The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Surveillance cameras may do nothing to prevent crime, but they sure settle who was telling the truth and who was not. 

http://www.fox4kc.com/video/?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=3665572

GRANDVIEW, Mo. -- A local man said he was shocked to be rushed by U.S. marshals at a basketball game Wednesday.

Surveillance cameras at a Grandview community center captured video of Stuart Wright at a men's basketball game when the marshals burst in, guns drawn and a Taser gun deployed.

Wright, of Kansas City, Kan., had just gone in to sub for someone when suddenly the U.S. marshals drew down on him.

The marshals said they were looking for Vinol Wilson, charged with dealing crack cocaine in an organization that involved dozens of others.
The marshals said they try to avoid busy places, but that Wilson had been eluding them for more than a year. And a confidential informant told them that he was at the community center, wearing an orange jersey with the No. 23 on it.

"I just heard all this commotion and screaming, and as I turned I heard this gentleman screaming and he had a gun pointed at me," said Wright. "And as I put my hands up I guess he was screaming the gentleman's name who they were after, and I said my name is Stuart Wright, that's not my name and I heard pop,pop and I felt my body tense up, and I was on the ground." He showed where the two Taser gun probes left blood stains on the shirt.

The marshals said a deputy deployed the Taser because Wright pulled away from them when they ordered him to the ground, then cocked his arm as if to throw a punch.

Wright said that's not true. "I had my hands up in the air," he said.

"It was out of control," Wright said. "It was all the way out of control. It's unfortunate they feel like that's OK, that type of behavior in a family atmosphere with kids around, with innocent people around, that that type of behavior is OK."

"I honestly think it was poor planning and strategy, and I think somebody didn't do their homework," said Wright. "I think they were out of control."

"Those guys just bum rushed the gentleman, and it was maybe 8 of them and they had their guns out and where they approached him at it was a stand behind him full of kids," said Dukes. "I'm still disappointed because it was a stand full of kids."

The U.S. Marshals Office admitted that entering a crowded community center with guns drawn was not an ideal situation, but they said that the man they were looking for was armed and dangerous.

I wonder why it is that police still take the word of confidential informants as gospel, when they fairly regularly spout utter BS to save their own skin, especially when they could easily take a few minutes to verify the information they've been given.

It is also interesting to note how the taser and other less than lethal weapons (that do pretty regularly kill, sadly) have significantly lowered the bar for the use of force against alleged suspects.

What gets me is they say that he did not comply, etc. But how can you in such a situation? It takes a minute to get your bearings and figure out whats going on. Especially when its something completely unexpected and there is lots going on around you. Is this a joke? someone playing around? Are they really talking to me? Are these even police at all? Whats going on?

When your in a situation that is totally unexpected and someone you dont know is perhaps threatening you, your not quite sure whats going on, its disorienting and it could be your life. When your dead, your dead. I remember when someone leapt out at a bikerider and hit them with a baseball bat on Riverside. You only have so much time to react. Or your dead. D-E-A-D, dead. If someone means you harm, you have no idea how far they are going to go, and you cant risk finding out, for your sake, for your families sake.     

I am not going to immediately surrender to anyone, period. Police or not. Until I know they are police and they have to give you that chance cause otherwise of course your going to back away. From what I could see in the video these people were not in uniform. They are just strangers yelling stuff and I am not going to risk dying. Perhaps it just those years in the army and going over and over the fact that its, kill or be killed. The enemy isnt there to "hurt you really bad" they are there to kill you, plain and simple. In the every day world, If I dont know who someone is, and they threaten me, if I can get away first I will, If not, I will put them out of commission, because they could kill you. And imo, it would be absolutely stupid to think any other way. Once your dead, there is no fixing that.   

I have been pulled over and jacked up several times for no reason. One time, while in the miltary, I walked out of my workplace at around 2:00 a.m. and right into a security police active investigation of some crime. Ain't nothing like having an M-60, fully loaded, trained on your head. The last time, the police thought I was the driver in a robbery and hit and run. Notwithstanding that I had no damage to my vehicle and my explaining they had the wrong person, the female officer had her service weapon aimed at my head telling me to get to the ground so she could due a Terry search (which I really enjoyed, that's why I mentioned the gender of the cop). I absolutely complied. After it was apparent they had the wrong guy, she and her partner apologized at length. I told them to forget about me and go get the bad guy.

