http://www.fwweekly.com/content.asp?article=770Torture by Taser
When police abuse their newest “nonlethal” toy, people die.
Robert Guerrero may have died because he wouldn’t come out of a closet.
The small-time crook had been looking to steal some electricity. When he tried to illegally reconnect a neighbor’s electrical meter at the North View apartment complex near the Fort Worth Stockyards last November, someone called the cops. And when the officers arrived, someone else pointed them to the closet in Apartment M where he was hiding.
Guerrero, 21, wasn’t a violent criminal. His rap sheet was littered with convictions for things like misdemeanor theft and burglary of a coin-operated machine. Normally, theft of electricity won’t even get you arrested — just reported to the electric company. But when Fort Worth police arrived at the apartment on Clinton Street that afternoon, they treated Guerrero like a dangerous character.
Two officers entered the apartment and pulled open the door to the closet, where Guerrero was hiding under a black plastic trash bag. Officer P.R. Genualdo, a six-year veteran, told him to step out of the closet. When the 143-pound Guerrero refused, Genualdo unholstered his Taser and shot him in the chest, sending electricity through Guerrero’s body. A police report of the incident indicated that Genualdo held the Taser’s trigger down for 10 seconds — double the normal length of time. Worse, in the next minute he jolted Guerrero three more times with five-second blasts before pulling him from the closet floor.
A few minutes after the officers pulled him from the closet, Guerrero stopped breathing. Neither the officers nor paramedics could get his heart started again, and Guerrero was declared dead when an ambulance got him to John Peter Smith Hospital a short while later.
A TASER International video shows the effect of their weapon on a full-grown bull. (www.taser.com)
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