Taser Talk

In the pilot episode of MTV’s “Jackass,” daredevil host Johnny Knoxville can be heard giggling between yelps of agony after being pierced with two prongs shot from a Taser, an electroshock weapon that is nothing to laugh about.

Gabriel Shane Bitterman, 23, could attest to that. Unfortunately, he’s dead. He died two weeks ago while in police custody a few minutes after being hit with a 50,000-volt Taser gun deployed by a Lincoln police officer. The assumption many make is that Bitterman died as a result of the Taser deployment. However, it’s not the Taser shock that killed Bitterman, according to Officer Dave Staskiewicz, Taser Coordinator for the Omaha Police Department.

“A man died in custody. It had nothing to do with a Taser,” Staskiewicz said this week. “It was labeled that way before a pathologist even saw the body.”

On Sept. 19, at 2:55 a.m., police were called to a Lincoln apartment after someone reported a woman screaming. Police found Bitterman in a bedroom with a knife to his 19-year-old girlfriend’s neck. After failing to follow the police officer’s commands to drop the knife and get down, Bitterman was hit with a Taser, which causes muscle incapacitation.

An autopsy and a toxicology test are being conducted on Bitterman, and as of Tuesday the results had not been made public. Lincoln Police Officer Katie Flood said that toxicology reports in Lincoln typically take two to three weeks, but can take longer depending on the case. In the meantime, the Lincoln officer who deployed the Taser on Bitterman, Jonathan Kossow, has returned to work.

A note of interest in the Bitterman case is that an MTV production crew was riding with the Lincoln officers that day, Sept. 19. They were filming footage for an upcoming reality show called “Busted,” which features what happens to kids when they take things too far and start breaking the law. The camera crew did not go into the apartment, but Officer Kossow was miked. The audio recorded during the incident is being reviewed and has not been made public.

But as Omaha’s Officer Staskiewicz said, Bitterman’s death had nothing to do with being hit with a Taser.

“If you gather up every other non- or less-lethal option at the disposal of law enforcement or the military, this (Taser) is the most tested piece of equipment – more testing than all those others combined,” he said.

“There is a history here if you go back 15, 20 years in law enforcement, every time law enforcement gets a new tool the media always says that’s what’s killing the people. When OC (Oleoresin Capsicum, aka pepper spray) came out all the reports were that OC was killing people. When the Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint System came out, that was killing people. When positional asphyxia came out, that’s what was killing people – the baton, the same thing. All of these things have been disproven over the years, and the Taser will be disproven. And then we’ll get a new cutting edge thing here in a few years.

“But what they’re missing the boat on is, regardless of what piece of equipment, people are still dying in police custody. And so they need to get to the root of the problem, which is drug use and the effects on the body.”

The Taser is born

Long before “tase” began being used as a verb (see the “Don’t tase me, bro” case out of the University of Florida when an unruly student was stunned with a Taser after he interrupted a speech by Sen. John Kerry in 2007) a NASA engineer was hard at work on a non-lethal weapon.

It was the 1960s when Jack Cover, a NASA scientist, began experimental use of electricity as a non-lethal weapon. He discovered that a high-voltage, low-amperage weapon could incapacitate a person without injury. So came the Taser, an acronym for Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle, a fictional weapon used by the hero of an old-school adventure story.

The modern Taser weapon (such as the X26, used by most law enforcement agencies, shown on our cover, and costing $800-$900 each) fires two small, dart-like electrodes, which stay connected to the main unit by conductive wire. The prongs are propelled by compressed nitrogen charges. The air cartridges (about $23 each, good for one use) contain a pair of electrodes and propellant for a single shot and have to be replaced after each use.

According to Taser, which became a brand name in 1993, a Taser device produces 50,000 volts to create a spark that will transmit electricity through 2 inches of clothing. Only short pulses of 400 volts actually enter the body, according to Taser. The average voltage during a typical five-second application is less than one volt.

