Handcuffed man ‘Tased,’ dies

Jen Lawson

Wednesday, June 8, 2005 | 11:01 a.m.

Late last year Metro Police adopted a policy banning officers from using Taser guns on handcuffed citizens, but Monday night an officer stunned a man in cuffs, police said. The man was pronounced dead a short time later.

However, whether the officer violated the policy is still up in the air.

"Our policy is clear, it's definitive. You cannot Tase a prisoner in handcuffs," Deputy Chief Greg McCurdy said. "But was he a prisoner? That's the sticking point."

That statement stunned and outraged civil rights activists, who called it ridiculous and offensive.

"There is no sticking point," Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the ACLU of Nevada, said. "It doesn't matter whether he has been charged with a crime. He was in handcuffs and in police custody. Whether or not he has been charged has nothing to do whether someone should be Tased."

"It's very troubling," he said. "Clearly these officers did not follow their own policy."

Monday's incident took place just after 8 p.m. outside the Western Hotel at 899 E. Fremont Street, near North 10th Street.

McCurdy said a 47-year-old man, whose name had not been released this morning, was acting erratically, "tearing up large amounts of money and throwing it around."

Hotel security called police after the man refused to leave the property.

The first officer who arrived approached the man and "immediately found him to be resistant," McCurdy said. The two began struggling on the sidewalk outside the hotel until a patrol sergeant arrived to help.

The sergeant used his Taser gun on him and it subdued him, then began fighting again after the 50,000-volt shock, police said. With the darts still in the man's body the sergeant pulled the trigger a second time, shocking him again, Metro spokesman Sgt. Chris Jones said.

At that point officers were able to get handcuffs on him, but he continued to struggle as they awaited paramedics, Jones said.

When a Las Vegas Fire & Rescue crew arrived, the officers placed the man on a gurney so he could be taken to the hospital for a medical evaluation. He had not been charged with a crime, police said.

McCurdy said the man started to thrash around again when the officers prepared to remove the handcuffs and replace them with gurney restraints so he could be taken to the hospital.

An officer used a Taser on him for the third time. McCurdy said late Tuesday afternoon that he had confirmed the man was handcuffed.

He was taken to Valley Hospital and Medical where he was pronounced dead at 9:06 p.m.

The coroner's office will determine the cause and manner of his death.

The sergeant, a 16-year veteran of the department, and the officer, who has been with the department for five years, were placed on paid leave pending the outcome of the coroner's inquest, which has not yet been scheduled. Their names will be released 48 hours after the incident in accordance with department policy.

William Lomax, 26, was the first person to die after being shocked with a Metro officer's Taser gun since the department began using the devices two years ago.

The officer used his Taser on Lomax numerous times in February 2004 while he struggled violently, including while he was in handcuffs, police said.

"For all the talk and all the hand-wringing and all the rationalizations, they seem to have learned nothing in the interim, and the result is yet another person losing their life," Gary Peck, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, said.

A medical examiner determined the primary cause of Lomax's death was cardiac arrest during restraint with PCP intoxication as a contributing factor, and ruled his death a homicide.

A coroner's inquest jury cleared the officer, but jurors determined the Taser could have played a role in Lomax's death.

After that case, which received national attention, Metro instituted a ban on using a Taser on those in handcuffs.

That incident and another last summer also led to a policy on how to manage people who, like Lomax, appear to be in a state of excited delirium -- combative, violent, aggressive toward objects, hot and sweaty, shaking, screaming, paranoid, removing clothing and injuring him or herself.

Keith Tucker, 47, died in August 2004 shortly after he was Tasered during a struggle with police while they said he was in the midst of an excited delirium episode.

His cause of death was ruled as cardiac arrest caused by narcotics during restraint -- part of that restraint involved immobilization by the officers' Taser guns.

In the Western Hotel case, although police said the man was behaving erratically, Jones said it's not clear whether the man was in the throes of excited delirium.

Peck said he doesn't buy the department's "excited delirium paradigm," but he said, if the most recent man to die "doesn't qualify as someone who is in a state of what they call excited delirium, that's really disturbing to me. It's preposterous and it's not credible for them to play these kinds of games in these kinds of circumstances."

The Metro policy says this should be treated as a medical emergency, not a crime, and specific protocols were established.

According to the policy, officers are permitted to resort to force to get the person under control, including using pepper spray, a baton or Taser if necessary.

But first they are required to try to calm the person down verbally, call officers on the department's crisis intervention team to the scene to help and call emergency medical personnel.

It's not clear if all of these steps were followed. Police spokeswoman Carla Alston said this is one of the things that will be investigated.

Jones added, "These things do happen quickly. We have just moments to make a decision."