Police Taser Gun Abuse Videos and Information

Click Here For Article! Taser video shows RCMP shocked immigrant within 25 seconds of their arrival

An eyewitness’s video recording of a man dying after being stunned with a Taser by police on Oct. 14 at Vancouver International Airport has been released to the public.

Robert Dziekanski is jolted by a shot from an RCMP Taser.
(Paul Pritchard)

The 10-minute video recording clearly shows four RCMP officers talking to Robert Dziekanski while he is standing with his back to a counter and with his arms lowered by his sides, but his hands are not visible.

About 25 seconds after police enter the secure area where he is, there is a loud crack that sounds like a Taser shot, followed by Dziekanski screaming and convulsing as he stumbles and falls to the floor.

Another loud crack can be heard as an officer appears to fire one more Taser shot into Dziekanski.

As the officers kneel on top of Dziekanski and handcuff him, he continues to scream and convulse on the floor.

One officer is heard to say, “Hit him again. Hit him again,” and there is another loud cracking sound.

Police have said only two Taser shots were fired, but a witness said she heard up to four Taser shots.

Robert Dziekanski falls to the floor as an RCMP officer looks on.
(Paul Pritchard)

A minute and half after the first Taser shot was fired Dziekanski stops moaning and convulsing and becomes still and silent.

Shortly after, the officers appear to be checking his condition and one officer is heard to say, “code red.”

The video ends shortly after.

Minutes later, ambulance attendants arrived but their efforts to revive Dziekanski were unsuccessful and he was declared dead.

RCMP spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr said no one can judge what happened to Dziekanski by just watching the video.

“It’s just one piece of evidence, one person’s view. There are many people that we have spoken to,” RCMP spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

Four RCMP officers subdue Robert Dziekanski after stunning him with a Taser on Oct. 14 at Vancouver airport.
(Paul Pritchard)

“What I urge is that those watching the video, take note of that. Put what they’ve seen aside for the time being. And wait to hear the totality of the evidence at the time of the inquest,” Carr said.

But retired superintendent Ron Foyle, a 33-year veteran of the Vancouver police who saw the video tape, said he didn’t know “why it ever became a police incident.”

“It didn’t seem that he made any threatening gestures towards them,” Foyle said.

Much of the video was shot through the glass walls that separate the international arrivals lounge from a secure area outside the Canada Customs exit.

The video was recorded in three segments. The first segment shows Dziekanski before police arrive.

He is clearly agitated, yelling in Polish, and appears to be sweating. He can be seen taking office chairs and putting them in front of the security doors. He then picks up a small table, which he holds, while a woman in the arrivals lounge calmly speaks to him in apparent effort to calm him down.

Before police arrived, Robert Dziekanski picked up a small table and put it in the doorway between the customs exit area and a public lounge.
(Paul Pritchard)

In the second segment, Dziekanski picks up a computer and throws it to the ground. Three airport personnel arrive and block the exit from the secure area, but Dziekanski retreats inside and does not threaten them.

Officers arrive in lounge

Then four RCMP officers arrive in the lounge. Someone can be heard mentioning the word Tasers.

Someone replies, “Yes,” as the officers approach the security doors.

Police have said repeatedly that there were only three RCMP officers involved in the incident, but the video shows four men in RCMP uniforms.

People in the lounge can be heard clearly telling the police Dziekanski speaks no English, only Russian. His mother later said he only spoke Polish.

Police enter the secure area with no problems and can be seen with Dziekanski standing calmly talking with officers. They appear to direct him to stand against a wall, which he does.

As he is standing there, one of the officers shoots him with a Taser.

RCMP officers have also said police did not use pepper spray because of the large number of people at the airport at the time. But the video shows Dziekanski standing alone with the four officers in an otherwise empty area, which is separated from the public area by a thick glass wall.