My point is that I did not make a federal case out this event, which I suspect the guy in this story will do.

You weren't tackled and tazed, dude.

You are missing the point.  He would be happy to be tazed or tackled and he wouldn't complain about it. 

I'm guessing there would be no shortage of volunteers from here to do that if he really really wanted to have it done to him.

 ;D

I understand the mix up, but the execution of the event was REALLY bad.  I'm with Artist, if some guy runs out on the court yelling at me and clearly looking like he wants a fight I'm likely to give him one.  No way the guy had any idea of what was happening no matter what the cop was shouting - you just can't process an unexpected event that fast.  You just react.

I'm willing to bet 85% of people would have reacted exactly the same way.  Furthermore, it was doubtful that the guy had a weapon on him on the court.  What did the officer expect?

Under the scenario it would be permitted to get the ID of anyone from an "informant" and then just run out en mass and taser the guy and arrest him.  I would like to think that is not the case.  This shouldn't be a "big deal" but I certainly think some kind of compensation for embarrassing, scaring, and then tasering this guy is in order.

More important than that, it is telling to that community how the officers work. 

Here is another case

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/23/AR2009012302935.html?hpid=topnews (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/23/AR2009012302935.html?hpid=topnews)

Rundown, Drug traffickers have been sending UPS packages to random people and then stealing the packages before the people get home.  Somebody did this to the mayor of a small town, the police picked up the package (from ups) because they knew it had drugs in it from drug dogs or something .  Then they put the package on the mayor's doorstep and rung the doorbell.  They took the package inside and set it on the counter.  Later, The Mayor's wife was downstairs in the kitchen and saw guys in black in the backyard with guns coming at the house so she screamed.  That basically authorized them to raid the house and use deadly force if necessary (in case she warned other people in the house).  The swat broke the door down, killed the dogs, held a gun to their head and asked them where the drugs were.  Gave an answer because that is what you do with a gun pointed at you.  I know Guido might be fine with this stuff but I would rather not have the SWAT team raid my house without checking more into things like this.

What bothered me the most is that the agency involved was U.S. Marshals, considered the top drawer of law enforcement.
All other LEO's are beneath the bar they set, but the bar just got lowered considerably.
It makes me wonder if this could end up being a precedent to a "Tase on first contact" standard set now that the Marshals service opened the door.

I was actually in favor of Tasers at one point, when they were being promoted as alternatives to deadly force, but now that they are in everyday use they have become alternatives to everything but deadly force.

I see, having a fully automatic weapon pointed at your head is not THAT bad. Having that happen and actually being shot at while in the military has given me some perspective. How about you?  Oh, I presume I didn't get tazed or tackled because: 1) I was too busy getting the sh#t scared out of me by loaded weapons, and 2) I quickly complied with the authorities.

I would much prefer to have a gun pointed at me and not fired than be tased. People die from tasers.

Luckily, on the occasion when I was mistaken for a burglar the cops weren't as over the top as they are now. Sure, the lady cop who was the only officer at first drew her service weapon, but a couple of moments of conversation and a plain showing of my hands and the situation was defused. No tackling or tasing, or even slowly laying on the ground involved. Of course, very few departments had tasers back then.

Apparently, walking down the street being dressed in dark clothing at night in a college town sometimes makes your neighbors think you're out to burgle them.

I think the SWAT mentality has become pervasive. Between that and the implicit trust some place in confidential informants who are telling the police things not out of any altruistic motive, but purely to avoid going to jail, things are getting worse, not better, yet criminals are no more violent than they were 20 or 30 years ago when the police weren't so over the top.

That's not to say all police are over the top, they're not, but things like this are depressingly common.

People also die from guns that are pointed at their heads which are accidentally fired. Other than that, I agree with the rest of your post.

Sure, but I trust those who have received extensive training to be able to exercise good fire control and not shoot someone accidentally. Besides, guns are almost always drawn while someone is being tased by police.

