Aren't you a cop in Houston?
You guys have gotten some heat over their use it seems.
Questions grow over HPD's use of Taser guns
HOUSTON CHRONICLE SPECIAL REPORT
The Taser Effect
ROMA KHANNA, Houston Chronicle Copyright 2012 Houston Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast,
Since the Houston Police Department armed itself with Tasers, touted as a way to reduce deadly police shootings, officers have shot, wounded and killed as many people as before the widespread use of the stun guns, a Houston Chronicle analysis shows.
Officers have used their Tasers more than 1,000 times in the past two years, but in 95 percent of those cases they were not used to defuse situations in which suspects wielded weapons and deadly force clearly would have been justified.
Instead, more than half of the Taser incidents escalated from relatively common police calls, such as traffic stops, disturbance and nuisance complaints, and reports of suspicious people.
In more than 350 cases, no crime was committed. No person was charged or the case was dropped by prosecutors or dismissed by judges and juries, according to the Houston Chronicle's analysis of the first 900 police Taser incidents, which occurred between December 2004 and August 2006.
Of those people who were charged with crimes, most were accused of misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies.
In an interview with the Chronicle, Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt adamantly defended the department's use of Tasers, saying the type of crime committed, or whether charges were filed, have little bearing on whether Taser use is justified.
"When people are charged with minor crimes or nonviolent crimes, maybe the reason is because they were stopped before they committed a much more serious offense," Hurtt said.
Though Tasers have become a flash point for conflict across the country, it was an incident involving Houston Texans football player Fred Weary that threw the city into the national spotlight. Weary, an offensive lineman, was shocked with a Taser during a traffic stop in November, arrested and charged with resisting arrest. A judge later dismissed the charge.
The Weary incident followed an October confrontation in which an officer, called to quiet a noisy music club, shocked musicians and concert-goers. The incident was videotaped by club patrons and then broadcast on the popular YouTube Web site.
Those instances, coupled with HPD's admission that the majority of people who officers have shocked are black, have roiled community controversy — particularly since Tasers were introduced at a time of high tension over questionable police shootings.
Calls for reconsideration
Elected officials, activists and some in the community have called for tighter restrictions on officers' use of Tasers, if not a moratorium.
"If they are still shooting the same number of people and the same number of people who are unarmed, you have to ask, 'What are they using the Tasers for?' " asked Sylvia Gonzalez, a former law enforcement officer who now helps lead the local chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Mayor Bill White and Hurtt, meanwhile, steadfastly support the weapon and note that none of the people who were shocked has died. But, in the face of public criticism, they have agreed to allow independent groups to study Houston's use of Tasers and the weapon's medical effects.
They maintain that Tasers have saved lives — including those of the 40 armed people whom officers chose to shock, not shoot.
"We don't know what could have happened in those situations in the past, before Tasers," White said. "The Tasers are a useful tool because the police need an alternative to using a baton or shooting someone."
In fact, Hurtt counts Weary among those whom officers may have spared from a more dire outcome.
"At one point, based upon some of the actions that took place, that could probably have been a much deadlier encounter," Hurtt said, declining to elaborate because of the possibility of refiling charges against Weary or a civil lawsuit from the football player.
Such explanations ring hollow for 24-year-old Wilbert Allen Foxx, whom officers shocked three times during a February 2005 traffic stop in which they claim he tried to grab an officer's gun. Foxx, a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta who was in Houston to help with a family matter, was charged with trying to disarm an officer. But jurors quickly acquitted him after hearing his account of the confrontation and an audiotape of the encounter.
"People may think a Taser is harmless — that it's five seconds and then it's over — but I can tell you that this incident has changed my whole life," said Foxx, who stayed in Houston to fight the charges against him, forfeiting scholarships and delaying his graduation from college.
"So many incidents seem to involve people like me, people stopped in their cars or at the wrong place who don't deserve this type of treatment."
Forces behind the device
The Houston City Council approved a $4.7 million contract to purchase Tasers in November 2004, one year after the controversial shootings of two unarmed teens that led to attempts to terminate one officer and the indictment on a murder charge of another. The fallout from those shootings churned as White ran his first campaign for mayor.
Two months after he was inaugurated, White named Hurtt, then chief of the Phoenix Police Department, to lead HPD. His appointment came with a mandate to reduce the number of controversial police shootings.
Hurtt, the first major-city police chief to arm all of his officers with Tasers, had noted success with the devices in Phoenix. In 2003, the first year the Phoenix force was fully equipped, shootings were cut in half. Similar results have not been achieved in Houston.
Houston officers killed or wounded 46 people in 2005 and 2006, among them a 16-year-old girl threatening suicide who officers said brandished a knife. One of every four shootings — or 11 times — in the past two years was of an unarmed person, according to police and news media reports.
Two shootings of two men this month, in which officers said they were threatened and witnesses disputed officers' accounts, have prompted public outrage.
Hurtt attributes the steady number of shootings to a variety of variables that affect the landscape of crime in the city, including population growth, increased arrests, drug activity and an increase in crime among juveniles.
"We are only one part of the equation," he said. "There are individuals out there who make decisions where officers do not have the opportunity to use Tasers — they have to use deadly force."
But others, who saw Tasers as a tool for reducing deadly shootings, are disappointed.
