Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Fort Worth offers $2 million to settle Taser death case
The City of Fort Worth, Texas has offered $2 million to settle a case brought by the family of a man who died after being Tased by a female Forth Worth police officer. The officer held back the trigger on the Taser for 49 seconds. She claimed she didn't know the device would continue to discharge electricity until she released the trigger. According to one source, the officer has not been disciplined. LINK. Link with news VIDEO
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The police departments should work with the taser manufacturers to ensure that the weapons will only discharge a defined amount of electricity for a defined amount of time. Anything more than this would require the trigger to be pulled again. That would prevent many problems.
ReplyDeleteThe taser will only discharge for five second intervals when the trigger is pulled. Once the five seconds is up the discharge will stop even if the trigger is still pulled. It would take the officer letting go and pulling the trigger again to discharge again. The taser actually stores data that can be uploaded on a computer, recording the date and time for every discharge. In my opinion this sounds like an officer who over did the tasing. The Department is taking responsibility because they have already investigated the incident and know for sure it wasn't a product issue with Taser because they would of been quick to place the blame on them. What kind of excuse is it that she didn't know it would discharge for that long? She should have been trained properly by her agency. This tells me the only option is for the Department to pay them off because it's ultimately their fault.
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