(Not to mention that the officer should be going for a center of mass shot, not a likely to miss head shot!)  :o

Have you ever had a loaded weapon pointed at you at point blank range or, more importantly, have you ever been under fire? If not, you unfortnately have no real experience in the sort of fear that results from that. I also stick by my original point, mainly because I have never been tased.

It depends on the definition of "point blank." If it includes a scenario where a police officer is standing next to their Crown Vic pointing a gun at me while I stand on the sidewalk less than ten feet away, then yes, I indeed have had a loaded weapon pointed at me at point blank range. I was 16 at the time, so perhaps it had less effect than it might have during my more "sane" years.

I did not like it, but I would prefer it to a possibly lethal electric shock, if that shock were to be administered in combination with handguns being pointed at me. (Note that the handgun thing is a constant in either scenario, so the only real question is whether you'd rather be tased or given the opportunity to surrender)

Never have had a firearm discharged at me, though.

I believe if you will check with the courts and the Taser industry, no Taser use has ever been proven to cause death.  Much to the dismay of the media who likes to put in headlines like "Man Dies After Being Tased." 

On a some what related note,  I haven't been shot at in 2 years.  I haven't been shot at in Tulsa or even had a loaded weapon pointed at me (that I know of) for 3 years.  That's some kind of record. 

Since I moved to Tulsa in 2003:

2003: Secret Service mistakes me for a terrorist when I drive around a parked firetruck looking for the I-244 ramp downtown (I went around it by turning into the near lane, hardly a barricade!).  Dick Cheney was apparently staying at the Adams Mark and the "kid" gawking around like an idiot in a Buick who "snuck" past the barricade was not welcome.  I was politely asked to get out of the car by men in black suits with firearms, I said I lived in Tulsa but had an Iowa drivers license.  I also had ammunition in the trunk with a book on Constitutional law, this was not comforting to them.  I was not allowed downtown the rest of the weekend and I didn't get to McDonalds in time for a McGriddle.

2005:  Went hunting on public land.  I was looking through my binoculars and saw some jackass with a 30-06 in a tree stand aiming STRAIGHT me.  He shot a rabbit that was between us (deer season, everyone out there surely appreciate that shot) and in line with where I was sitting, about 20 yards short of where I was.  I nearly shot back at this stupid SOB, but instead stood up, took the rabbit and left, never to return to public hunting land in Oklahoma.

2006: On my way home from work heading South on Harvard at the BA.  A hatchback pulls up next to me and slows down short of the light but close enough to be strange.  He rolls down the window so I figure he needs directions or to tell me I have a flat, so I roll down my window.  He then brandishes a 9mm+ automatic handgun (silver) and starts shooting into my car.  His passenger liens forward to watch (driver: white guy, "Starter" jacket style coat on, backward hat, ~20.  Passenger: I think he was a black guy, don't really recall.  Car:  hatchback with a stupid extra load tailpipe.  Gun:  Silver, automatic, 9mm+ as I distinctly remember seeing the barrel.).  I think I ducked, not really sure.  He sped off immediately onto the BA on-ramp heading towards downtown.  For a split second I was going to chase him, then realized this was not a wise decision and called 911, ears ringing.  I had powder burns on my passenger seat, but all the shots (3?  Really not sure at all) went in one window and out the other.  A back window of a car going the other way was shot out.  They shut down the BA towards downtown but it was clearly not going to have any effect.  Cops said it was 1) road rage (did you cut anyone off?  Ummm, it was midtown at 5:15, probably.  2) Mistaken identity or 3) some jackass gang wanna be.  Someone matching the description was arrested a few weeks later after the same basic stunt on 169 left a bullet hole in an empty car seat.

2007:  Route 666 (between Cortez and Farmington, or thereabout anyway) in the Navajo reservation, NW New Mexico, 3am, pulling a sailboat, transmission was dead so going 10mph with the flashers on.  Been up for 40 hours with a few naps.  Not happy.  In mesa territory (out of the mountains of Colorado).  Out of the corner of my eye I see fireworks and comment to my friend, who suggests I'm crazy.  The fireworks are followed by sparks on the road at which point I see a camp fire on the side of one of the mesas and a distinctive muzzle flash.  Some idiot(s) are out camping/drinking/tripping and see a sailboat, in the middle of the damn desert, drive by at 10mph with flashers going and start taking pot shots at the boat.  I floor it, we get to the red line and 15 mph for our getaway.  The drive back to Albuquerque takes forever and a half.