Pritchard hired lawyer

Paul Pritchard, right, accompanied by his lawyer, Paul Pearson, at a recent press conference, said that he feels police are trying to manipulate the truth.
(CBC)

Paul Pritchard shot the video with his digital camera, but afterward he surrendered it to police for their investigation on a promise that they would return it within 48 hours.

The next day, police told Pritchard they would not be returning the recording as promised.

Carr previously stated investigators kept the video longer than they anticipated in order to protect the integrity of the police investigation while they interviewed witnesses.

Saying he feared a coverup by police, Pritchard then engaged a lawyer to start legal proceedings to reclaim the recording. Police returned the recording to him on Wednesday.

Dziekanski, 40, died on Oct. 14, hours after he arrived at Vancouver International Airport. He was on his way to Kamloops to live with his mother in the B.C. Interior.

Robert Dziekanski with his mother Zofia Cisowski in Poland, before she emigrated to Canada.

The Polish immigrant arrived from Europe the previous day around 4 p.m., but for some unknown reason he did not clear customs until after midnight.

Dziekanski’s mother had already returned home to Kamloops after waiting for several hours at the airport. She claims airport officials offered her no help locating her son.

The RCMP’s integrated homicide investigation team, the B.C. coroner’s service, the Vancouver International Airport Authority and the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP are each conducting their own investigations into the incident.

 Click Here for Original Story

 Pregnant woman ‘Tasered’ by police is convicted

By HECTOR CASTRO
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

She was rushing her son to school. She was eight months pregnant. And she was about to get a speeding ticket she didn’t think she deserved.

So when a Seattle police officer presented the ticket to Malaika Brooks, she refused to sign it. In the ensuing confrontation, she suffered burns from a police Taser, an electric stun device that delivers 50,000 volts.

“Probably the worst thing that ever happened to me,” Brooks said, in describing that morning during her criminal trial last week on charges of refusing to obey an officer and resisting arrest.

She was found guilty of the first charge because she never signed the ticket, but the Seattle Municipal Court jury could not decide whether she resisted arrest, the reason the Taser was applied.

To her attorneys and critics of police use of Tasers, Brooks’ case is an example of police overreaction.

“It’s pretty extraordinary that they should have used a Taser in this case,” said Lisa Daugaard, a public defender familiar with the case.

Law enforcement officers have said they see Tasers as a tool that can benefit the public by reducing injuries to police and the citizens they arrest.

Seattle police officials declined to comment on this case, citing concerns that Brooks might file a civil lawsuit.

But King County sheriff’s Sgt. Donald Davis, who works on the county’s Taser policy, said the use of force is a balancing act for law enforcement.

“It just doesn’t look good to the public,” he said.

Brooks’ run-in with police Nov. 23 came six months before Seattle adopted a new policy on Taser use that guides officers on how to deal with pregnant women, the very young, the very old and the infirm. When used on such subjects, the policy states, “the need to stop the behavior should clearly justify the potential for additional risks.”

“Obviously, (law enforcement agencies) don’t want to use a Taser on young children, pregnant woman or elderly people,” Davis said. “But if in your policy you deliberately exclude a segment of the population, then you have potentially closed off a tool that could have ended a confrontation.”

Brooks was stopped in the 8300 block of Beacon Avenue South, just outside the African American Academy, while dropping her son off for school.

In a two-day trial that ended Friday, the officer involved, Officer Juan Ornelas, testified he clocked Brooks’ Dodge Intrepid doing 32 mph in a 20-mph school zone.

He motioned her over and tried to write her a ticket, but she wouldn’t sign it, even when he explained that signing it didn’t mean she was admitting guilt.

Brooks, in her testimony, said she believed she could accept a ticket without signing for it, which she had done once before.

“I said, ‘Well, I’ll take the ticket, but I won’t sign it,’ ” Brooks testified.

Officer Donald Jones joined Ornelas in trying to persuade Brooks to sign the ticket. They then called on their supervisor, Sgt. Steve Daman.

He authorized them to arrest her when she continued to refuse.

The officers testified they struggled to get Brooks out of her car but could not because she kept a grip on her steering wheel.

