http://www.fox10tv.com/video/videoplayer.swf?dppversion=2397
Victor Steen, a 17-year-old high school senior from West Pensacola, Florida, was murdered while riding a bicycle home from a post-Homecoming Game party last October 3rd. His murderer, Jerald Ard, ran him down in an automobile. According to eyewitnesses, Ard dragged the victim a considerable distance, nearly severing his body in half.
Ard had endangered other drivers and pedestrians as he veered into the wrong lane and even drove onto a sidewalk in pursuit of Victor, repeatedly attempting to shoot the teenager with a lethal weapon. After he ran down the youngster, Ard tried to cover up his crime by planting a gun on the victim.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Ard is a police officer. Nor should it be considered unusual that he will suffer no significant punishment for his act of vehicular homicide: After it was established last April that Ard’s actions had exposed Victor “to unreasonable risk of harm and injury” — gee, ya think? — Capt. Jay Worley suspended Ard for two weeks without pay.
In a coroner’s inquest last February, Escambia County Judge John Simon blamed the victim for his death.
“Mr. Steen desired to avoid apprehension on October 3, 2009. That desire led to Mr. Steen’s ill-advised decision to ignore a lawful command.”
What about Ard’s reckless driving? According to former police officer Dave Klinger, a use-of-force expert who examined the case, Ard was driving with “one hand on the steering wheel and looking out the window when he [fired] the Taser, which [meant he didn't] have complete control over the car.” This not only led to Victor’s death, but placed other lives at risk.
Judge Simon says that “Officer Ard violated no traffic laws in light of the fact that he was actively pursuing Mr. Steen.”
All of this depends, of course, on the assumption that Ard had just cause to be pursuing the 17-year-old — and he’s never told a straight story about his reasons for doing so. He initially claimed to have seen the young man at a construction site and suspected that he may have stolen something. After an eyewitness testified that Victor had passed the site without stopping, Ard changed his story, claiming that there was no reflector or light on the bike Victor was riding.
Given Ard’s equivocal description of his reasons for pursuing Victor, he clearly had no “lawful” right to detain the young man, let alone assault him with a Taser — thereby directly precipitating the victim’s violent death when he lost control of his bike.
Dashcam video recorded by one of the police cars that arrived on the scene showed Ard unlocking the passenger side of his cruiser and retrieving an object, then crawling under the car. He stayed there for more than a half-minute. When paramedics arrived two minutes later, they found a silver-and-black 9mm semiautomatic handguns in one of the victim’s pockets.
“Lab tests showed the gun had been wiped clean,” reports the St. Petersburg Times. “No fingerprints were on it — not Victor’s, not anyone’s.” Either the mortally wounded teenager — despite being nearly cut in half by Ard’s cruiser — managed to wipe the gun clean in the seconds before he died, or Ard planted a “drop gun” to provide a retroactive pretext for his pursuit of the teenager.
After seeing the video, an investigator for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement asked Ard if he had planted the gun. The subject was promptly dropped when Ard denied that he had done so.
According to Klinger, Ard’s use of a Taser in these circumstances was impermissible: “You don’t Taser people in circumstances that increase the likelihood of injury unless they’re a suspect for something like rape or murder.”
Assuming that Ard’s second story is correct, Victor Steen was suspected of what Judge Simon called a “non-criminal” infraction — hardly the kind of thing that justifies the use of lethal force. However, Judge Simon placed his imprimatur on Ard’s lethal actions by insisting that Steen precipitated the chase by engaging in “unprovoked flight” from Ard, which created a “reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.”
This neatly closes the circular argument: Ard didn’t commit a crime by murdering Victor Steen, because the young man — a mere Mundane, after all — made a criminal of himself by fleeing the armed stranger who eventually killed him for no reason.
SOURCE: Murder a Kid, Plant a Gun — Take a Vacation via Lew Rockwell dot com Blog.