Good times, good times.

Remind me not to ride with cannon fodder.

Then tobacco industry fell back on that logic for a long, long time.

So if you tase someone, and someone goes into cardiac arrest and dies, that's due to...misfortune? Not the taser?

I take it you've never heard that people's hearts are sometimes stopped by electric shock?

A taser is probably less likely to kill than a gunshot, but so is a bean bag shotgun shell, yet those also manage to stop people's hearts sometimes when they get shot in the sternum.

The problem with "less than lethal" weapons is that the bar to their use is low as compared to the use of "deadly force."

I came across this video and story of some white guy having the audacity to place orange cones out on the street while watering apparently public property, What does he get for his trouble? You guessed it. Harassed and beat to death by African Americans. Where's the cry for a hate crime?  crickets.

http://www.kirotv.com/news/19476229/detail.html

Oh, and the murderer that pled guilty and apologized for his crime? 11 years.

A nationwide study examining the safety of Tasers® used by law enforcement agencies suggests the devices are safe, causing a low occurrence of serious injuries.

"This study is the first large, independent study of injuries associated with Tasers. It is the first injury epidemiology study to review every Taser deployment and to reliably assess the overall risk and severity of injuries in real world conditions," said William Bozeman, M.D., the lead investigator and an emergency medicine specialist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "The injury rate is low and most injuries appear to be minor. These results support the safety of the devices."

Bozeman will present the study results at the American College of Emergency Physicians' Research Forum in Seattle, Wash., Oct. 8. In a review of nearly 1,000 cases, 99.7 per cent of those subjected to a Taser had mild injuries, such as scrapes and bruises, or none at all. Only three subjects (0.3%) suffered injuries severe enough to need hospital admission. Two had head injuries suffered in falls after Taser use. A third subject was admitted to a hospital two days after arrest with a medical condition of unclear relationship to the Taser. Two subjects died, but autopsy reports indicate that neither death was related to the Taser. Earlier partial results involving 597 cases were published in the September issue of Annals of Emergency Medicine.

The independent prospective study was funded by the National Institute of Justice and included six law enforcement agencies across the United States. A tactical physician at each participating agency reviewed police and medical records after each successful application of a Taser. Injuries were identified and classified as mild, moderate, or severe and their relationship to the Taser was classified as direct, indirect, or uncertain.

Tasers are used by many police departments in the United States and are credited with decreasing police officer and suspect injuries and deaths due to police use of force. However, the devices have been surrounded with controversy.

"This is the largest independent study to date, and the first to detail the medical effects of Tasers under real-world conditions," said Bozeman. "With physician review of 100 percent of Taser uses, this study promises to give us the best information yet on the medical risks of these weapons."

Bozeman said results from previous studies were limited by the use of animal models and of healthy police volunteers in training settings, not criminal suspects in real-world conditions.

"The Taser is a weapon and it can clearly cause injuries and even deaths in some cases," Bozeman said. "The question is 'how likely is it to cause a significant injury" and whether that risk of injury outweighs the benefits it brings."

Co-researchers were J. Tripp Winslow, M.D., M.P.H.; Derrel Graham, M.D.; Brian Martin, M.D.; Joseph J. Heck, D.O.; all of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Wake Forest University; Louisiana State University, Inova Fairfax Hospital (Va.), and University Medical Center (Nev.).

Let's just go back to the good ol' days and bust out the billy clubs and blackjacks.

The blackjacks were no joke.

You know I was kidding, right?

Didnt they go from Blackjacks to the Mag Flashlights ?

No. Officers started using mag lights instead of their billy clubs.  It's not a good practice. 


http://user.cavenet.com/grakat/blackjack.htm

Bad things can happen anywhere. Indianapolis can be very ruff. :)

My Dad had one of those back in the good ol day's of the TPD.

Is it a billy club or a MagLite they are using to break this prisoner's ribs?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6ZU2jP0ZWc

That looks like he is using th butt of his gun. 

