Cleveland Police find that officers’ body cameras may lead to a drop in citizen complaints about police misconduct, and an improvement in citizen behavior: Cleveland police body cameras reduced citizen complaints by 40 percent, police officials say - cleveland.com
Because nobody want’s their own beating and\or violent murder recorded and played on youtube?
You left out the part where the cause of death was a cocaine overdose and not Tasing.
Taking him to jail instead of continuing into the hospital was counterproductive and should not have been done, however.
Since when has a violent tazing ever been proscribed in the event of a drug overdose?
OOoooorrrrr, police know they are being recorded and allavasudden civilians start behaving themselves so the police no longer have to beat and kill them for their own good.
As opposed to a nonviolent Tasing, or are you just throwing in superfluous adjectives for the emotional response?
You have a man who’s high on cocaine, breaking glass windows and running around screaming like a maniac. How do you think you’re going to control him? By asking politely?
They continued to taze him after he was handcuffed with legs manacled. But the policemens were still in fear of him, so they are justified in killing him. Right?
Notwithstanding the fact that the Tasing didn’t “kill him”, I don’t see a problem with the use of force here. Taking him to jail when he was clearly in need of medical care, however, was a bad idea, and I could see a charge of negligent homicide sticking on those grounds.
And you left out the part where the autopsy showed that the level of cocaine in his body was “less than 0.01 mg/L,” which, while ***possibly ***associated with an overdose, is orders of magnitude lower than the typical amount of cocaine required for an overdose.
A forensic pathologist interviewed on MSNBC this morning said that the typical amount for cocaine intoxication is around 5 mg/L (which comports with the typical figure given by the medical toxicologist in the article), and that the standard textbook in the field lists a level of 0.9 mg/L as the low end for intoxication. This Medscape article says:
The autopsy also notes the presence of taser marks, but does NOT note that the officers discharged their tasers a total of 20 times over the space of half an hour, during which time the only person in their custody was the person who died.
So, we have a guy who was apparently tased multiple times over an extended period of time, and whose cocaine level was about 10% of the lowest level for previously reported cocaine toxicity deaths (Medscape), about 1% of the usual minimum dose for intoxication (forensic pathologist on MSNBC), and one-fifth of 1% of the typical dose for intoxication (MSNBC guy, and NYU medical toxicologist).
It could be that this guy was a radical outlier in the field of medicine, but you’ll forgive me if i express some skepticism about this, especially when the person performing the autopsy made no observation about the number of times the guy had been hit with an electric shock.
Yeah, because it exposed them to the inconvenience of having to explain the death of another black man in police custody. Why can’t we just them get on with their jobs, right?
How much more control is needed for a handcuffed and shackled man in the back of a squad car? Exactly what could have he done to the cops?
The coroner blew it. The prosecutor blew it. I hope the family’s lawyer can at least get some money for the victim’s family.
The MSNBC video (but not mentioned in the written story) says police found Linwood Lambert in a trashed motel room, hallucinating, and acting paranoid. Trashing a motel room is a crime. The police decided to take Lambert to the hospital. The police could have arrested Lambert at the motel but chose to get a medical assessment first.
Lambert acted in a dangerous manner in the hospital’s parking lot. Lambert chose to kick out the radio car’s window, run from police, and attempted to run into the hospital. Since the ER door was locked, Lambert literally ran into the hospital. Lambert was now detained and taken to lockup.
I’ve seen video demonstrations of TASER use and I’ll suggest that these TASER’s were not operating properly. TASER’ed subjects usually react strongly. Maybe these prongs weren’t properly anchored into Lambert’s skin?
The coroner’s report says Lambert died of acute cocaine intoxication and cardiac arrest. Lambert admitted that he had taken cocaine.
Despite what the Mythbusters may tell you, you can’t polish a turd. So he was high. Big deal. It is not a capital offense. When high, you aren’t in control of yourself. You do crazy things like kicking out a window. He ran to the place that the police were taking him. For this he gets tased multiple times. Perhaps they were malfunctioning, perhaps people high on coke react differently. Once cuffed and shackled and in the car, he was no threat to anybody. Yet they continued tasing him just because the cops were sadistic killers. This man was murdered.
The coroner fucked up. Perhaps he didn’t know of the tasing. Perhaps he was too close to the cops. I believe the probability of getting killed by multiple applications of thousands of volts is greater than the probability that a sublethal dose of cocaine killed him.
After he was handcuffed and shackled.
Let’s dig him up, or better yet, the family should seek a court order for another autopsy.
Lambert chose to get high. Lambert trashed the motel room. Those are crimes. It was a big deal.
It appears that police were tasing Lambert, in the vehicle, after Lambert had been detained at the ER entrance. It doesn’t appear that Lambert was reacting to the tasing. It will be interesting to hear the officer’s response if they are ever asked about this, in court.
They kept blasting him, trying to get him to comply with their orders. As if a man who was hallucinating and irractional was capable of such rational thought. They knew he was hallucinating and irrational, hence the trip to the hospital. I cannot imagine why they changed gears once they thought that cocaine was the cause.
I say ‘thought’ because it is entirely possible that he was hallucinating and irrational before he took the drug.
I imagine that between getting zapped by all that electricity and having coke in your system and the adrenaline of getting roughed up by the cops that rational thought would be a superhuman response at that point.
Was the level of cocaine even remotely near the toxicity level? No (see upthread @ #70219).
Did the police know that he required immediate medical attention? Yes. Rather than taking him to jail they took him to a hospital.
Knowing that he needed medical attention, did the police take him away from the hospital before he received the treatment that then knew he required? Yes.
Did the police know that their department prohibited the tasering of a restrained person? Yes. Did the police knowing violate this rule? Yes.
Once restrained, was the victim any danger to the officers? No. Was there further tasering? Yes.
It’s pretty obvious. Either he was deliberately electrocuted, or the officers are dumber than doorknobs and utterly insensitive to the well being of others.
Agreed, but you know what? You can have a functional justice system without cops tasing shackeled suspects. See:<All of the Civilized World>
Of course you agree. I’ve been watching news reports from much of the civilized world and have noticed that beheadings, mutilations, starvation, cattle prods, and other electrical tortures are used in many so-called civilized countries. But they don’t seem to TASER anyone.