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/2441023001?isVid=1
‘I Have a Black Male Trying to Get Away From Me on a Bicycle’
So said a Pensacola, Florida cop before he tasered the man on the bike, ran him over with his squad car, killing him, and then planted a gun on the body. (Thanks to Travis Holte). According to the Tampa Bay media, Florida’s “finest” have killed 57 civilians with taser guns since 2001, leading the nation in that particular category of Death by Government.
‘I Have a Black Male Trying to Get Away From Me on a Bicycle’ « LewRockwell.com Blog.
Cop uses Taser on another in Mass. off-duty spat
Thu Jul 15, 9:11 am ET
HAVERHILL, Mass. – Two police officers are facing charges after an off-duty fracas outside a Massachusetts home ended with one officer using a Taser on the other.
Daron Fraser lives in Raymond, N.H., and is a patrolman in Lawrence, Mass. Joshua Wallar, of Methuen, Mass., is a patrolman in Kingston, N.H.
Authorities say Fraser and his pregnant girlfriend were having a dispute late Tuesday night in Haverhill (HAY’-vruhl), when Wallar intervened and subdued Fraser with his department-issued Taser.
Fraser was charged with two assault counts. Wallar was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Both pleaded not guilty.
Wallar’s lawyer says his client believed his intervention was justified. Fraser’s lawyer says the dispute was overblown.
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Information from: Eagle Tribune, www.eagletribune.com
Cop uses Taser on another in Mass. off-duty spat – Yahoo! News.
| Jul 15, 2010 … The incident grew into an altercation in which Fraser was subdued with a Taser weapon by off-duty Kingston, N.H., Patrolman Joshua Wallar, … www.eagletribune.com/…/Off-duty-cop-Tasered-by-other-in-neighborhood-fracas – 9 hours ago |
| Jul 15, 2010 … Kingston, N.H., Patrolman Joshua Wallar, 26, of Methuen, who subdued Fraser with a Taser issued by his department, was charged with assault … www.eagletribune.com/…/Off-duty-cop-Tasered-by-other-in-neighborhood-fracas – 12 hours ago |
| Salem police Sgt. James Chase stepped in, drawing his Taser, warning the Londonderry man that the dot of a laser trained on him meant he was about to fire. … www.eagletribune.com/newhampshire/x1876376719/Tasers…N…/print |
| Aug 2, 2008 … Police said Estes squared off against the police holding a 40-ounce bottle of beer in his hand, and an officer used a Taser to subdue him. … www.eagletribune.com/local/…/Officers-use-Taser-on-Methuen-man |
| “The whole department became Taser-certified within the past six months,” … The Taser can be used as a direct-contact stun gun, or, in its regular mode, … www.eagletribune.com/local/x1650958362/Lawrence-police…/print |
| One of the officers took a Taser off his belt and warned him they would use it on him. Getchell then submitted to being handcuffed, Patten said. … www.eagletribune.com/newhampshire/x1876449485/…Taser…/print |
| Eagle Tribune news from Southern New Hampshire including Derry, Londonderry, Salem and Windham. www.eagletribune.com/…/Police-use-Taser-when-man-interferes-with-emergency-workers |
| Windham police ended up using a Taser to subdue Christopher Grannis, 20, after he wrestled with two officers who were trying to handcuff him Saturday … www.eagletribune.com/newhampshire/x1876438503/…use-Taser…/print |
| May 16, 2010 … SALEM — A veteran police officer faces possible disciplinary action and has been placed on desk duty after his on-duty handgun and Taser … www.eagletribune.com/…/Gun-Taser-stolen-from-Salem-police-officers-car?… |
| Eagle Tribune news from Southern New Hampshire including Derry, Londonderry, Salem and Windham. www.eagletribune.com/…/Police-use-taser-gun-to-subdue-suspect-in-domestic-disturbance |
2 officers out of jobs in wake of repeated Tasering of woman
By Rhonda Cook / The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Janice Wells called the Richland Police Department when she feared a prowler was outside her clapboard house in the rural west Georgia town.
