Austin People's Legal Collective

APLC will be giving a Know Your Rights workshop on Sunday the 4th of March at the radical Encuentro in Wimberly,
for more info see www.radicalencuentro.org.   

WORKSHOP:
Know your rights
The workshop covers dealing with police, searches and seizures,
questioning, and
going to jail as well a briefly covering the leagl process post arrest. We
cover the
basics of the current legal system while taking into account the political
climate in which we are working. We feel that if people are impowered
with the way the system works they are more likely to be able to negotiate
that system in a way that feels empowering rather than humiliating and
degrading.

BIO:
The Austin People's Legal collective began in response to the mass arrests
in Austin when the war in Iraq began in march of that year. Since our
formation we have worked on education projects and trainings (know your
rights, going throgh the system, when the FBI knocks, how to do action
legal, Legal observing), Action support (getting folks out of jail, court
support, evidence rangling, legal observing, lawyer support) and police
accountability (see our website www.austinlegal.com, for our full APD
TASER report).  APLC has supported over 100 detentions and arrests in
Austin and Houston, as well as working in collaboratiopn with the other
legal colletives across the country on mass action legal support and
compiling educational mateials and legal resources avaiable to anyone in
need of help negotiating or understanding the system.

Tue, Apr. 25th, 2006, 04:25 pm
tasers and APD

I. Summary & Introduction Page02
II. Taser Statistics
A. By Location/Race 03
B. Levels of Resistance 05
C. Tasing Incidents by Date 06
D. Multiple Occurrences 06
· “Unequal Force” Revisited 07
E. Top Performers 08
F. Fatalities 08
G. New Guidelines 09
III. Conclusion 10
IV. Open Records Request 11

“So I’m grabbing [for my Taser, and the] Taser is gone, and I remember
this clearly, like pawing [at my vest] like, ‘Oh my God! My Taser is gone.’”

-APD Officer Julie Schroeder, explaining her reason for shooting 18-year-old Daniel Rocha. Although authorities have repeatedly assured the public that Tasers are not a real danger, Officer Schroeder’s fear of being Tased herself resulted in Rocha’s death.

Summary & Introduction
The following data reflects information obtained through an open records request made April 2005. This information reflects all the unredacted use-of-force reports involving Tasers by the Austin Police Department. The information begins with the first Taser purchase and ends April, 2005. (Further information regarding use-of-force reports are available in the “Open Records Request” segment.).
· Sixty-seven percent of all reported Taser subjects were people of color.
· Less than one percent of those Tased possessed a firearm.
· Two Taser-related deaths occurred during the period of this report, the first death happening within four months of the initial major Taser purchase in March 2004.
· Thirty-two percent of all Taser incidents happened downtown in Austin’s entertainment district.

Tasers are part of a national trend. Police departments are more heavily armed than ever before. The problem could be described as an arms race, but the target for the race is the very community that the police have sworn to protect. Due to their erratic nature, because Tasers have the potential to cause death in victims with heart problems or drug histories and in unpredictable situations, Tasers in particular are not a good weapon for the police. This report demonstrates that Taser use is concentrated in communities of color, that some cops use Tasers disproportionately more than others and that Tasers are being used irresponsibly by the police. The Austin People’s Legal Collective does not recommend that the police use electric stun devices without adhering to a strict civilian oversight program. Barring that, we urge an immediate moratorium on Tasers.

A. Location/Race

The Downtown Area Command (DTAC) has the highest occurrences of Taser use by officers. (The downtown area of Austin is the entertainment district.) Thirty-two percent of all Taser incidents happened in this area. We also recognize that the city’s rational for the high use of Taser’s downtown, that people are drunk and fighting, minimizes the violence and indifference with which Tasers are wielded and provides a convenient rebuttal for claims of excessive force.

The number of Taser victims in communities (areas which are not the downtown area, DTAC), and the racial breakdown of those being Tased speak for themselves: Seventy-two percent, 228 out of 316 people, Tased in communities were people of color. People of color were Tased 2.57 times more than whites in residential areas.

B. Levels of Resistance
What is the relationship between high levels of resistance during arrests and APD use of force? Less than one percent of all reported Tasing incidents involved a firearm. Whether or not Tasers can be used as a substitute for deadly force, has remained unclear. According to an article written by the Austin American Statesman Austin police chief Stan Knee armed “more than 750 additional officers with the weapons following three high-profile shootings of minority suspects by white officers.” The chief of police stated, “We believe the Taser is an effective tool in reducing situations in which police officers and the public have violent confrontations.” The prevailing public perception has been that Tasers are an alternative to deadly force. However, the Statesman reports that, “The Austin Police Department in Texas turned to Taser stun guns to reduce the potential for deadly violence … and to deal with suspects who otherwise might required lethal force.” Whatever their understood purpose, Tasers are not predominantly being used in cases that would require deadly force. Almost half of those Tased (44.9%) were resisting either verbally, passively or defensively, offering no threat of harm to the officers. The Statesman article further notes ambivalence within the APD itself. “Some Austin officers have quietly raised this issue of whether Tasers have become the first line of defense, replacing verbal commands and physical intervention.”
In September 2005 Michael Clark became the second person to die after being Tased by APD. Perhaps his death and the death of Abel Perez, who died shortly after being Tased in June 2004, could have been prevented by using other less-deadly items in the officer’s arsenal.

