Suspect hit by Taser on 9 occasions; 41-year-old died 4 hours after his ar

[Blue Diadem]

Article published Wednesday, February 2, 2005

TOLEDO POLICE
Suspect hit by Taser on 9 occasions; 41-year-old died 4 hours after his arrest at art museum

By CHRISTINA HALL
BLADE STAFF WRITER



Jeffrey Turner stood in the street behind the closed Toledo Museum of Art for nearly 40 minutes before a security guard called police.
Almost four hours after the 41-year-old was approached by police on a suspicious-person call Monday night from the museum, he was dead.

City police shocked Turner five times with a Taser - a gun that administers 50,000 volts of electricity to subdue a person - after he refused to identify himself and did not comply with police instructions.

Once at the Lucas County jail, Turner, of 2115 Collingwood Blvd., ate a lunch before he began pounding on his cell in the booking area. Sheriff's personnel tried to restrain him, but he fought them and they shocked him four more times with a different Taser model.

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050202/NEWS03/502020361

[shanti]

1. not again!!

this is getting way out of hand! :grr:

[truthisfreedom]

2. sounds like this guy should have been taken to a psychiatric ward

not brought in for torture.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

7. the fact they did it in his cell is appalling

apparently torture is now de rigeur.

[liberalnurse]

20. No, not torture......

it is about regaining control. Let me add, if all the inmate did was pound on his cell, then that is not an issue for Tasing. Even if he was loud, screaming obscenities and finger painting the windows with his feces.....Inmate porters can clean the cell later. Let him wear down on his own...but .....
Was he harming himself? Was action critical?

Oh, I found a little snip-it that said he was fighting....he may of tried to harm another....I thought he would of been in a cell by himself since he was so unruly in the field at the arrest.

snip>

Turner ate lunch but became unruly and started to fight.


I ask; Could chemical restraint have been an option? The inmate may of had a prior record, prior incarcerations and be known to be mentally ill. A psychiatric assessment could of been a good tool at that time. Many jails have psychiatric crisis care workers and medics on staff.

[Rex]

3. Wouldn't ID himself or follow instructions

that is what led to his downfall IMO. When will people learn that you don't fuck with cops? Of course what they did to him is criminal, I mean, 9 times? What, they couldn't tranquilize him?

[Kagemusha]

4. Wanna bet the odds of death are higher with a tranq?

I wouldn't know personally, but there must be statistics out there on it. Tranquilizers are supposed to be administered by mental health professionals anyway, not police or security guards. Obviously such restrictions aren't placed on tasers.

[gumby]

5. If a person is unable to "follow instructions"

then they would have no idea of the consequences. Perhaps this guy was mentally ill or having an episode. In Bush's America, the defective are executed on the spot.

[whistle]

9. What evidence other than the word of the police is there of this...

...this is clearly shoot first, ask questions later. Nine taser bursts is excessive use of force no matter how one spins this.

[BiggJawn]

13. oh, indeed...

"failure to identify"....Yep, sounds like an offense requiring IMMEDIATE execution to me....
"Oh, No..You've seen me without my mask on!"

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

15. the death penalty is hardly an appropriate remedy

[glitch]

17. Indeed. nt

:eyes:

[whistle]

6. A street person, possibly mentally handicapped, a drug addict....

...or perhaps an alcoholic, but a criminal? I don't think so. Now the fascists have a new weapon for executing undesirables in society, the taser gun. This weapon is being used on children and the elderly. I am waiting to hear about use of this weapon on gays, the physically disabled and pretty soon non-Christians and people who don't agree with the current political base in power. What is happening in America? We have become totally insane.

[tblue37]

18. It has been used on the physically disabled.

There was that guy in the wheelchair with a pair of scissors. Ooooh! Dangerous! Hell, even I (an out-of-shape 54-year-old woman) could disarm a guy in a wheelchair who was wielding nothing but a pair of scissors, and I could do it without resorting to a Taser.

There was the 71-year-old blind, deaf woman in Oregon, who was wrestled to the ground by two cops and pepper-sprayed so violently that her glass eyeball popped out. Her offense was that she kept walking when the cops told her tostop. (We deafies will do that--because we are, um deaf!) When her 94-year-old mother brought out a 2-qt Tupperware container of water to rinse the glass eyeball, the burly male cops slammed her up against a wall, because they feared she "might use the water as a weapon."

[indepat]

8. One questions police-state-type tactics only at the risk of one's life,

or so it would seem.

[all.of.me]

10. would they have done that to a white guy? n/t

[GoddessOfGuinness]

21. You can't help but wonder...

...and I seriously doubt it.

I don't really get why Turner was picked up in the first place. He wasn't hurting anybody. As for not IDing himself, I wonder how he was approached.

Was it, "Excuse me, sir...I'm officer So-and-so. Could we please see some identification?"

Or was it, "Freeze! Hands above your head! What's your name boy?"

[mrbassman03]

11. Wooo boy! Police state is my favorite game to play!

Luckily we get to hear about it every day!

/sarcasm

Nine times? 4 times in his cell? Sorry about bringing up a stoner movie, but reminds me of Harold and Kumar when they are in jail...

[BiggJawn]

12. Bernie makes a Buck

Cha-CHINGGGGGGGG!!!!!

[superconnected]

14. was it a baseball game that I read about a month ago

where they were taser happy and shocking people who ran out on the fields to protect the goal posts for an upcomming game.

What ever it was, it proved to me that people holding tasers, do get shock happy and administer it non-judiciously.

It's a weapon. If they're going to use it on people for simply no id-ing themselves or resisting arrest then I say take it away.

I thought it was to protect the police from getting shot or stabbed. None of the people I've read about recently were threats to the police in that mannor.

What did they use before tasers to take in an unarmed man?

[Blue Diadem]

16. Another thing I found suspect was the number of shocks reported kept

changing. First report was 2-4, then 5, now it's at 9.

[liberalnurse]

19. Pounding on the cell door is no big deal, a daily occurance.....

I ask, what else was he doing? I'm just asking......

One Taser sting should of been enought to ralax the inmate and get him into the time-out chair.....