The third-grade teacher had phoned for help. But within minutes of an officer coming to her backdoor, she was screaming in pain and begging not to be shocked again with a Taser. With each scream and cry, the officer threatened her with more shocks.
“All of it’s just unreal to me. I was scared to death,” Wells said in an interview with the AJC. “He kept tasing me and tasing me. My fingernails are still burned. My leg, back and my butt had a long scar on it for days.”
The officer in question is Ryan Smith of the Lumpkin Police Department. Smith was called to back up an officer from the Richland Police Department because the sheriff’s office in the county, Stewart, had no deputies to send.
Smith resigned as a result of the incident. The other officer involved, Tim Murphy of Richland PD, was fired for using pepper spray while trying to arrest Wells.
Wells is considering filing a lawsuit, according to her attorney,.
…
Read entire article here:
More News Coverage:
Lonnie Tinsley of El Reno, Oklahoma made a nearly fatal mistake last December 22 when he went to check on his grandma, Lona Vernon.
Concerned that Lona hadn’t taken her medications, Lonnie called 911 in the expectation that an emergency medical technician would be dispatched to the apartment to evaluate the bedridden 86-year-old woman.
Instead, that call for help was answered by nearly a dozen armed tax-feeders employed by the El Reno Police Department.
Understandably alarmed — and probably more than a little disgusted — by the presence of uninvited armed strangers in her home, Lona ordered them to leave. This directive, issued by a fragile female octogenarian confined to a hospital-style bed and tethered to an oxygen tank, was interpreted as “aggressive” behavior by Officer Thomas Duran, who ordered one of his associates : “Taser her!”
“Don’t taze my granny!” exclaimed Tinsley. According to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Tinsley’s “obstructive” behavior prompted the police to threaten him with their tasers. He was then was assaulted, removed from the room, thrown to the floor, handcuffed, and detained in a police car. At this point, the heroes in blue turned their attention to Lona.
The tactical situation was daunting; at this point, the police had only a 10-1 advantage over a subject who — according to Duran’s official report — had taken an “aggressive posture” in her hospital bed. The sacred imperative of “officer safety” dictated that the subject be thoroughly softened up in order to minimize resistance.
Accordingly, one of the officers approached Lona and “stepped on her oxygen hose until she began to suffer oxygen deprivation,” narrates the complaint, based on Lona’s account. One of the officers then shot her with a taser, but the connection wasn’t solid. A second fired his taser, “striking her to the left of the midline of her upper chest, and applied high voltage, causing burns to her chest, extreme pain,” and unconsciousness. Lona was then handcuffed with sufficient ruthlessness to tear the soft flesh of her forearms, causing her to bleed.
Read the entire article here:
Some parents are voicing objections to tasers in schools…
Glynn County school board rejects Taser proposal
March 23, 2010 – 8:49pm
“My intention is to bring this issue for an up or down vote,” Madala said.
BRUNSWICK — The Glynn County school board, voting 6-1 Tuesday night, rejected a proposal to arm the school system’s 24 police officers with Tasers.
School system Police Chief Ron Lee had requested the non-lethal weapons, saying officers needed them to do their job. The officers already carry .40-caliber semi-automatic pistols and pepper spray while some also have batons.
Board member John Madala, chairman of the board’s Safety and Discipline Committee, who advocated measure was the only one to vote for it.
Opposed were board Chairman Millard Allen, Vice Chairman Ray Snow and members Venus Holmes, Mike Hulsey, Jerry Mancil and Ruby Robinson. They cited the wishes of their constituents or concern that the school system would be sued if a student died or was severely injured after being tased.
In his motion, Madala asked the board to approve issuing Tasers to school police contingent upon three factors: when money was available to pay for the weapons; when policies governing their use were in place and when the officers underwent proper training to use them.
Read the rest here: jacksonville.com
