.png)
Attorneys for the families of two of the men killed are calling for a moratorium on the use of Tasers in San Mateo county.
A man killed after sheriff’s deputies south of San Francisco Tasered him earlier this month was the third such death in the county at the hands of law enforcement officers using the electric-shock weapon in the past 10 months.
The series of killings in San Mateo county has law enforcement officials reconsidering the value of a weapon used by police agencies worldwide as a less-lethal alternative to a gun while attorneys for the families of two of the men killed are calling for a moratorium on the use of Tasers in the county until a thorough study on the department’s policies and training is completed.
“In a county our size, to have three deaths where a Taser was used, it has to raise concerns for everybody, for law enforcement and for everyone else in the community,” said the San Mateo county district attorney, Steve Wagstaffe, whose office is investigating the killings. “The whole goal was for our officers to have something other than a firearm. Their motive is good. But is this the right tool?”
Chinedu Okobi, 36, died shortly after he was Tasered by San Mateo county sheriff’s deputies on 3 October. Department officials said Okobi, who was unarmed, had been “running in and out of traffic” in Millbrae when he “assaulted” a sheriff’s deputy who approached him.
According to his family, Okobi – a poet, father, and Morehouse College graduate – had been struggling with mental illness.
Two months before his death, a Redwood City police officer Tased 55-year-old Ramsay Saad multiple times in a home less than 20 miles south from where deputies encountered Okobi. Police had been responding to reports that he had assaulted his 83-year-old mother and arrived to find his neighbors restraining him.
In January, 34-year-old Warren Ragudo died after Daly City police officers Tased him inside his home. Ragudo suffered from drug addiction and mental health issues, and his family had called the police in hopes of getting him help, according to a lawsuit filed against the police department in September.
“I think every time you have an example of what happened in San Mateo county – and there are many of these incidents cropping up everywhere – police departments need to stop and look at what that means with the potential use of this weapon,” said Micaela Davis, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is an example of what could happen anywhere.”
Following Okobi’s death, the ACLU filed a public records request for the San Mateo county sheriff’s use-of-force and stun gun policies.
“One of the big concerns with these weapons is that they’re not, in fact, non-lethal,” Davis said. “They can be lethal. And because many law enforcement officers have been trained and believe that these are simple non-lethal alternatives, it leads to overuse. And with overuse, we see more lethal incidents, as well as non-lethal incidents that still result in serious consequences.”
A spokeswoman for Axon, the company that manufactures Tasers, cited company policy to not comment on ongoing investigations, but the Arizona-based company has long stood by their product, saying that the weapon can be a safer, less-lethal alternative with the proper training.
In recent years, however, weapons experts have noted that following a number of lawsuits, Axon reduced the charge on its newer models and added a number of disclaimers that shifted liability on to the police departments who deploy the weapons rather than on the company that produces them.
“Taser has gone into overdrive with warnings,” said John Burton, a Pasadena-based attorney who has represented plaintiffs in dozens of lawsuits involving the weapons. “If you take their warnings literally, the amount of training that they’re requiring is off the charts and no one is going to do it and it’s going to be very expensive.”
John Burris, an Oakland-based civil rights attorney who is representing Okobi’s family, has handled a number of cases involving Tasers as well and said he found that officers tend to lean on the weapon as a way to make subjects comply, which can have deadly consequences.
“It was sold as a non-lethal weapon, and arguably, you’re not supposed to use it unless you’re at a point where you’re going to use a lethal weapon,” he said. “I have never found that to be the case. What I’ve found that it is a weapon of choice much earlier in a confrontation, in verbal confrontations of minor resistance. It is used contrary to its purpose.”
Burris has called for a moratorium on Taser use in San Mateo county, something Stanley Goff, an attorney representing the family of the man killed in January, said he supports.
“I don’t think police departments should be using them, period,” Goff said. “There are too many scenarios and situations in which a person can die when they’re Tased. If they’re underweight, they can die. If they have heart conditions, they can die. If they’re on drugs, they can die. If they’re elderly, they can die. They shouldn’t be used.”
Dozens of Americans die each year after being Tased by the police. In 2015, at least 50 Americans died after being Tased by the police, according to The Counted, the Guardian’s investigation into every police killing in the United States in 2015 and 2016.
The Redwood City police department did not respond to requests for comment, while the Daly City police declined to comment on its officers’ use of Tasers.
Sheriff’s detective Rosemerry Blankswade of San Mateo county said: “It would be inappropriate for us to make any decisions at this point. We need to allow the district attorney to do a complete investigation. Once the investigation is completed with ours, we definitely want to make sure that everything we do is for the best of the community.”
Wagstaffe, the county district attorney, noted that his office’s role in the investigation is limited when it comes to figuring out the future of the Taser – he determines whether the officers used excessive force in the deaths, and has already cleared the Daly City police officers in the January case.
“We need to try and figure out what role the Taser plays in a person’s death,” he said. “The prior two cases, it’s been vague from the pathologist. They determined that they were cardiac arrests, but we need to know more. If you or I were to grab a live wire with our hands, the cause of death would be clear, but there are too many factors with a Taser.”
With Axon rolling out a new model this month that would require a number of agencies to reinvest millions in the product should they choose to continue equipping their officers with Tasers, Wagstaffe said he believes it’s time “where we need some more knowledge.”
“Three in 10 months,” he said. “We need to take a look at this.”
Comments