Category: Uncategorized

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia Austin

As details of the Austin case are still being
puzzled together by press and police officials, local activists said at
a press conference Tuesday afternoon that tasers are dangerous enough
to be taken out of service pending further review.

[Wednesday’s
Statesman reports that 33-year-old Michael Clark was shocked multiple
times after being pepper sprayed during a struggle involving nine
police officers. Family members told the Statesman that Clark was using
crutches after a leg injury Sunday]

Austin Dullnig of the
Texas Civil Liberties Union questioned police use of lethal force in
two recent incidents: the fatal shooting of "130 pound 18-year-old"
Daniel Rocha who was allegedly resisting arrest in June during a
traffic stop/drug bust; and now the death of a 30-something African
American male who allegedly struggled with nine police officers who
were called to the scene of a fight between the man and a woman. Police
have been slow to post an official version of Monday’s Taser associated
death. As of midnight Tuesday, no press releases mentioning the
incident appear at the department’s official web site.

Although
Austin Police Chief Stan Knee has been widely quoted saying that
Monday’s death was, "the first time someone has died in custody after
being Tased," activists point to the case of Abel Ortega Perez who "was
tased several times and later died". The Austin Chronicle reports that
the official cause of death for Mr. Perez was "accidental overdose".
The American-Statesman reports that police say Perez also had a
superficial head wound prior to the burglary he was arrested for
committing. Could the head wound prove to be the official cause of
death? Statesman reporter Joshunda Sanders writes that the final
autopsy (for the June 2004 case?) was still unavailable Monday night.
Sanders attended Tuesday’s press conference outside police headquarters
(see press release below).

The Perez case went unreported in
the press for more than a year, until local activists noticed a taser
associated death in a routine statistical report. The Chronicle
mentioned the case in August when reporting on an admission by Taser
International, Inc. that "repeated, prolonged and/or continuous
exposure to the Taser may cause strong muscle contractions that may
impair breathing and respiration, particularly when the [weapon’s
metal] probes are placed across the chest or diaphragm."

‘When
Taser International admits their product is lethal, then you know you
have a problem," said Debbie Russell at Tuesday’s press conference.

Try
"dies taser" on your favorite search engine. Try "dies taser" on your
favorite search engine under news. In California, South Carolina,
Nashville, and now in Austin, four people died this past week following
taser attacks. In late August, men died in Ohio and Florida following
taser attacks. In the Florida and South Carolina cases, reports say the
victim was stunned twice. In Nashville it was "multiple times" by as
many as 11 officers.

Said Victoria of the Austin Spokescouncil,
"The public perception of Tasers is that they save lives. But they are
not only immoral, they are potentially deadly."

Tasers were
originally billed as weapons to be used instead of guns, but the weapon
has taken on a life of its own. Taser use went up from 66 to 334 from
2003 to 2004 says the Statesman. TCLU’s Dullnig said at the press
conference that of 334 Taser uses reported by the Austin Police
Department in 2004, only five were said to have replaced use of guns.
Police are claiming that injuries to suspects and police have gone down
as a result of taser deployment, but it’s not clear from web sources
whether being stunned is being itself counted as an injury under usual
circumstances.

Spencer Crowl of ownside.org
said, "Considering that the Taser is the second line of defense, I
would be shocked if APD came out and said they would have needed to use
guns 300-350 times."

Amnesty International also worries,
"that US police agencies are deploying tasers as a routine force option
to subdue non-compliant or disturbed individuals who do not pose a
serious danger to themselves or others." But Amnesty also worries that
sometimes, "the use of electro-shock weapons appears to have violated
international standards prohibiting torture or other cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment as well as standards set out under the United
Nations (UN) Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and the
Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement
Officials."

As Chief Knee told the Statesman, "use of the Taser
during the arrest was in line with department policy, which allows use
of a Taser whenever a suspect actively resists arrest."

—–
For immediate release – Sept. 27, 2005
Contact: Debbie Russell: (512) 573-6194 "The Taser Hotline"

MORATORIUM on TASERS NOW!!!!
Austin Police Department must stop targeting the people of southeast Austin!

PRESS CONFERENCE: 5pm today: APD Headquarters, 8th and I-35

Yesterday,
a person of color died approximately an hour after being “Tasered” by
APD. According to the Statesman, there were 5 officers present to
subdue the one reportedly uncooperative suspect. Given these odds, the
police should have been able to subdue a single individual without
having to use the second most deadly weapon in their arsenal. Instead,
they used a lethal weapon on a single unarmed and outmanned suspect,
and ended up killing him, as in the shooting of Daniel Rocha that
occurred not 4 months ago. Contrary to statements by Chief Knee, such
exaggerated use of force is not in accordance with APD policy, which
calls for the “least amount of force necessary” to resolve a conflict.

