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Police taser deaf man for noncompliance with verbal orders

IMST

If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a W
IMST
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Police forced entry into Williams home while responding to a shooting, but it turned out to be a false call. They had no idea at the time the call wasn’t real and that Williams is hearing impaired. Without his hearing aid he is basically deaf.

“I kept going to my ear yelling that I was scared. I can’t hear! I can’t hear!”

Officers were worried about their own safety because at the time it appeared Williams was refusing to obey their commands to show his hands. That’s when they shot him with a Taser.
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http://www.kwch.com/global/story.asp?s=7446220

10 page thread in 5...4...3...
 
That really sucks. Unfortunately, things like this will happen from time to time and I'm not sure there is really much that can be done to prevent an incident like this.

At least he was only tased and not shot.
 
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Or shot. We handled a similar call years ago, a massive case of miscommunication.

Panic call from a woman in an affluent West County area; a man was trying to force his way into the house. He appeared deranged.

I and another unit responded. Second call from the homeowner..."I've got a gun!" Tweaks things up a notch. My partner arrives first. When I get there, the "burglar", a large, unkempt, and looney-looking fellow is advancing towards the other officer, who has his gun drawn and is obviously ready to fire. The looney is making inarticulate sounds and waving his arms wildly.

A second from getting shot, the guy stops. We begin to communicate with him...He's deaf. He's not only deaf, he's homeless, and lives "downtown". He found the resident's wallet lying in the street, figured out where she lived, and took a bus 20 miles to return it.....

This good Samaritan could easily have been killed.
 
Miscommunication? What part of pointing at your ears and yelling "I can't hear" did the cops not understand? And what threat to their safety was posed by an obviously naked man wearing nothing but a towel? Might one suggest that if this really was an inability to understand on their part, then even if the cops were exonerated of wrongdoing they should be fired for being so incredibly stupid that they are unfit to work with the public?
 
It is a little disturbing that all it takes to have your home invaded by the police is a faked phone call saying there was a shooting there.
 
Kopji said:
It is a little disturbing that all it takes to have your home invaded by the police is a faked phone call saying there was a shooting there.
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How are they supposed to tell from a phone call if the shooting did or did not happen?
 
Yup. They should be allowed to keep screwing up until they kill someone. Until then there's nothing wrong.
 
Rob Lister said:
whereas I hope they get exonerated.
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Would you hope this because you believe they behaved properly, or because they were lucky enough not to kill the guy so it should be forgotten?

One of the things that keeps coming up in discussions of situations like this is that it seems police are very well versed in how to deal with criminals and criminal suspects, but they appear often to be totally clueless about how a truly innocent person might behave when confronted by the utterly surprising, confusing and unexpected appearance of invaders who are already preemptively angry and abusive owing to their own mistake.

Perhaps chucking them off the force for being stupid is too harsh, but I think incidents like this point to a serious deficiency in the way at least some police perceive their own job and their own effect on people. Somewhere there really ought to be training in how to deal with a suspect who is confused, surprised, or uncomprehending.

I have to repeat, what part of pointing to one's ears and yelling "I can't hear" did these cops find either ambiguous or threatening? How much higher than one's ears does one have to raise his hands to count them as sufficiently raised? And what possible alternative did the man in question have? Assuming that he actually could not hear what was being requested, what could he have done to comply with requests, except to guess what was required, and why should he not have guessed that what was required was to inform the cops in the most obvious way that he could not hear them? Is that not a reasonable way for him to have interacted with them? What you seem to be saying is that it is always all right for cops to taser a person with whom they do not know how to communicate, without regard to the reason, and even if the failing is their own.
 
What does this have to do with tasers? As always, if it hadn't been a tasing it would've been a physical tackle which is much more dangerous. You're conflating the issues of unruly police officers and use of tasers, as if the problem is the tasers when in fact the tasers make the situtuation much safer.

Is the tazer really all that that bewildering and futurisic to inspire so much fear and panic in you - this isn't a Mars Attacks death ray for god's sake.
 
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bruto said:
Would you hope this because you believe they behaved properly, or because they were lucky enough not to kill the guy so it should be forgotten?
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Excluded middle (and two opposing ends).

Still, the answer is yes.
 
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