Two Columbia police officers are the focus of a civil lawsuit concerning an incident last year in which a man was tasered after a traffic stop. Attorney Samuel Trapp filed the civil suit yesterday in federal court in Jefferson City on behalf of Cadilac Derrick, 23, of Columbia. [LINK]
Mr. Derrick's crime? Nothing; or (let's be frank) maybe Driving While Black. The classic "cover charge" of resisting arrest was dropped (of course).
Police claim he was tasered because he was "reaching for his waistband". Sounds like a fairy tale to me, but that's just my intuition speaking.
This incident appears to be a classic taser incident where if the taser hadn't been there, then it's very likely that nothing would have happened. Mr. Derrick wasn't reaching for a weapon. There was no reason to attack him with the death-dealing electro-torture device. None of this should have happened.
I hope that the lawsuit sticks. Nothing personal. But something needs to be done to counteract the trigger-happy taser wielding idiots.
In the video [embedded in article] it's clear that they didn't warn him before they tasered him. Even assuming someone supported use of the taser as a pain-compliance device the least the police could do is explain: "If you don't obey this command, we will taser you."
ReplyDeleteIn this case, the command appears to have been to get out of the vehicle, and Derrick refused.
This was the same excuse Seattle police gave after tasering a pregnant woman three times: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/pregnant_woman_tasered/
AFAICT they had no reason to ask anyone to step out of the car.