Now that more and more medical examiners nationwide are ruling that
Tasers are a contributing cause, and in some cases, the primary cause,
of deaths; since some segments of the law enforcement community are
coming out AGAINST the weapon such as 2 divisions of the Department of
Homeland Security having dsallowed their use and a national law
enforcement-based class action suit against Taser, Int. has been
brought forth – accusing the company of misleading the law enforcement
community and the public in terms of safety; since the SEC is now fully
investigating Taser Int., (after earlier this year announcing an
inquiry into the safety of the product); and while TASER, INT.
themselves admit they are lethal,* there is no logical reason to
continue to use these poorly-designed and potentially lethal tools on
the streets.

While the City of Austin’s Human Rights Commission
is hard at work on improving policy and oversight regarding the use of
these lethal weapons, the City must act today by placing a moratorium
on Taser use until further studies have been conducted and APD use of
force policies and procedures have been further examined and revised.
It is too late to help the second victim in Austin of Taser abuse by
the APD, but we can prevent further deaths! We must implement an
IMMEDIATE MORATORIUM on their use in Austin!

—
Christian
Hartwig, a very recent APD Taser victim, will be on hand to relay his
story about how policy was broken when police on 6th St. repeatedly and
simultaneously tasered him as a means to resolve a conflict that was no
longer even taking place.
—

*From a June 28 memo:
"repeated, prolonged and/or continuous exposure to the Taser may cause
strong muscle contractions that may impair breathin

g and respiration,
particularly when the [weapon’s metal] probes are placed across the
chest or diaphragm…[which] may lead to death.” This is the first
admittance that the weapon is, in fact, NOT non-lethal. This came out,
certainly without coincidence, on the same day that the first medical
examiner in the nation (in Chicago) ruled a Taser as the primary cause
of death.

Links related to above info:
http://www.newsinferno.com/storypages/8-23-2005~001.html
http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/0927Taser27-ON.html
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/index.php?page=business&story_id=092605d1_taser

In early 2002, Rocha was assigned to my math class, since he was having
problems with his grades and had a slight learning disability.
Rocha seemed to be cocky and non-caring about school….One day he
confronted me and pulled out a large roll of cash and showed it to
me. He asked me "How much do you make?" He flashed this
roll in my face and said he made enough money to buy a grade from
me….I decided to front him out in front of the class. I told
Rocha that he would just get busted and use all his money getting a
lawyer to get out of jail. Rocha would always say "No cop is
going to take anything away from me or take me down. I ain’t
goin’ to jail….We attempted to work with him and tried to intervene
as needed….Some of the female students said they were afraid of
Rocha…I became upset when I heard people in the neighborhood saying
that Rocha was a good boy and an innocent young man….

The Governor’s Office has a pdf file that claims
Texas ranks way high up in total spending on schools. Well it
ought to rank high up as the second most populous state. Question
is, how does Texas rank in terms of spending per pupil? Here the
Governor’s preferred source (the NEA) ranks Texas 34th or 35th.

Here’s the Governor’s PDF

Here’s the NEA (see page 57)

And here are the latest census numbers (Released June 30, 2005)

Also worth mentioning, since 2000 Texas is the second fastest growing state in terms of raw numbers (1.6 million), fourth in terms of percentage (7.9).

***

"In the view of attorney David Thompson who represents the
property-rich plaintiffs led by West Orange Cove, the steady
improvement of the past ten years cannot assure the Court that things
will go equally well in the next decade. For Thompson the difference
this time around is that standards are being rapidly increased and
achievement gaps are showing up again but state appropriations are not
matching the challenge. Although total state funding has gone up, the
state is also growing, with the result that state spending per pupil
has gone down. Meanwhile local tax options have reached capacity."

See below: Texas Supreme Court Justices Seek Role in Education

On October 8, 2004, Daniel Rocha was sentenced to six (6) years
Community Supervision for the criminal offense of Burglary of a
Habitation…. Since that date, two (2) Motion To Revoke Probation have
been filed. thje first was filed on February 8, 2005 due to Rocha
being arrested for Possession of Marijuana, failure to complete a TCADA
License Intensive Outpatient Treatment and delinquent monies. The
offender was continued on supervision on Apri 1, 2005.

On June 2 [H name withheld by editor] called to inform me that Mr.
Rocha had committed the subsequent criminal offense of Theft from a
Person, State Jail Felony. He also indicated that at the time of
the offense, the offender was seen with [I name withheld by editor] a
convicted felon…

The report goes on to describe a conversation with Danel’s mother
Daniella in which the mother expresses concern that Daniel is hanging
out with the old crowd: "she was worried about him getting hurt because he does something stupid while getting arrested."