Boys and Their Toys: Just a Couple of Kidders...

More from the annals of Boys and their Toys, Dan Kelly at the Reading Eagle reports on the investigation into TASER usage by two West REading, Pa cops:

Berks County detectives are investigating two West Reading police sergeants for allegedly stunning fellow officers, a relative and others with their department-issued Tasers, officials confirmed Thursday.

Matthew R. Beighley and Ryan Phillips had been suspended and are under investigation for improperly stunning people, said Joseph A. Brown, president of the Berks County Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 71 and a borough detective.

Police department records show Beighley and Phillips were suspended with pay April 26 and returned to duty Thursday.  Brown called the incidents embarrassing to the department and all police.

Daniel P. Emkey, a Reading attorney representing borough Officer Chad T. Marks, said Beighley approached Marks from behind and stunned Marks in the buttocks as he was talking to a borough employee in borough hall in late March or early April.

Marks immediately reported the incident to another sergeant, who told Chief Edward C. Fabriziani, officials said.  When Fabriziani took no action, Marks filed a written report with Fabriziani and Brown. Brown and Fabriziani took the matter to the district attorney's office May 2, officials said.

Marks declined comment and referred questions to Emkey.

"They got 2½ months of paid vacation and now Chad Marks has to resume working in that environment," Emkey said.

Officials said Beighley also allegedly stunned a family member in the chest.

During a 2010 Halloween party in Phillips' house, officials said, Phillips allegedly stunned Beighley and a woman, and Beighley stunned another officer and a woman at the same party. Officials said videos of some of the incidents were posted on YouTube until investigators seized copies of the videos and had them removed from the site.

District Attorney John T. Adams confirmed county detectives are investigating the incidents and that they have given their 60-page report to Fabriziani, Mayor Shane J. Keller and borough Solicitor Daniel P. Becker.

Fabriziani, Keller and Becker were unavailable. Beighley and Phillips could not be reached for comment.

Chief County Detective Michael J. Gombar said the investigation continues.

"We are investigating incidents of possible criminal wrongdoing within the ranks of the West Reading Police Department," Gombar said. "We are not an internal affairs unit. Our detectives investigate allegations of criminal acts that violate the state crimes code."
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Cops, what a bunch of jokers!  Har, har . . . must have been real funny watching their pals thrash around with a TASER probe in their asses! 

I wonder how it is that these Cops were able to muscle down the YouTube videos?

Bountiful City Pays Man Repeatedly TASERED Pulled Over for Crooked License Plate

Maybe you recall this story, a Utah man was pulled over by the City of Bountiful, Utah police.  He got out of his car, unarmed, hands at his sides and implored the police officer to tell him why he was stopped.  The cops deployed the TASER on him,  mmmmmmmm . . . 8 or 9 or maybe 10 times. 
The City of Bountiful is paying,.  Hey, that means you, taxpayers.  Congratulations.

Here's a link to the local news account at ABC4.com.  At this link you can watch the police video of the confrontation without the commercials, etcetera.

Boys With Toys: 64-Year Old Injured Man Being Treated by EMTs Tasered by Marin County Sheriff's Deputies in His Own House, Nice!

Big hat tip to KC Crime Blog for this illustrative story of Boys with Toys.  KGO-TV Channel 7, San Francisco reports:

"A Marin County man has filed suit against the Marin County Sheriff's Department for an incident in which he says law enforcement officers went too far. Peter McFarland was Tased inside his own home as his wife watched, begging officers to stop.  On June 29, 2009 McFarland and his wife Pearl were returning home from a charity fundraiser just before midnight. McFarland injured himself as he stumbled and fell down the long steps to his front door.

'Mainly it was to my knee and the front of my leg, my shin,'McFarland said.

His wife called paramedics, who helped him into the house and treated him. As the paramedics were leaving, two sheriff's deputies arrived.   'All of a sudden, they just showed up, they came in here like there was a fire going on, like a gunfight was going on,' McFarland said.   What happened in the following minutes was captured on a camera mounted on the deputy's Taser.

The deputy tells McFarland he is going to take him to the hospital because he may be suicidal.

'We want to take you to the hospital for an evaluation, you said if you had a gun, you'd shoot yourself in the head,' the deputy can be heard saying.

McFarland says it was just hyperbole. He was tired and in pain.

