Terror police in UK taser man in coma
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) in England is investigating an incident involving police who tasered a man in a coma because he was unresponsive.
Mr Gaubert said he was on his way to meet friends when he suffered a hypoglycaemic fit on the bus which left him slumped on his seat clutching his rucksack.LinkArmed police were called to the bus depot in Headingley and when he failed to respond to their challenges he was shot with the Taser.
He said as this was happening, another officer was pointing a real gun at his head.
He was restrained and eventually came round in the police van.
He said it was only then that the officers realised it was a medical emergency, despite him wearing a medical tag round his neck to warn of his condition, and took him to hospital.
the latest
latest episodes
you cry foul now, but when the terrorists start hitting us from all sides with unresponsive diabetics, you think back to my words.
It's a good thing those cops probably hadn't seen "Sean of the Dead" or they'd have whacked his noggin off with a baseball bat.
cldn't fnd nythng bt t n th PCC wbst (vn smpl srch fr "Gbrt" rvls nthng). ws wndrng whr th nfrmtn cm frm, snc thr's n wy h cld hv knwn ths dtls hmslf, wht wth bng n cm.
'm jst wndrng f h ws rlly tsrd r s jst clmng h ws tsrd. f h ws rlly tsrd, dn't s why nthng cm f t. Srly sm srt f pnshmnt shld b dld t fr tsrng nrspnsv ppl.
f t ctlly hppnd.
Well the BBC seem to think it happened:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/7096456.stm
Local news coverage of the same here
Hmm...
BBC rtcl:
"H sd s ths ws hppnng, nthr ffcr ws pntng rl gn t hs hd."
Yrkshr Pst (qtng Gbrt) --
"'Wht gs thrgh my mnd nw s wht wld hv hppnd f thy hd bn crryng rl gns lk thy wr n Lndn. t gvs m nghtmrs.'"
S... rl gns wr prsnt nd pntng t hs hd r nt?
@nonesuch: The IPCC statement quoted at the bottom of the writeup discussed how they were proceeding after the CPS declined to prosecute. Why do you doubt that it happened?
Yes, and bravo for subduing a man in coma.
I hear they can be quite wily; what with all that sitting there and not moving.
BB lwys tks cyncl sd gnst th plc, fgr smn hs t tk cyncl sd n thr fvr! Mst f th plc bs ncdnts thy'v rprtd n hv ndd p bng xggrtns by th md nd/r by th prptrtr nd ndd p bng nthng lk wht ws rgnlly clmd. Th clrfctn tht cms t ltr s nvr mntnd n fllwp, f crs.
ws hpng t fnd th src f th PCC sttmnt whch BBC qtd frm s cld s f th tsr ccntng ws frm th plc rprt f th ncdnt r jst prphrsng f Mr. Gbrt's rgnl cmplnt.
'd b ttlly n hs sd f t wnt dwn th wy h sys, bt ftr thngs lk th Krry tsr ncdnt whr th kd bsclly rrngd th whl mttr (nd ltr rlsd pblc plgy), hp y dn't mnd f 'm nw skptcl.
They only hold off if you're un-hypoglycemic enough to shout, "Don't tase me, bro!"
This gives weight to my theory that new devices like tasers just make the police lazy. I can imagine them using the new "heat ray" non-lethal weapon I've heard about: any protest whatsoever will get blasted at that point where the police have had enough, even if it's just a case of "I want to go home, the game is on tonight and my wife is making pork chops. . . hurry up and blast these jokers."
He had a bag with him? Surprised he isn't still in jail.
This seems very strange. Why would a police officer feel the need to Taser someone for not moving? The point of a Taser, from a cop's point of view, is that it is a more convenient means of subduing a combative arrestee than repeatedly clubbing him over the head. If a person is just sitting quietly and not repsonding, it seems like it would be easier still to simply walk over and put handcuffs on him. I feel like there must be some key details missing from this story.
When did Tasering become a first response?
If you move, you get tasered, if you don't move, you get tasered too?
Absolutely idiotic response from the police in this case. I think you have to assume it's a pretty smart idea to establish a threat FIRST.
There is a report in Germany of Mark Benecke, a forensic biologist, German but spent some time in Manhattan, pinned to the railway station platform by five police yesterday - possibly because his mobile phone looked dangerous.
http://www.transblawg.eu/index.php?/archives/2939-Mark-Benecke-in-Cottbus.html
(quoting myself because it was in German elsewhere)
Why would they even put handcuffs on a unresponsive person? They are obviously not posing a threat. I wonder how long the guy would have been in custody if he had been dead.
When Tasers were first developed they were
promoted as an alternative to deadly force
when used against combative suspects, but
they're increasingly used as a 'compliance
tool' to punish people for not obeying the
police. So how could a reasonable person not
take a "cynical side against the police" for
using a taser on someone who isn't actively
violent?
I hope the victim in this case sues and wins.
I wonder if there is a growing attitude in the police force that its ok to use non-leathal weapons like tasers in more and more situations.
A cop wont shoot you because there is a psychological deterrant to possibly kill someone, but a taser... why not?
