Sleeping Offense
by digby
Last week an Oregon jury found that tasering a sleeping person is an abusive use of force, which is not always the case. Portland columnist Steve Duin was in the court room:
I spent three days last week in the Multnomah County Courthouse listening to a witness — or was it four witnesses? — lie repeatedly under oath.
As I begin to write Friday morning, the jury is still out, but its verdict won’t alter the unkind truth of what happened at the Mall 205 Denny’s 19 months ago, only establish where the story of Jason Elgin and Portland Police Officer Kevin Tully falls between farce and tragedy.
In July 2009, Elgin and Monica Roundtree, a fellow student at Portland Community College, walked into Denny’s at 1:15 a.m., ordered sandwiches and — exhausted from mid-term exams and celebratory drinks — promptly fell asleep. Unable to wake them, the restaurant manager, Zach Fair, called 9-1-1. The diners came in “normal and happy,” Fair told the 9-1-1 operator, but were now dead to the world.
Tully arrived at 1:57 a.m. Although this was a low-priority call, our friendly neighborhood peacekeeper arrived “angry,” according to Cherisse Watts, the waitress, and Danielle Mehner, another witness.
In the next two minutes — most of which is captured on the Denny’s security tape
— Tully did more than roust Elgin and Roundtree. He jerked Elgin off the bench by his feet, twice tazed him, handcuffed him and placed him under arrest on charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, harassment, failure to comply, and trespassing.
After the DA’s office summarily dismissed the five misdemeanors, Elgin filed a $300,000 civil suit against the city, alleging false arrest, battery and malicious prosecution.
The jury found that the officer had a right to arrest the sleeping student but that he was wrong to have tasered him twice while he was on the ground and awarded him 30,000. (Read on for more of this officer’s nasty behavior.)I doubt that this verdict will result in better behavior by the police unfortunately, although it might make this particular officer think twice.
But I think this is correct:
“Nothing will happen to him,” Kafoury assured me. “I’m glad the jury found no force was required (to wake Elgin) because a hell of a lot of force was used. There is nothing more difficult than a police case because people need to believe in the police.”
That belief was sorely tested, yet again, by Tully’s performance at Denny’s and on the seventh floor of the courthouse.
Charged with policing a veritable slumber party, Tully showed up looking for a fight. That farce becomes tragic if the cops who take their peacekeeping mission a lot more seriously are denigrated right along with him.
That’s true. It’s probably a rare cop who would have behaved this way toward a sleeping citizen. But there are plenty who use their tasers inappropriately nonetheless. They have gotten the idea that if it doesn’t leave any marks that it isn’t brutal. And that’s the problem. Until the police agencies take this seriously it’s going to keep happening.
I’ll be curious to see how this one from 2009 comes out:
A federal lawsuit claims the El Reno police “cruelly injured” an elderly and disabled woman with a stun gun, while she lay in her hospital-type bed hooked up to oxygen. The police officers responded to the elderly woman’s home after her grandson called 911, because his grandmother wanted to die, as reported by UPI.
Lonnie D Tinsley, the grandson to 86-year-old Lona M. Varner, was visiting his grandmother when he called 911 on Dec. 22, 2009.
“She says … her life is over. She wants to end it. … She’s taken some medicine. I don’t know what she’s taken,” Tinsley said in the 911 call. “I can’t get her to tell me what she took. … She’s kind of upset and everything else,” says Tinsley.
About 10 El Reno police officers subsequently responded to the emergency call. One of the police officers even stepped on Varner’s oxygen hose, causing her to suffer from oxygen deprivation.
Varner apparently fought back at the help, and pulled a knife from underneath her pillow and threatened officers. One of the officers she threatened subsequently fired a Taser at her, striking her with only one prong.
The lawsuit alleges, “The police then fired a second Taser, striking her to the right and left of the midline of her upper chest and applied high voltage, causing burns to her chest, extreme pain and to pass out. The police then grabbed Ms. Varner by her forearms and jerked hands together, causing her soft flesh to tear and bleed on her bed; they then handcuffed her.”
Both Varner and Tinsley filed a federal lawsuit in Oklahoma City as a result. They claim their civil rights were violated and El Reno failed to adequately train and discipline its officers who were involved in the incident. The suit did not specify what damages were being sought.
.