“When compared to a static shock from a doorknob (35,000 to 100,000 volts) or a Van de Graff Generator (1,000,000 to 20,000,000 volts), a common display in science museums that makes your hair stand on end, 400 volts with extremely low current is equally as harmless,” Taser says.

“Volts are not dangerous,” Officer Staskiewicz said, “amperage is what’s dangerous.”

Pointing to an electrical outlet in his office at the new Omaha Police Department Training Academy at 11616 Rainwood Road in northwest Omaha, Staskiewicz said: “This wall outlet – this is only about 110 volts. So people think that ‘Well, this wall outlet is 110 volts, and a Taser is 50,000 volts; holy cow, that thing’s gotta be pretty dangerous.’

“But what happens is that (the wall outlet) has 16 amps. And this (Taser) has .0036 amps. If the amps are very, very low, and the volts are high, it’s safe. If the amps are high and the volts are low it’s dangerous. But people don’t seem to understand that. Do you know what makes this thing work? The same two batteries that make my flashlight work. Two 3-volt lithium batteries make this thing operate. I don’t think these two 3-volt batteries are enough to kill a person.”

Not all agree on that

One of the groups that is most against the use of Tasers is Amnesty International, a Nobel Prize-winning grassroots activist organization that “undertakes research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the context of its work to promote all human rights,” according to its mission statement.

According to Amnesty International, more than 290 individuals in the United States have died after being struck by police Tasers since June 2001.

“Amnesty International is concerned that Tasers are being used as tools of routine force, rather than as weapons of last resort. Rigorous, independent, impartial study of their use and effects is urgently needed,” AI’s Web site says.

Omaha Officer Staskiewicz disagrees.

“People say we’re overusing the Taser, that we use it too much,” he said. “For example, in 2004 we had 26,000 arrests, just criminal citations, criminal arrests, not the traffic citations that end in an arrest. Of the 26,000 arrests that we made, we only used the Taser 172 times, so the percentage is miniscule of the times we’re actually using the Taser … There’s never been a death anywhere in the world attributed to the Taser.”

Nevertheless, Amnesty International contends that people have died as a result of being struck with a Taser.

“Most of those who died were shocked more than once and 92 were subjected to between 3 and 21 shocks. One man was shocked repeatedly while in handcuffs in cycles lasting 19, 12 and 10 seconds; another man died after being shocked for 57 continuous seconds. The ability to prolong the electrical cycle beyond five seconds, for as long as the officer keeps his or her finger depressed on the trigger, may dangerously increase stress levels, and that the psychological and physiological effects of prolonged or repeated shocks requires urgent review by relevant independent experts.”

Council Bluffs Police Sgt. Pat Morris said there “hasn’t been one Taser related death that has been proven.”

“Amnesty International tries to claim that,” he continued. “But say you get in a car accident today and then next year you die, and they say, ‘Oh, well, must have been the car accident.’ It makes no sense, and that’s what’s going on here with all of the Taser-related deaths that Amnesty International claims.

“There hasn’t been any actual proven one, and so we feel very, very comfortable with using it, versus using the baton or OC or other less-than lethal options.

Tasers in Omaha

Omaha has seen its share of Taser controversy. In February 2006, David L. Moss died after an arrest that involved being struck with a Taser. Police said a toxic level of PCP and an irregular heartbeat led to the 26-year-old Moss’ death.

After struggling with Moss and a failed attempt at deploying a Taser, police used what is called a “dry stun” or “drive stun,” whereupon the Taser weapon is applied directly to the individual. After he was stunned with the Taser, Moss was placed in handcuffs and leg restraints, then appeared to go into cardiac arrest while being placed in an ambulance.

(Standard police procedure requires calling an ambulance whenever a Taser is deployed.)

Moss died at the hospital.

In August of last year, 21-year-old James Barnes of Omaha died following a confrontation with police, who deployed a Taser on him.