The deputy orders him numerous times to get up or else.   'Stand up, put your hands behind your back or you're going to be Tased,' the deputy says.   McFarland keeps refusing.  The exchange goes on for about five minutes; his wife keeps pleading with the deputies not to Tase him, saying he has a heart condition.   Then, McFarland tells the deputies in no uncertain terms to leave.  As he gets up to go to bed, McFarland is Tased. Not once, but three times.

'There's got to be a problem in terms of training and on supervising deputy sheriffs in the county; it's hard to imagine something so shocking could happen,' McFarland's attorney John Scott said.   McFarland says he never had any suicidal thoughts. In fact, he considers himself lucky to be alive.  'I'm a survivor of pancreatic cancer; one of 4 percent in this country,' McFarland said.

Scott says his client was arrested, jailed and charged with resisting arrest. A judge later dismissed the charge. Scott says the deputies had no search warrant or legal reason to enter McFarland's home and even if they thought he was drunk and suicidal, Scott says the Tasing was excessive force.   ABC7's calls to the Marin County Sheriff's Department were not returned"
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At the link you can watch the video of the incident.

DA: We Agree You're Crazy, Now Plead Guilty!

Cynthia Hubert at the SacBee.com is reporting the storyof the mentally ill woman being held in the Sacramento jail.  According to the account, the taxpayers are paying tens of thousands of dollars to keep her in lock-up despite the fact that she has private health insurance that will pay for residential mental health services--the only problem, the district attorney insists that she plead guilty to a crime before he will let her go.  Here's an excerpt from the story:

"Accused of assaulting a peace officer, Tracy Sinclair Feather has been behind bars for 3 1/2 months. She has suffered from bipolar and other disorders since she was a teenager, and her spiraling mental condition – she has tried to harm herself numerous times in the downtown jail and has attempted suicide at least twice – has cost the county tens of thousands of dollars for treatment during her incarceration.

Feather's lawyer said her client has private insurance and could serve her time in a locked mental facility at no cost to taxpayers.   But the path through the criminal justice system is complicated, particularly when the defendant is seriously mentally ill. The county District Attorney's Office wants Feather to plead guilty to a felony before being allowed to transfer out of the jail to serve six months in a 'locked facility,' most likely a hospital.

'We can't release a defendant while a case is still pending,' said Shelly Orio, a spokeswoman for the district attorney.  'Our top priority is protecting public safety. We can't just let her go without accountability or monitoring.'

Feather's attorney, Dennise Henderson, has resisted a plea deal so far, saying Feather did not commit a felony during a brief standoff with Sacramento police officers on May 2.  But her client's mental condition has deteriorated so dramatically, Henderson said, that she may have no choice but to accept the offer. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for today.  'I am very bothered by this resolution,' said Henderson. 'But this is the problem when a mental health case becomes tangled in the criminal system. Tracy does not function well in jail, because she has never been there before. It is not a place for someone who is mentally ill.'

Yet more people with mental illnesses are showing up in jails and courtrooms, as cuts in social safety net programs leave them with less access to services and medications. In California, jails and prisons have become 'today's de facto mental health treatment facilities,' says a new report by a task force studying the issue for the Administrative Office of the Courts. A recent study found that four times as many mentally ill people in the state are in jails or prisons as in psychiatric hospitals.

The human and financial costs are high, according to the report. In 2008, the cost of a bed for 'acute mental health services' in a psychiatric unit of county jails in San Mateo and Santa Clara was $1,350 a day, it says. Sacramento County figures likely are close, officials said. Local police confirm that officers are encountering more mentally ill people since Sacramento County began cutting mental health services to close a mammoth budget deficit. Psychotic patients also are jamming emergency rooms and jails, officials have told The Bee. . .

In a jailhouse interview and in records supplied by her lawyer, Feather said that more than once during her stay, she was forced to lie on the floor of an empty 'classroom,' handcuffed and shackled, after deputies told her they had no room for her in the psychiatric unit.  She has tried to harm herself numerous times, banging her head against objects and once tying her jail-issued pants around her neck in a suicide attempt, the records show.

They also show that deputies have placed her in physical restraints, including the controversial Prostraint chair, several times.   In her interview, Feather was weepy and trembling as she described her experiences. 'Every day I try not to kill myself,' she said.