"We feel misled," said Gonzalez, of LULAC.
City Councilwoman Ada Edwards repeatedly has called for a review on police Taser policy and an independent medical study of the effects of the stun guns.
"When people have the kind of authority we give our police officers with guns and Tasers, then they need to have the accountability that goes with that authority," Edwards said.
Starting off as routine
In Houston, according to the Chronicle analysis, officers turn to Tasers most often when conflicts arise during routine encounters. Interactions such as a complaint about fireworks, a person littering and another riding a bicycle with no light at night gave way to conflicts that resulted in officers shocking people. One common circumstance that preceded an officer using a Taser was the traffic stop.
Donald Touchet was driving home from dinner with his girlfriend Jan. 26, 2005, when an officer tried to pull him over for ignoring a stop sign 1,056 feet from his driveway. Touchet said he did not immediately notice the lights and then could not find a spot to stop because a number of cars were parked on the street. He proceeded to his girlfriend's driveway, where she watched as the officer ordered him out of the car.
The officer told Touchet to place his hands on the patrol car, which he did. Touchet turned to speak to the officer, and the officer shocked him. The officer said Touchet elbowed, but Touchet and his girlfriend maintain that he did not.
"The officer asked Donald something," Julie Mitchell said in a statement for the grand jury that reviewed Touchet's case. "When he turned around, the officer Tasered him. I was so scared. I screamed into the phone that Donald had been shot."
Prosecutors charged Touchet with evading arrest with a motor vehicle and driving while intoxicated, but the grand jury that reviewed the case declined to indict Touchet, and prosecutors dropped the DWI charge.
"This so-called chase lasted all of one minute and went on for less than half a mile," said Robert Pelton, the lawyer that represented Touchet. "I am not one to say that officers should not use Tasers. They're a good tool. But the department needs to have clear rules about what is justified and what clearly is not."
HPD officials maintain that Taser use is scrutinized more carefully than any weapon except guns. An assistant police chief who reports directly to Hurtt reads every report of Taser use and requires a supervisor to go to the scene each time a stun gun is deployed.
Taser-use guidelines
HPD considers the Taser an intermediate weapon that officers can use any time they otherwise would use batons or physically confront people. Officers go through a four-hour course before they are issued Tasers and must pass requalification tests on the weapon annually. Policy and training dictate that officers should use the minimal force necessary to eliminate a threat to officers or others. They also outline instances in which Tasers should not be used, including occasions in which someone is "verbally aggressive" but does nothing else.
The last limitation was clarified after police officials found that a number of officers used Tasers on people who had been verbally aggressive. On March 30, Hurtt distributed to officers a video on which he explained that Tasers should be used against people who are verbally aggressive only if their comments are accompanied by aggressive gestures or the officers think assault is imminent.
"We wanted to make sure we all are on the same page," Executive Assistant Police Chief Charles McClelland said. "But officers do not have to wait to be assaulted prior to using a Taser."
The department does not track how often charges are accepted against people whom officers have shocked, nor does it monitor whether cases are successful, McClelland said. The outcome of criminal cases has no effect on whether an officer's use of a Taser is ruled justified.
Hurtt said many factors, not just an officer's actions, can affect the outcome of a criminal case. "The system is the system," Hurtt said, referring to decisions by prosecutors, judges and juries over which he has no control.
Trust, mistrust of system
Jerome Forney Jr. knows the system well. The 31-year-old served several stints in prison and jail for drug offenses, which is why he was surprised when a judge questioned an officer's judgment after Forney was shocked in the parking lot of an apartment complex Dec. 28, 2004.
Forney was leaning into a friend's car watching a portable DVD player when an officer, who suspected Forney was dealing drugs, approached him. A struggle ensued, and the officer shocked Forney, yelling for him to spit non-existent drugs out of his mouth. No drugs were found, but Forney was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and search. That day, at a probable-cause hearing, a judge took issue with the officer's claims.
"He asked for the details to be read twice," Forney said, "and then said, 'Uh-uh, he wasn't resisting arrest.'
I was shocked. I knew I had done nothing wrong, but I didn't think anyone would question the officer, especially with my experience in the system."
Many of the people whom officers encountered and shocked with Tasers had criminal histories. But in 317 of the 892 cases that the Chronicle examined, no charges were filed in state or county courts stemming from the incidents when they were shocked. Among the cases that were filed, half were misdemeanors, and most of the felony charges were nonviolent, such as possession of a controlled substance or evading arrest with a motor vehicle.
Cases against about 50 of the people charged fell apart.
Managing the mentally ill
Several of those cases faltered because the people whom officers shocked were mentally ill. Six whom officers shocked were declared incompetent to stand trial, and the cases against them were dismissed. Others with mental illness faced no charges.
Kenneth Izzat, who has bipolar disorder, was standing in the street shouting profanities June 25 when an officer approached him. Izzat, 30, kicked the officer's car and ignored orders to stop his aggressive behavior before the officer shocked him.
Prosecutors would not accept charges.
Izzat, now on medication, thinks officers could have used a different tack to calm him.
"One minute he was ordering me around and then next I was being shocked," he said. "It seems some other steps could have been taken first. I think that's all people are looking for. That officers take some time and use their options before they start tasing people."
Chronicle reporters Steve McVicker and Noel Smith contributed to this report.