C. Tasing Incidents By Date
According to the Austin Chronicle the Austin Police Department purchased 730 new Tasers in March 2004. This purchase directly reflects the increase in Taser incidents. During 2004 the reported number of Taser incidents averaged about one a day. These numbers do not reflect, as one might expect, a rise in citizen violence. They only reflect the fact that Tasers were introduced into the police force without a comprehensive and responsible policy on their use. The more weapons the police possess the more they are likely to use said weapons against the community. It should also be noted that a proliferation of weapons does little to encourage the police to resolve conflicts without using force or, at the least, weapons that do not have the potential to result in death.

D. Multiple Tasing Occurrences
Sixty-five Taser incidents were situations where multiple cops Tased one subject. That would be 65 uses of the Taser for only 31 subjects. 49% of these incidents happened downtown.

E. Top Performers
Officer Lonnie Gall has the largest number of Taser victims, dominating the list with 16 total Tasing incidents. The top 27 officers who used their Tasers the most account for 156 out of 464, or 34% Taser incidents. They Tased subjects predominantly in DTAC. Notably, communities of color were more like to be the targets for the top Tasing cops. NE and CE (Austin’s Eastside) were the communities Tased the most with Latinos being Tased more than any other group. Much like the Statesman’s top ten, our top ten did the bulk of their Tasings downtown and, with a few exceptions, east of the Interstate.

Top TasingPolice Officers Number ofTotal Incidents
Gall, Lonnie 16
Bigongiari, A. 9
Marquez, Joshua 8
Bushell, Colby E. 8
Nash, Steven W. 7
Johnson A. 7
Oborski, Khristof 7
Haynes, Andrew 6
Harvey, James R. 6
Riley, Charles 6
Williams, James 6
Quintana, Leonardo 5
Kelly, Phillip W. 5
Griffin, D.A. 5
Pursley, W. 5
Jelesijevic, Mark 5
Harrell, J. 5
Hugonnett, T. 5
Pollard, Michael 5
Goodman, J. 5

F. Fatalities
In April 2005, with public unease over the Taser device building, the Austin City Council and Chief Knee staged a publicity event to repeat assurances of safety. Presenting his findings, Dr. Ed Racht, medical director of the Austin/Travis County Emergency Medical Services stated there had been 40,000 uses of Tasers on humans. At the same time Amnesty International reported 103 Taser-related fatalities. This means that nationally a fatality occurs once every 400 times a police officer Tases someone. And within the period covered in this report the fatality rate has been approximately 1 in 400.
At the current rate of Taser use, averaging about once a day, we can expect a death about once a year, a trend which has held true for 2004 and 2005.
The death of Abel Perez on June 16, 2004 was not reported to the general public as a Taser fatality, even though Chief Knee and Dr. Racht were both certainly aware of the incident prior to assuring the public that Tasers were a strictly non-lethal ordinance on April 7, 2005. To quote from the Use-of-Force Report, “Subject yelled once, possibly twice, then showed no reaction to drive stuns. Subject died of probable cocaine overdose.” It’s difficult to understand how the police arrived at their conclusion. Before Perez was Tased he was alive and immediately after receiving a large electric shock he was dead.

G. New Guidelines
Early in 2005, in response to changing public perceptions of the Taser technology, Chief Knee introduced a revised policy for APD Taser use. Most of these guidelines make sense. Officers should avoid Tasing someone who is in the middle of doing something where sudden paralysis could lead to catastrophe, such as running or operating a vehicle. Officers should avoid Tasing pregnant women, subjects who appear to be children, the elderly, or the disabled. Officers should avoid Tasing people if there doesn’t appear to be a pressing need. Officers shouldn’t Taser people soaked in inflammable liquid such as pepper spray.
The records surrendered to us by the APD taper off at about the time this policy went into effect, so there is no way to know if these new guidelines reduced the frequency of Taser use until the next round of record requests.

III. Open Records Request

It should be emphasized that our information reflects only reported Taser incidents. The data that was not made available to us or that was available in a redacted form includes information on juveniles, incidents where policy was violated, or where an officer was punished or reprimanded. An example of withheld information is the most obvious in the case of Lonnie Gall who, in a separate open records request was shown to have Tased 19 individuals. Yet the city of Austin relinquished only 16 use-of-force reports upon further inquiry. The justification for this omission is unclear.

Officers are not required to site the exact location of the incident in the use-of-force report. We had to infer location from the officer’s assignment. Some assignments, such as SWAT, have no designated territory. For the sake of readability, similar sectors and districts are grouped as the same region: for instance Frank sector, Henry sector, South East Area Command, and South Central Area Command are all grouped as the Southeast region.

IV. Conclusion

The increase in Tasers reflects a growing shift in the way law enforcement relates to the community. Increasingly, weapons are seen as the medium by which police handle arrests. In Knee’s own report that he presented to the city council, 220 people in 535 use-of-force incidents were Tased during the last 8 months of 2004.

But cop violence is not a foregone conclusion, nor is the notion that a larger and more sophisticated arsenal is the only way to handle arrests. Austin citizens are subjected to greater and more dangerous levels of violence as the city purchases more Tasers, and Tasers guarantee a statistical certainty: The longer Tasers are in use the more unsuspecting citizens will die during arrests.