Prior to budget cuts that closed the crisis center at the county's mental hospital and slashed outpatient services, Feather, 48, had been stable for years.  Before her dust-up with the police, she lived independently in a midtown cottage owned by her mother, where she cared for her husband, a retired psychiatrist who suffers from dementia and other health problems. She managed her medications, kept house and prepared meals.

After her county services fell away, Feather began to spiral downward, relatives said. Without the crisis center to turn to, she told The Bee, she started calling police when she was suicidal or desperate.

On May 2, she called police to report she wanted to kill herself and emerged from her home with a knife. She has since said she had no intention of harming anyone but herself, but police perceived her behavior as a threat. Officers deployed a Taser, then handcuffed and arrested her. She has been in jail since, with bail set at $500,000.

Henderson, her lawyer, has been negotiating to have her transferred to a locked mental facility until the case is resolved, but the District Attorney's Office has refused to allow it without a guilty plea.

In exchange for the 'non-strike' felony plea, the district attorney is proposing that Feather serve 180 days in a locked facility, most likely a hospital if a bed is available, Orio said. But Henderson said it is unlikely that any mental facility will keep her that long, so once she becomes stable she could end up back in jail. Henderson is pushing for the DA to credit the time Feather already has served toward her sentence.

Both sides are scheduled to appear in court today on the matter.

Feather told a reporter that she believes she is innocent and would like to try her case before a jury, but not if it means staying in jail for months longer.   'I want to apologize to Sacramento for all of this,' she said tearfully.  'If I were younger and stronger and my husband were healthy, I would like to carry the flag and go to trial. But right now I just can't."
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Where is the logic in all of this?

Mesherle Weeps On the Witness Stand

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the testimony of former Oakland BART officer Johannes Mesherle, the transit cop who shot and killed Oscar Grant at point blank range and caught on cell phone video.  This is from Demian Bulwa's story:

"'I didn't think I had my gun.'

Those were the words Friday of former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle, who wept on the witness stand at his murder trial as he testified that he had accidentally shot and killed Oscar Grant while intending to fire Taser darts into the unarmed man's back.  But after waiting for a year and a half to hear an explanation from Mehserle, Grant's family was not satisfied. They said the story was a lie, the tears a piece of courtroom theater.

Mehserle said that seconds before the shooting, he had decided to shock the 22-year-old Grant with a Taser because he saw him dig his right hand into his pants pocket - the same hand Mehserle was trying to handcuff on the platform of the Fruitvale Station in Oakland during an arrest early Jan. 1, 2009.

The pistol pull was smooth, with no 'red flags' to tell him he hadn't grabbed his Taser, said the 28-year-old ex-officer. He didn't realize he had shot Grant, he testified, until he looked at his right hand after firing and saw he was holding his pistol.

'I didn't think I had my gun,' Mehserle told the jury in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. 'I remember the pop. It wasn't very loud. It wasn't like a gunshot, and I remember wondering what went wrong with the Taser. I remember looking to my right side and seeing my gun in my right hand,'  Mehserle said. 'I didn't know what to think. I just thought it shouldn't have been there.'

Defense attorney Michael Rains asked Mehserle what he remembered after that, and the former officer, by now crying, struggled with the words. "I remember Mr. Grant said, 'You shot me,'  he said.

Heckler's yell bring arrest

Grant's mother, Wanda Johnson, quickly left the courtroom as a Bay Area man identified by friends and authorities as Tim Killings, 24, stood and yelled, 'Maybe you should save those f- tears, dude.'  Bailiffs arrested Killings on suspicion of disorderly conduct and led him from court, and Judge Robert Perry declared a brief recess."
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As you will recall from my earlier posts on this sickening-video recorded homicide, the prosecution of former officer Mesherle will turn on the concept that we talk about repeatedly on Bad Lawyer--mens rea, what was Mesherle's intention. It sounds like Mesherle's testimony helped him bring perspective on this awful event.  There certainly is the "taste of hell" in this unnecessary tragedy, and lessons for all of us abounding., especially the lesson of abuse of police power.

What Was Officer Mesherle Thinking?

Former Oakland, California BART Police Officer Johannes Mesherle goes on trial this week for the pointblank shooting death of Oscar Grant III on an Oakland subway platform last year.  The homicide of Mr. Grant by Officer Mesherle is sensational because Mesherle is white and Grant balck.  More importantly the killing was caught on video and went "viral."