@nonesuch wrote:
"I'm just wondering if he was really tasered or is just claiming he was tasered. If he was really tasered, I don't see why nothing came of it. Surely some sort of punishment should be doled out for tasering unresponsive people."
Well, from TFA,
"An IPCC spokesman said: "The IPCC managed an investigation into an incident on July 13, 2005 in which West Yorkshire Police discharged a Taser at a man while he sat on a bus in Leeds.
"The man was mistakenly treated as a potential security threat when he was, in fact, in a hypoglycaemic state. The investigation report was submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service in November 2006.""
Then again, how does the idiot cop know he really fired a taser? Maybe he just handed him a greeting card. If it even happened.
They probably thought he was drunk. Hypoglycemia basically looks exactly like drunkenness.
That said, hypoglycemic coma looks a lot like alcohol poisoning... either one needs medical treatment.
Nonesuch @3: From the Yorkshire Post article:
My emphasis. Really, the information is there, if you're not too busy trying to prove an invalid point.
As to why the officers did it, it was only a week after the suicide bombings in London, so heightened fear of terrorism was undoubtedly part of it. Not that this excuses the utter absurdity of the idea that an unconscious man on a bus is more likely to be a suicide bomber than, say, a drunk, or indeed seriously ill.
I don't like the implications of this distinction the news outlets (and the rest of us) are making between Tasers and "real guns." Tasers *are* "real guns" that are less deadly and less bloody in use.
I really wish people would quit thinking of them as an electric version of a half-nelsonn
Clay, while I agree that Tasers aren't the gentle sleep-ray that the police sometimes wish they were, I think there is indeed a genuine difference between a firearm, which is designed to be deadly and if targeted correctly usually will be, and an electric stunner, which in 0.3% of cases [Bozeman, Winslow, et. al] can cause a sequence of events that eventually lead to serious injury. It's not totally nonlethal, but even half-nelsons can and do cause disablement or death.
The question here is really not whether a Taser needed to be used, but whether any force was necessary at all. Would the police have been justified in pepper-spraying or manually pummeling Mr. Gaubert? From the story, it sounds not, but the case as described is so bizarre that I have a hard time understanding why the police would do what they did.
when we read about the guy who got tasered at the airport after waiting 20+ hours for his mom, i thought the only way they could top that was if they tasered a guy who was already unconsious (splng?!!!).
well, i feel guilty just to have tought about it because now they did it.
i wish this is the last tasering incedent ever. i really wish it. i really, really, really do.
not because we`re never going to talk about it if it happens again, I just wish it doesn't happen anymore.
c'mon bro, fuch tasers!!!!
:(
yeah!!! fucH tasers!!!
I think the Boing Boing moderators should start adding disclaimers to blatantly false comments and accusations... Seriously people, being skeptical of media spin does NOT mean crying foul at BB when you don't find something in the source after a brief scan, spitefully looking for anything you'd be able to paint as a discrepancy.
Channel your anger in something more productive, like kitten killing.
To Nonesuch and others doubting what happened: it happened alright. Mr Gaubert is my best mate's brother. Nothing's embroidered: what he's said is what took place. He was just back from holiday, so was more tanned than usual, he had a rucksack with him on the bus and started having a hypo. The police jumped to conclusions, thought he was a suicide bomber, tasered him when he didn't respond to them, then tasered him again. This they told him themselves. Later, when he woke up in hospital, he was in handcuffs. For having had a hypo on a bus. Why, after what happened to Jean Charles de Menezes, is this sequence of events so hard to believe?
Those readers asking why the police got so worked up by a guy on a bus with a backpack might look at the date of the incident: 13 July 2005.
In other words, this happened six days after a guy with a backpack blew up a bus in London and killed 13 people.
Now, I've seen advice for identifying potential suicide bombers, and it included signs such as ignoring warnings or instructions or seeming detached and unresponsive. This was an awful case, but I can see how it flagged a whole load of warning signs at a very stressed time. (And at least the police didn't actually shoot the guy - as the did in London a week later.)
Come on people read the article in post #4 where "Officers said when he failed to respond to requests to remove his hand, they felt they had to stun him again to ensure it was safe to approach".
It seems only fair that if an unconscious person does not respond to a request then he/she should be tasered.
Anyone who thinks this is acceptable is nuts. We live in such a paranoid society that is willing to give up their civil rights just to feel a false sense of security. It is very rare that police intelligence (feel weird using those two words together) is preventative influence on crime. Simply put they usually arrive after the crime has been committed. I personally would rather have the freedom to live my life without endorsing the growing militant like society we are evolving into that is being embraced by so many who do not realize the full extent to which this power can be exercised until one day it affects them in an adverse way.
Anonymous:
Anonymous, Nonesuch said that because he's pursuing a political agenda. Any time one of the Boingers writes an entry about misused tasers, overzealous security guards, multiple police officers jumping a nonthreatening protester, etc., Nonesuch pops up to declare that it never happened, and furthermore the officers were acting in self-defense, and anyway the guy had it coming to him.Mind you, he says this after reading exactly the same story as the rest of us.
