone was illegally hooking up electrical service at a unit, police Lt. Abdul Pridgen said.
When they arrived, Guerrero hid in a closet and refused to come out, Pridgen said. Officers shot Guerrero with a Taser stun gun after asking him twice to come out. Pridgen said the man was then handcuffed but stopped breathing shortly thereafter.
...to a salad bar dispute at a chuck e cheese...
Police talked to the Chuck E. Cheese manager who told them that a customer had refused to show proof that he had paid for food. The manager said the man was seen "loading" his plate at the salad bar.
The officers confronted Danon Gale, 29, who was at the restaurant with his children, aged 3 and 7. Patrons said the popular kids pizza parlor was packed with children and families at the time.
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"One of the officers kept poking the gentleman in the chest," Felicia Mayo told the Rocky Mountain News.
She was there with her 7-year-old son. She told the newspaper that Gale told the officer, "You don't have to do that." She said Gale never put his hands on the officer who was confronting him.
The argument escalated until Gale was shoved into the lap of Mayo's sister, who was sitting two booths away, holding a 10-month-old baby. That's when police pulled out a Taser stun gun to subdue him.
"They beat this man in front of all these kids then Tased him in my sister's lap," Mayo told the newspaper. "They had no regard for the effect this would have on the kids. This is Chuck E. Cheese, you know."
Gale's two children were "screaming and hollering and crying" as Gale was tasered two times with the stun gun.
Police arrested Gale as his children and other customers and their children watched. They took him outside, leaving his children inside the restaurant.
Gale was arrested for investigation of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and trespassing.
...no suspected offense is too small to justify cops tasing the shit out of you, possibly resulting in death. Or beating you up and tasing the shit out of you in front of a room full of children, including your own, and then arresting you, leaving your children there to fend for themselves. And if you manage to survive the encounter? They will be sure to invent charges against you. Charges you'll have a tough time disputing both because the statutes are so open ended, and because whatever a cop says is automatically treated as a immutable truth.
Lastly, there is the consistent use of these horrible devices on children.
Police have acknowledged using a stun gun to immobilize a 12-year-old girl just weeks after an officer jolted a first-grader with 50,000 volts.
...Parker said Friday that he could not defend the decision to shock the fleeing girl, who was skipping school and apparently drunk.
Nelson said he noticed the girl was intoxicated and was walking her to his car to take her back to school when she ran away through a parking lot.
Nelson, 38, said he chased her and yelled several times for her to stop before firing the Taser when she began to run into traffic. The electric probes hit the girl in the neck and lower back, immobilizing her.
You dare to run away? Make a fat cop run his lazy ass down the street? Whether you're a suspect or not, whether they intend to arrest you or not, they'll shock the shit out of you if they feel like it. Any bets on whether or not there were ever any consequences for that prick?
Or for this asshole who tased a 14 year old boy who was sitting on a sofa?
A Chicago police officer and the city of Chicago are being sued for using a taser Monday on a 14 year old boy. The teenager went into cardiac arrest and is still recovering in the hospital.
According to the lawsuit filed Thursday - the teenager was sitting on the couch when a police sergeant shocked him with a taser gun.
Overall, these events demonstrate the innate danger in using 50,000 volts of electricity to shock people into submission. It often electrocutes them.
These events also add to the mountain of examples of the broken culture of america's militarized police.
[also posted at disastrophe!]
Update:
Added a link to the video of the police inflicted death of Deacon Williams. [I had trouble embedding this one.]