Tasers Used to Control Mentally Ill

Reports of Tasers being used to control volatile situations involving mentality ill people are on the rise.

This rise in Taser use on the mentally ill by police is cause for some concern. In Houston, Texas alone, the local paper the ‘Houston Chronicle’ says that since the end of 2004 there have been 120 known incidents of police using Tasers to control a mentally ill suspect of the 1000 incidents the paper investigated.

Also uncovered about the Houston Taser incidents was that the police had some prior knowledge about the situations. Meaning they were made aware that they were entering a volatile situation involving a mentally ill person. This prior warning should have triggered the police to bring in specialists that have training in how to deal with this type of situation, however this happened very seldomly.

When taking a closure look at the people who were tasered by the police the ‘Houston Chronicle’ found that nearly all of the people were weapon less. It was also found that the majority of the tasered people were not guilty of committing a crime. There were of course a couple of exceptions and a criminal was apprehended.

The circumstances leading to the Taser use appears to be the lack of clarity in the mind of person the police were attempting to apprehend. These people were mentally ill and in most cases just confused and unable to understand what the police officers wanted, due to their illness.

When the ‘Houston Chronicle’ spoke to the police chief, Harold Hurtt, he defended what looks to be heavy-handed use of Tasers. He said, “When you look at instances where people were armed, there could have been more deadly encounters if Tasers were not in place.”

Of the many people tasered by the Houston police there was a man who was mentally ill, aged 63 and could not get around without the use of his walker. In another incident a bi-polar sufferer, Carol Ann Vickery suffered an episode at a store leading to her becoming agitated and picking up a can of soda and apparently threatening to throw it. Police were call in and Vickery was tasered. The husband of Vickory said, “She may have gotten excited, but two male officer should be able to defuse a situation with on woman without pulling out a Taser. In this case, it’s clear they did not try.”

Houston isn’t the only US city with reports of police using Tasers unnecessarily; reports are also coming from Minneapolis.

In Minneapolis a woman who was apparently homeless, in her early thirties, African-American and to a witness mentally ill was the target of police Tasers in May. When writing her story about what she saw the witness, Lydia Howell described the homeless woman’s obvious mental illness. The woman was repeating one sentence, “I’m not white and I’m not a star.”

© 2007  Associated Content, Inc.

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