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At 2 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2007, a suicidal 15-year-old sat at a gas station holding a knife.
He refused to drop the knife and made it clear he had no interest in surrendering to police.
Jason Brown, a police officer of 14 years and a SWAT team member, weighed his options, he recalled in a recent interview.
Spraying the teen with pepper spray could have made the situation worse. Bean bag rounds fired from a shotgun carried similar risks. Brown could have wrestled the knife away from the teen. But both of them could have been cut or gravely injured.
Instead, he used the Taser he had been issued earlier that year.
The weapon’s pair of barbed metal darts struck the teen in the back, delivering 1,200 volts of electricity to his body, causing him to seize up and immediately drop the knife, a police report said.
“That’s not fair. You guys don’t play fair,” the boy told officers after they handcuffed him, Brown’s police report said.
For Brown and every other Fort Wayne officer who carries a Taser, not playing fair is kind of the point.
More than two years after Fort Wayne police started a pilot project with six Tasers, the number of weapons has expanded to about 115 on the street, with 50 more on order. The weapons are spread evenly across shifts and sectors of the city, ensuring that an officer with one is always available.
And with about 90 documented uses of the devices, police officials believe them to be a safe and effective tool for officers to use to subdue suspects in a variety of situations.
They contend the department’s tight restrictions on and close monitoring of Taser use have silenced most of the program’s initial critics and resulted in few complaints. One case involving a Taser shock has led to claims that a lawsuit would be filed, but no legal action has occurred. Additionally, one officer has been disciplined for his improper use of a Taser.
Black community leaders were quick to caution, however, that Tasers must still be tightly controlled because they carry the potential for abuse.
Former Fort Wayne Board of Public Safety member Hana Stith said she is less opposed to Tasers now than when the department rolled them out. But she said the police department must carefully screen the officers who receive the weapons because they can easily inflict pain on people and leave little trace.
She also said the department’s policy requiring an officer to justify each use of the weapon provided little protection against misuse.
“Justification is very easy,” Stith said. “No matter how many times (an officer) had to do it.”
Despite early protests from the Fort Wayne branch of the NAACP, the group’s president, the Rev. Bill McGill, said he hasn’t heard any complaints about the Tasers.
“Until that becomes an issue, we’re not going to make it an issue,” he said.
A review of about 75 incidents shows that officers shocked civilians about 50 times. Of those incidents, at least four out of five were cases in which civilians were physically resisting officers’ attempts to bring them under control or into custody.
Fifteen people were fleeing police – usually on foot – and 14 were actively fighting or preparing to fight officers. Ten were resisting officers who were trying to handcuff them.
The three armed suspects who were shocked were suicidal. One had a knife, one had scissors and one had a length of chain.
At least 10 times, officers pulled out the weapons and activated them without shocking anyone. This “spark display” was used to break up crowds and calm agitated people. The remainder were either animal hits or accidental deployments.
City attorneys denied a public-records request by The Journal Gazette to review the use-of-force forms that officers are required to file after a Taser is used. But Police Chief Rusty York agreed to turn over copies of most of the police incident reports from Taser deployments.
Department policy allows officers to use their Tasers any time a suspect is actively resisting arrest. That applies to fighting, running away, and struggling during handcuffing, York said.
When an officer has to struggle with a combative person, it greatly increases the chance that both of them will be injured, York said. The Tasers his officers carry are meant to quickly and safely subdue resisting people. And to that extent, they have worked well, he said.
“I think they’ve been very successful for us,” he said.
The department worked hard to develop a policy and training for the safe use of Tasers, York said.
Officers must justify all Taser uses. The standard Taser deployment delivers a 5-second burst of electric shock. An officer can deliver another shock by pulling the weapon’s trigger but must justify each successive burst as well. This limits the suspect’s exposure to the Taser.
Anyone who is exposed to the Taser must be taken to a hospital and examined by medics.
Despite the policy, there have been a few instances when Taser use has drawn some scrutiny.
On Sept. 2, 44-year-old Sean O’Mara was shocked three times when he became disoriented after his blood-sugar level crashed.
O’Mara, a service engineer who works on medical equipment at hospitals, said he began fading in and out of consciousness as he was driving. When O’Mara stopped in a parking lot, Officer Chris Michel, who had been alerted to O’Mara’s erratic driving, pulled up.
O’Mara said that while he has a hazy recollection of the events, he clearly remembers telling the officer “I need help” as soon as he arrived.
Michel’s incident report makes no mention of this. The report depicts a traffic stop in which O’Mara did not obey Michel’s commands to get out of his vehicle and didn’t show his hands, as requested.
As a result, Michel sprayed the diabetic in the face twice with pepper spray and shocked him with a Taser three times. One of the Taser shocks possibly came when he was passed out, O’Mara said.
O’Mara said such a use of force was never necessary. He was so disoriented, he couldn’t understand the officer, O’Mara said recently from his Aboite Township home.
Despite his frustration, O’Mara has not filed a formal complaint against the department or taken any legal action.
York defended Michel’s use of the Taser in that instance, saying O’Mara’s resistance to showing his hands gave the officer the justification, since Michel believed the man could be reaching for a weapon, York said.
In another situation, an attorney has filed notice that he intends to file suit against police on behalf of a 14-year-old boy he says was injured during an April 2008 Taser incident.
The boy was walking away from officers at 3919 Winter St. As he entered the home, Officer Anthony Smith used his Taser, and the boy fell forward and slid down a flight of stairs into the basement, according to a police report.
And in another case, one officer was disciplined for improperly using a Taser, York said.
In January, Officer Clayton Taylor shocked a violent and aggressive man four times. The probes were not correctly imbedded in the man, so the weapon’s repeated shocks had no effect.
Taylor also didn’t call for backup quickly enough when he realized that he was alone with a violent and unstable person. He was counseled and sent back for remedial training, York said.