He's been warned about it several times, and ignored the warnings. This time around, I've taken sterner measures, including temporarily suspendeding his user account. I'm hoping this will finally get his attention.
why didn't they just shoot him? it's very rude to be in a coma.
Simon Bradshaw, the suicide bomber who killed 13 people by detonating a backpack bomb did so in a crowded bus. He didn't attract the attention of officials by playing possum on the floor of a bus, then set off his bomb in an emptied-out bus in a depot.
A general query: can it possibly be standard procedure to haul an unresponsive passenger to the bus depot and call the police? There are any number of medical conditions where that much additional delay in treating a patient will drive down the odds of a good outcome.
I'll agree that the main issue here is that the police tasered an unconscious man who posed no threat to anyone. But beyond that, it disturbs me that there were two classes of public employees present, bus drivers and police officers, who ought to be trained to respond to a "collapsed and unresponsive" situation by immediately phoning 911 (or the equivalent local number).
I strongly suspect they were ignoring their own departmental policies. The police run into "person down and not moving" scenarios a lot oftener than they run into suicide bombers. And when they do, if the site is otherwise secure and the person doesn't pass the standard tests for "obviously dead" (decapitated, bisected, charred, decomposing, or displaying dependent lividity), their standard first move has to be to call for emergency medical backup.
The same goes for bus drivers. If they carry enough passengers enough miles on enough buses, sooner or later they'll have to deal with a passenger who has collapsed and is unresponsive. In such cases, chances are good that the passenger will have been carrying a briefcase, shoulderbag, backpack, instrument case, or other parcel.
I can't believe they haul all their parcel-carrying critically ill passengers to a central depot and give them a good tasering. We would have heard about it by now.
How threatening can a person in a coma be, for God's sake? Does any police officer realize that the saying "shoot first, ask questions later" is a joke?
Per the talk about "non-lethal" police measures: a hard kick to the testicles is "non-lethal." So what? Would you want that done to you? Does it matter that it's better than be killed?
Can we talk about "appropriate" police responses, as opposed to "non-lethal," as if "lethal" and "non-lethal" are the only two categories?
Doesn't this show our low-standards for police behavior? It seems to me that we have become resigned to the fact that cops kill a lot, and maybe we could get them to kill a little less if we give them the right toys.
Am I off-base here?
Teresa,
I'm not disputing that the police action was wrong; I'm just suggesting that in the context of a multiple suicide bomber attack the previous week it wasn't utterly and inexplicably bugfuck crazy.
The problem is, in cases like this people - even members of the police - start to run through a version of Pascal's Wager. 'If this guy does have a bomb,' they think, 'even if that's very unlikely, then if I place myself at risk, I die. If I disable him, and he doesn't have a bomb, I may get into some degree of trouble.' Two factors make this worse: the well-known poor ability most people have to make accurate assessments of serious but unlikely risks, and the oh-so-tempting availability of a 'non-lethal' weapon.
A point I don't think is in dispute: tasers and similar devices greatly raise the risk of escalation by providing an alternative to blatant deadly force. On a much smaller scale, it's a version of the argument as to why tactical nukes are so destabilising; they make it possible to even contemplate nuclear escalation.
Simon: abnormal frame of mind, Pascal's Wager, check. I see what you mean. And tasers were marketed to police and other security forces as a nonlethal weapon that has stopping power even when wielded by a complete novice, which carries unfortunate overtones of "requires no judgement."
Nick @34: I don't know about the States, but that doesn't apply to UK police, who are generally unarmed (at least with lethal weapons). We have firearms squads who get called in only when it's deemed necessary. Not that there haven't been tragic mistakes, even before de Menezes.
Simon @35: the well-known poor ability most people have to make accurate assessments of serious but unlikely risks
I think this is precisely what happened with de Menezes: that SO19 got themselves into a tizzy trying to weigh the odds and consequences of a false positive and a false negative, and let the generally awful but relatively unlikely chance of one outweigh the more likely chance but individually awful outcome of the other. It was obvious from the public statements made by the Met immediately after the shooting in the Underground, though they seem to have retconned that a bit in the recent court case.
Here's a question that's been bothering me for a while: are British police (and possibly other first responders) taught to always describe situations in the fewest words possible?
It's seemed to me, though I could be in error, that the worst screw-ups have occurred when information about what's happening has had to pass via radio or telephone to some other unit, or to another organization.
It makes me wonder whether they're habitually (and these days, unnecessarily) doing lossy compression on their descriptions, then expanding them again at the other end. A round or two of that, in a situation fraught with anti-terrorist anxiety, could provoke all kinds of inappropriate responses.
Interesting idea, Teresa. I wouldn't know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if police radio procedures, like all radio procedures dating from early to mid-twentieth century are based on the assumption of limited bandwidth. On the other hand a lot of officers these days also carry cell phones for direct officer-to-officer communications.
On the other hand, a major part of the de Menezes tragedy seems to have been different understandings of the word "stop" by the senior officer in charge and SO19 officers. Not so much a compression problem as an ambiguity one.