Brooklyn Man Dies After Police Use a Taser Gun

[IDemo]

New York Times
By TRYMAINE LEE and CHRISTINE HAUSER
Published: September 24, 2008

A naked and apparently emotionally disturbed man fell to his death from a building ledge in Brooklyn on Wednesday after an officer shot him with a Taser stun gun, the police said. The police and witnesses said he had been yelling at passers-by and swinging a long light bulb tube at officers before he fell.

The man, identified by the police as Inman Morales, 35, was taken to Kings County Hospital Center with serious head trauma after falling about 10 feet to the ground, witnesses said. He was later pronounced dead, officials said.

Mr. Morales’s death on Wednesday afternoon was another episode in the controversial history of Taser use in the city. While Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has looked cautiously on the use of stun gun technology by the Police Department, he recently said he was open to broadening the use of the weapons after a city-commissioned study on police shooting habits urged the department to consider using Tasers more frequently instead of deadly force when applicable.

A video taken by a witness and posted on the Web site of The New York Post shows Mr. Morales naked on the ledge, waving the filament tube over the heads of officers as onlookers screamed, an eerie soundtrack to what soon followed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/nyregion/25tased.html?em

[BlooInBloo]

1. Fucking piece of shit cops.

[Lerkfish]

2. why in heaven's name would you taser someone in a precarious position on a ledge?

tasering overcomes a person's motor functions.
This should be prosecuted as a homicide.

[sui generis]

3. so . . . what part of tasers is "non-lethal"?

here's the deal. The electric current paralyzes muscle. Skin and organs conduct electricity. Your heart is a muscle. This is not rocket science, there is clearly a high probably that when you zap somebody who has been running, or whose heart is already racing, you're putting them at risk.

Having said that, when used "properly" (meaning, not repeatedly in a circle jerk taser orgy by a bunch of poorly trained morons), they are the better alternative to shooting someone. Now the question to ask is, are tasers being used ONLY where a gun would otherwise be used, or are they being used just for the hell of it whenever some dumbass thinks he needs to exert authority?

Yeah. Thought so.