And that’s when Jones brought out the Taser.

Brooks testified she didn’t even know what it was when Jones showed it to her and pulled the trigger, allowing her to hear the crackle of 50,000 volts of electricity.

The officers testified that was meant as a final warning, as a way to demonstrate the device was painful and that Brooks should comply with their orders.

When she still did not exit her car, Jones applied the Taser.

In his testimony, the Taser officer said he pressed the prongs of the muzzle against Brooks’ thigh to no effect. So he applied it twice to her exposed neck.

Afterward, he and the others testified, Ornelas pushed Brooks out of the car while Jones pulled.

She was taken to the ground, handcuffed and placed in a patrol car, the officers testified.

She told jurors the officer also used the device on her arm, and showed them a dark, brown burn to her thigh, a large, red welt on her arm and a lump on her neck, all marks she said came from the Taser application.

At the South Precinct, Seattle fire medics examined Brooks, confirmed she was pregnant and recommended she be evaluated at Harborview Medical Center.

Brooks said she was worried about the effect the trauma and the Taser might have on her baby, but she delivered a healthy girl Jan. 31.

Still, she said, she remains shocked that a simple traffic stop could result in her arrest.

“As police officers, they could have hurt me seriously. They could have hurt my unborn fetus,” she said.

“All because of a traffic ticket. Is this what it’s come down to?”

Davis said Tasers remain a valuable tool, and that situations like Brooks’ are avoidable.

“I know the Taser is controversial in all these situations where it seems so egregious,” he said. “Why use a Taser in a simple traffic stop? Well, the citizen has made it more of a problem. It’s no longer a traffic stop. This is now a confrontation.”

**Click Here** for Article in the UCLA Daily Bruin about the taser abuse

Police Taser Abuse Incident UCLA

Incident occured around 11:30 p.m. in the Powell Library CLICC computer lab

• Published: Wednesday, November 15, 2006

UCPD officers shot a student several times with a Taser inside the Powell Library CLICC computer lab late Tuesday night before taking him into custody.

No university police officers were available to comment further about the incident as of 3 a.m. Wednesday, and no Community Service Officers who were on duty at the time could be reached.

At around 11:30 p.m., CSOs asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check. The student did not exit the building immediately.

The CSOs left, returning minutes later, and police officers arrived to escort the student out. By this time the student had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack when an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, at which point the student told the officer to let him go. A second officer then approached the student as well.

The student began to yell “get off me,” repeating himself several times.

It was at this point that the officers shot the student with a Taser for the first time, causing him to fall to the floor and cry out in pain. The student also told the officers he had a medical condition.

UCPD officers confirmed that the man involved in the incident was a student, but did not give a name or any additional information about his identity.

Video shot from a student’s camera phone captured the student yelling, “Here’s your Patriot Act, here’s your f ing abuse of power,” while he struggled with the officers.

As the student was screaming, UCPD officers repeatedly told him to stand up and said “stop fighting us.” The student did not stand up as the officers requested and they shot him with the Taser at least once more.

“It was the most disgusting and vile act I had ever seen in my life,” said David Remesnitsky, a 2006 UCLA alumnus who witnessed the incident.

As the student and the officers were struggling, bystanders repeatedly asked the police officers to stop, and at one point officers told the gathered crowd to stand back and threatened to use a Taser on anyone who got too close.

Laila Gordy, a fourth-year economics student who was present in the library during the incident, said police officers threatened to shoot her with a Taser when she asked an officer for his name and his badge number.

Gordy was visibly upset by the incident and said other students were also disturbed.

“It’s a shock that something like this can happen at UCLA,” she said. “It was unnecessary what they did.”

Immediately after the incident, several students began to contact local news outlets, informing them of the incident, and Remesnitsky wrote an e-mail to Interim Chancellor Norman Abrams.

With reports from Lisa Connolly, Derek Lipkin and Saba Riazati, Bruin senior staff.