According to police reports, police went to Barnes’ residence to serve misdemeanor warrants for traffic violations. Barnes was in an upstairs bedroom when police attempted to arrest him. As Barnes was trying to escape through a window, he was hit with a Taser. He fell out of the window to the ground, causing head injury. Barnes died five days later due to head trauma.

A Taser case that made several headlines occurred in November of 2006. Omaha Police Officer David Erickson was suspended after he repeatedly deployed a Taser on Monte Williams, who was suspected of having a crack cocaine rock in his mouth. At the time of being hit with the Taser, Williams was in handcuffs.

Williams did not die, and no felony charges were brought against Erickson, who resigned from the police force a couple of months later.

Omaha Officer Staskiewicz gave an example of a person “whacked out on drugs,” and how a jolt from a Taser is not going to cause them pain.

“That person is going to fight and fight and fight, because there are so many factors that go into it. It’s either a PCP related type of overdose, where they are cooking from the inside out and that’s why they always discard their clothing. Either way, they’re not going to feel pain.”

It’s for that reason, law enforcement agencies say, that they favor the Taser – because it is not dependent on pain compliance, making it highly effective on subjects with high pain tolerance, aka those “whacked out” on drugs like PCP.

Reiterated Staskiewicz, “The Taser doesn’t rely on pain for compliance, that’s the gem of what a Taser does.”

C.B. police want more

“We definitely could use more Tasers. It is by far a very good tool. We’re big fans of it,” Sgt. Morris said.

“It’s a tool that you use on a suspect and typically it leaves very little markage, it leaves virtually no injury, unless they fall and strike themselves on the ground or something, versus a baton when you hit them – you’re going to cause injury, maybe a broken bone. So if I can subdue a suspect, or if a suspect has a knife, instead of having to use lethal force I use this (Taser) and I save his life and I save my life – it’s a win-win situation.”

Council Bluffs has 114 members in its police department. Of those, 60 are certified to carry and use a Taser, of which the department has had a “handful” since 2004. Like Omaha, Council Bluffs’ police department bought the Tasers without department-budgeted funds. Morris said C.B. got its Tasers with proceeds from an auction of confiscated items

Omaha also began using Tasers, paid for using drug-seized assets, in 2004. Today, Omaha has 260 (out of its department of 820) officers certified to use a Taser. The Omaha department has 99 Tasers for use.

According to Officer Flood, Lincoln’s police department owns 15 Tasers and has 80 officers (out of 300) certified to use them.

“It’s my goal that every officer is issued a Taser just like they are issued OC spray and a baton,” said Sgt. Staskiewicz. “And hopefully, we’ll get to the point where we can do that.”

‘Tasers save tax dollars’

In 2003, the City of Omaha paid out $334,000 in workman’s compensation expenses for police officers who were injured in the line of duty, Staskiewicz said. After getting Tasers in 2004, that figure dropped to $152,000 for that year.

“It’s hard to judge how much money we’ve saved in lawsuits and in complaints and in officers not being injured and the fact that they may or may not have to use lethal force because of it, you can’t really judge for sure,” Sgt. Morris said.

“But I do know that we used it (Taser) 247 times since getting them, and we haven’t had one complaint. And I can tell you if we had to use the baton 247 times, there would be a lot of complaints.”

Morris said the Council Bluffs police department encourages the use of Tasers as opposed to going to hand-to-hand combat with suspects.

Said Morris: “Say we confront a suspect and say, ‘Sir, you’re under arrest.’ Well, ‘F-you.” Well, then it’s, ‘Sir, you don’t understand, turn around and put your hands behind your back, you’re under arrest.’ Well, ‘F-You.’

“You have two options at that point, because we’re not going to run away: We can either A, tackle this guy and fight him out, and he’s going to get hurt, I’m going to get hurt, someone is going to get hurt and it’s not going to be good. Or B, I stand back, take my Taser and I blast him, he goes down like a dirty shirt.

“When he comes to, he’s handcuffed and he’s not hurt, I’m not hurt and he’s got a whole new respect for the law … or at least the Taser.”