Los Altos finally Tases a dude

The back of Sgt. Scott McCrossin's trading card hopefully already credits him for hosting the most boring ridealong in the history of journalism, as well for convincing a judge that it was perfectly reasonable of him to pull a guy over for hanging an air freshener from his rearview mirror.

His stats just got even gaudier. On October 30, he became the first Los Altos police officer to use a Taser on a suspect.

By comparison, Mountain View police have had Tasers about twice as long (four-plus years compared to two in Los Altos) and used them 34 times. (I covered the the first nine of those times in one of my favorite stories ever.)

The circumstances of Los Altos getting onto the scoreboard are a little ironic:

Los Altos Police responded to a single-vehicle crash at El Monte Avenue and El Camino Real at approximately 1 p.m. Oct. 30 and observed the driver grow “combative with a Mountain View police officer ...”

You might think that having Tased people 34 times, Mountain View police are pretty set as far as their Tasing needs go. Keep in mind, though, that Mountain View has more than 34 officers, so not all of them have had the pleasure of pumping electricity into a suspect's body. Still, I wonder what happened afterward. Did the MV officer get angry about McCrossin stealing his Tasee? Or did he shed a tear about how much Los Altos police officers are growing up? Maybe share a tip with McCrossin on the best grip to use when electrocuting a suspect?

I of course haven't bothered to try to find out the facts of the case, making it hard to judge from the story what "combative" means, and in turn exactly whether the use of the Taser was appropriate. Detective John Korges told the Town Crier that it was “definitely within policy, and definitely a prudent use of the Taser.” It seems this was good enough for the Town Crier, but a routine departmental investigation is reportedly underway anyway.

More on this, perhaps, after finals.

UPDATE: The Center for Investigative Reporting has been kicking Taser's ass this week, mainly by letting company officials talk. National litigation counsel Michael Brave is quoted in California Lawyer maintaining that "Exercise is far more harmful to you." In this week's Columbia Journalism Review, Taser defends the claims it made to analysts and the SEC that it somehow has a right to review news stories about it before they are published.

The Russian is cut!

Taser held responsible in Salinas death

The Daily Bruin violates the Best Evidence Rule

A year after repeatedly electrocuting a kid who was lying on the floor of the library in pain, UCLA has finally come out with a new policy regarding when officers can use Tasers. (This according to the Daily Bruin, which has not actually seen a copy of the new policy).

The highlights include a prohibition on Tasing people engaged in passive resistance and a requirement that police officers actually get trained by someone other than the company who makes the weapon.

Can someone please tell me why it took more than a year to come up with this?

UCLA faces lawsuit for Taser incident

The UCLA student Tasered multiple times for his failure to show idea is suing UCLA for violating his civil rights. Mostafa Tabatabainejad's complaint, which is supposedly on the Daily Bruin Web site somewhere (if anybody can find it, let me know), includes allegations of excessive force, battery and, curiously, an American with Disabilities Act violation.

Not surprisingly, the account of the incident in the complaint looks even worse than the original story. According to the complaint (or at least Sara Taylor's description of it in today's Daily Bruin), UCPD officer Terrence Duren fired the Taser more than once after Tabatabainejad was already in handcuffs.

Notably, the complaint does not raise an issue of racial profiling, an accusation which would seem difficult to prove given the facts of this case. I expect that a lot of people are likely to lose interest as a result. But the constitutional question has more significant ramifications. If Tabatabainejad can resist the temptation to settle and end up prevailing on that issue, it will put a lot of pressure on police departments across the state to prohibit the use of Tasers on suspects who are passively resisting.

Acting Chancellor Norm Abrams has released a rather bland statement, saying "We regret that Mostafa Tabatabainejad has filed a lawsuit at this time," and asking everyone to wait for the results of an independent investigation. No word yet on when those will be coming.

UCLA student Tasered in library for failure to show ID

Remember when Taser International said that their products would save law enforcement officers from having to use guns? UCPD were caught on video camera Monday night using the weapon four times on a student who refused to show ID in the main library.



The video and other witness accounts in today's Daily Bruin contradict the police version of events that the student was physically struggling and encouraging others to join in his "resistance." One officer threatened to use the Taser on another student who asked for his badge number.

Meanwhile, Assistant Chief of Police Jeff Young defends the officers by saying that Tasers are safer than batons. This is, of course, not true. More importantly, it is pointless. Police are not supposed to use batons to beat people for non-compliance with verbal commands or to threaten those who ask for their badge numbers.

Young also says that police didn't know the suspect was not armed. Unfortunately, police never actually know a negative fact like that, even if the suspect is naked, so accepting Young's argument would give police a right to do pretty much whatever they wanted.

I hope that UCPD takes a close look at its training and use policies and disciplines the officers. A surprising number of my classmates seem willing to defend the officers today, but I guess we didn't get here by questioning authority.

White people politely applaud

How to explain the lack of outcry after the Los Altos City Council's unanimous decision to arm all 38 police officers with Tasers? Perhaps it's that any high school student who ever went on a ride-along with the Los Altos police knows that the police spend a disproportionate of their time tailing minorities and people who drive beat-up looking cars.

Tasers, like all police weapons, tend to be disproportionately used on minorities. But police frequently fire them at non-violent suspects who are disobeying orders (the link is worth reading just for the story of "Dan-o" Curran). Imagine if they said that every time they asked for more.

Local police have a few handy stories that purport to prove the necessity of Tasers, disingenuously saying that the presence of a Taser saved them from shooting a suspect.

Sometimes, though, the stories appear to bear this out. When police did not have a Taser to subdue a crazed machete-wielding man in Los Altos Hills, they wound up shooting him. (The man survived, but the Palo Alto Daily did not get the memo, leading the next day with a story along the lines of "Police shoot, kill machete-wielding man." Instead of issuing a correction, the following day the paper ran an interview with the man. I believe the headline was "Machete-wielding man tells his side of story.")

As long as we're making fun of newspapers here, a Google search for Los Altos and Tasers turned up this barely comprensible article from the Town Crier's archives.