That was 2007.
In 2008, we saw:

http://www.charlydmiller.com/LIB11/2008Jun19TaserLetters.pdf

Can you find one death that was the sole result of a taser deployment?

Tasers are safe but I like the pepperball rounds myself.  Those things are outstanding and effective!

Maybe, maybe not.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0730taser30.html

Although admittedly methamphetamines were found in this person's system.  There have other cited Taser death causes.   The 'excited delirium' excuse for deaths after tasers were applied are becoming more and more suspect.

Maybe because "excited delirium" is the cause and not an "excuse".

No legitimate medical organization recognizes "Excited Delirium"
It's something made up by a police coroner's association to excuse deaths of people while in police custody.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_delirium
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7608386
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/deaths-in-custody-excited-delirium-or-excessive-force/

I love your articles! Did you even read these before you posted them?  Here are some quotes from them about excited delirium....

The coroner found that Jones did not die from excessive police force but from a number of causes — such as heart failure, obesity, drug use and asphyxiation. He later told reporters that Jones' death could have been the result of something called excited delirium.

"Someone who's disproportionately large, extremely agitated, threatening violence, talking incoherently, tearing off clothes, and it takes four or five officers to get the attention of that individual and bring him out of harm's way — that's excited delirium."

Mash says the phenomenon came to light in the 1980s, when cocaine burst onto the scene. Most victims have cocaine or drugs in their systems. Jones had smoked cocaine and PCP. Mash says victims become irrational, their body temperatures rise so fast their organs fail, and then they suddenly die.


"It's definitely real," Mash says. "And while we don't know precisely what causes this, we do know it is the result of a neural chemical imbalance in the brain."

Di Maio says it is often the very act of resisting that sends people prone to excited delirium over the edge. If they were in a field, alone, running around hysterical, Di Maio says they might still have died. But he says fighting makes death all but certain. And because most people are in public places, not in fields, that means they're usually fighting with the police. Di Maio says civil liberties groups then wrongly blame the officers for the death.

and my favorite....

"They buy into this mode that if somebody dies, somebody's got to be responsible," DiMaio says. "Of course, it can't be the person high on coke or meth."

Oh yeah, Excited Delirium was first diagnosed in 1849 by Dr. Luther Bell. It was called Bell's Mania, agitated delirium, excited delirium and acute exhaustive mania.

Did you?

Effective Cherry Picking there:


See?  I can do it too!

But we know you're in the law enforcement profession, so obviously you'll be a law enforcement apologist.   :'(

DiMaio also said "What these people are dying of is an overdose of adrenaline."

Not to quote any more of his articles but excited delirium was a descriptive phrase coined by medical researchers to describe the extreme end of a continuum of drug abuse effects.

Don't let the truth get in the way of your opinions. Everyone knows that "police watchdog groups" and the ACLU are not biased.

Hoss, don't worry, when you get scared and call the police, we'll still show up even if you think we just beat people. ;D

Just a few articles I pulled up

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/health&id=6620623

http://www.aclu.org/police/abuse/19977prs20051006.html

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-04-01-taser-report_x.htm

http://www.ajconline.org/article/S0002-9149(08)02113-9/abstract

I only scanned these articles, but every one of them seem to support that tasers are at least partially to blame for an increase in-custody deaths.  Even without the articles or studies, common sense tells you that electrocuting someone, even with the amperage used in  tasers, carries a risk.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is lieing to themselves.

Of course their is a risk but No one has successfully proven that the taser cased their death.  Since you didn't read your articles let me tell you about them, The first one talks about a study from the American Journal of Cardiology Association. The article then states that their observational study has limitations because several California cities and all of the largest U.S. cities surveyed were unwilling to release information. The fourth article is the same study.

The second study is an ACLU study. I bet anyone can guess it's results. The third study is an Amnesty International study that predates the 2007 study that was cited above. Of course it is Amnesty International so you can again guess it's results.

Of course the articles contained some dissenting quotes, and im sure the author intended to balance his reporting with such, but I wasnt particularly worried because of the strength of the argument warning against being dismissive about taser deaths.