Officer Mesherle's legal outcome will be determined by a jury which will try to judge what was in Officer Mesherl's mind, did he have a criminal intent to kill Oscar Grant.  Mesherle's attorneys will argue that Mesherle mistakenly thought he had his taser in hand when he pulled the trigger that killed Grant, Mesherle was legally allowed to use a Taser in this scenario according to the Oakland police.

Watch the video if you have the stomach for it.  Whatever you think of Mesherle's criminal intent, the video documents the abuse of police power and the outcome was the death of twenty-two year old, Oscar Grant III.

Another Whack-Job Sheriff

The Lake County, Colorado Sheriff, Ed Holte, has been feuding with the Leadville, Colo. Fire Department over who should be the first responder in the event of a medical emergency, according to a report in the Denver Post.  The Lake County Prosecutor's office has charged one of Sheriff Holte's deputies with three counts of interfering in a medical emergency for cuffing and jailing a fire captain who responded to an emergency call for a Leadville woman who complained of neck pain from a domestic relations assault.

Here's an excerpt from Mike McPhee's article:

Prosecutor Mark Hurlbert said he has charged Deputy Steven James with first-degree official misconduct, obstructing a medical person and trespassing on public property, which is defined as keeping a public official from doing their duty.  Each charge is a Class II misdemeanor . . . Additionally, Hurlbert chose to file no charges against Leadville Fire Capt. Dan Dailey. 

On the evening of March 27 a Leadville woman drove to the sheriff's office to file an abuse complaint against her husband. While talking to James and Deputy Arin Hart, she complained of a neck injury. James had the sheriff's dispatcher in the next room issued an emergency call for an ambulance.   But Fire Capt. Dailey was monitoring the radio and responded, as well as the ambulance. When he arrived with two other firefighters in the sheriff's office, James and Hart ordered the firefighters to leave. Dailey refused. So the deputies handcuffed him and put him in jail while the two other firefighters left. Police Chief Mike Leak arrived at the jail awhile later and removed Dailey from his cell.

Fire Chief Robert Harvey said later that Dailey had acted appropriately by responding to the emergency call. Leadville officials said there has been a two-year feud between the Sheriff Ed Holte and the fire department over who should be dispatched first to emergency calls. Holte believes the deputies should respond to most calls first to assess the situation, then call the fire department if needed.  However, Mayor Bud Elliott accuses Holte of violating an agreement between the city of Leadville and Lake County over the choice of first responders.

Hurlbert sent investigators to Leadville shortly after the jailing and released his conclusions on Wednesday.  'Our primary concern was the safety of the public,' Hurlbert said. 'We felt the deputy kept the EMT (Dailey) from treating the person and that the EMT was merely doing his duty.'

Hurlbert said his office is continuing to investigate another incident last week in which Deputy John Ortega used a Taser stun gun on 30 high school students during a career fair at the school. Ortega, who was immediately suspended for one week without pay, said the students had asked him to Taser them and had given him permission. School officials said the students did not give their permission.
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How are the citizens of Lake County, Colorado served by this sort of officially clownish conduct?

Professional Courtesy

The South Carolina Post and Courier has a revealing article that addresses the age old question:  what do cops think other cops will do for them? 

A video recording made Christmas Eve at the arrest of North Charleston Police Officer Christine Phinney (pic) who was breifly pursued for speeding and ended up with a fat lip is remarkably illustrative of what cops will do for other cops.  The video tape (at the link--worth watching) of the incident records Officer Phinney berating both the Summerville police and the Dorchester County Sheriff's deputy for arresting her and issuing a citation.  Despite an alleged "tussle" with the arresting deputy, Officer Phinney was not charged with an assault.

That Mrs. Phinney was cited at all--astounded Officer Phinney.  Officer Phinney is not just a cop, she's a two-fer, she's married to a police officer.  And as Officer Phinney told the charging officer, she routinely pulls over speeding law enforcement, who flash their badges, and of course she has the decency not to arrest or charge them.  

Isn't that what all cops expect of one another?  Officer Phinney unwittingly is letting the cat out of the bag, cops protect their own.  But really, are we surprised. 

What's frightening is that they gave this officer--who was clearly impaired, any kind of break.  The arresting officers didn't conduct a field sobriety test and they didn't ask her to perform a breathalizer.  Instead her colleagues charged her with disorderly conduct and speeding;  and, then they let her go home.  

You and me, we do what Christine Phinney did,  trust me, we get tased.