Politics aside, the Taser's effectiveness hinges around it's ability to disrupt the brain's ability to control all muscles in the body, except magically the heart, which it somehow knows how to avoid.  It's a gray science backed up more by corporate lawyers than by physicians.     

I remember a few years back when deaths at the hands of police were all being attributed to "suicide" but since "Excited Delirium" was dreamed up it has proven to be a much more publicly acceptable shade of whitewash.

So let me get this right, because you don't agree with what the studies say, you can just ignore anything in them.  And I went back and reread them after I posted as I had time.  So far every study and/or article that has been linked on this thread has shown data giving strength to the dangers of tasers.  In fact, when I did the search for these articles I linked the ones on the first page that were on sites that I knew (like usa today).  I liked all of them on the first page, and even went a few more pages in looking at results.  Nothing I could find states any studies showing that there is no risk in using tasers.  The fact that you are the one in this conversation that is at risk of loosing a weapon because of it's missuse, and are so blindly fighting that it's safe is scary in itself. 

And this one I came on, and it's not even a US station that this report comes from.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/map-tasers-canada/

"So let me get this right, because you don't agree with what the studies say, you can just ignore anything in them.  And I went back and reread them after I posted as I had time.  So far every study and/or article that has been linked on this thread has shown data giving strength to the dangers of tasers.  In fact, when I did the search for these articles I linked the ones on the first page that were on sites that I knew (like usa today).  I liked all of them on the first page, and even went a few more pages in looking at results.  Nothing I could find states any studies showing that there is no risk in using tasers.  The fact that you are the one in this conversation that is at risk of loosing a weapon because of it's missuse, and are so blindly fighting that it's safe is scary in itself. 

And this one I came on, and it's not even a US station that this report comes from.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/map-tasers-canada/"

I guess you conveniently missed the study I cited earlier or you are ignoring it because you don't agree with it.

I'm confused about your earlier statement, Are you arguing about the dangers of the taser or it's missuse?

Oh FYI, I don't use a Taser.

Sorry, missed your posting on that. However, even the report that you cited shows that a risk is involved with using the taser. 

And I am arguing about the dangers.  The missuse is not really an issue that can be argued.  It exists, it hurts, it will be missused.

Its been years since Ive heard anyone use the contrived term "excited delirium" to justify in-custody deaths.

Deputies 'acted justifiably' to subdue motorist who died after fight, Wagoner County DA says
Both deputies deployed their stun guns, but attempts to subdue Krueger were “completely ineffective.”  Shortly thereafter, law enforcement officers discovered that he was not breathing normally; he was quickly taken to Wagoner City Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving.
“The preliminary finding, absent toxicology results, is that Krueger died as the result of excited delirium.”

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/state-and-regional/deputies-acted-justifiably-to-subdue-motorist-who-died-after-fight/article_b459c4e2-06b9-5abd-aadf-11fad8f54e5c.html


A leading doctors group on Thursday formally withdrew its approval of a 2009 paper on “excited delirium,” a document that critics say has been used to justify excessive force by police.

The American College of Emergency Physicians in a statement called the paper outdated and said the term excited delirium should not be used by members who testify in civil or criminal cases. The group's directors voted on the matter Thursday in Philadelphia.

“This means if someone dies while being restrained in custody ... people can’t point to excited delirium as the reason and can’t point to ACEP’s endorsement of the concept to bolster their case,” said Dr. Brooks Walsh, a Connecticut emergency doctor who pushed the organization to strengthen its stance.

In March, the National Association of Medical Examiners took a stand against the term, saying it should not be listed as a cause of death. Other medical groups, including the American Medical Association, had previously rejected excited delirium as a diagnosis. Critics have called it unscientific and rooted in racism.

https://tulsaworld.com/ap/national/a-doctors-group-calls-its-excited-delirium-paper-outdated-and-withdraws-its-approval/article_7368f685-4a32-5af4-95cc-af08daf7ae2e.html

Euphemism for "high as sh!t on PCP"

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-taser-legal/

or just plain old asphyxiation:
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2019/07/30/gonna-kill-dallas-police-body-cam-footage-reveals-final-minutes-tony-timpas-life