Don't let anyone tell you the police just need better training or better tools.
Don't let anyone convince you that those people shouldn't have done the crime and they wouldn't have had a bad day with the police.
It takes an organized effort to be this corrupt.
Hat Tip AAPP for this story from Howard Witt. Once again Bro. Witt is all over one.
Taser death ignites racial tensions
In a town not far from Jena, La., fears of a cover-up mount
By Howard Witt <http://www.chicagotribune.
Tribune correspondent
7:24 PM CDT, July 18, 2008
WINNFIELD, La.-- At 1:28 p.m. last Jan. 17, Baron "Scooter" Pikes was
a healthy 21-year-old man. By 2:07 p.m., he was dead.
What happened in the 39 minutes in between--during which Pikes was
handcuffed by local police and shocked nine times with a Taser device,
while reportedly pleading for mercy--is now spawning fears of a
political cover-up in this backwoods Louisiana lumber town infamous
for backroom dealings.
Even more ominously, because Pikes was black and the officer who
repeatedly Tasered him is white, racial tensions over the case are
mounting in a place that's just 40 miles from Jena, La. Jena is the
site of the racially explosive prosecution of six black teenagers
charged with beating a white youth that last year triggered one of the
largest American civil rights demonstrations in decades. And in a
bizarre coincidence, Pikes turns out to have been a first cousin of
Mychal Bell, the lead defendant in the Jena 6 case.
No novelist could have invented Winnfield, a place so steeped in
corruption that they built a local museum to try to sanitize it all.
Here in the birthplace of two of Louisiana's most colorful and
notorious governors-Huey and Earl Long-the police chief committed
suicide three years ago after losing a close election marred by
allegations of fraud and vote-buying.
Just four months later, the district attorney killed himself after
allegedly skimming $200,000 from his office budget and extorting
payments from criminal defendants to make their cases go away.
The current police chief is a convicted drug offender who got a pardon
from Edwin Edwards, the former Louisiana governor who is serving time
in federal prison for corruption convictions.
All of that tangled history is now wrapped up in the Pikes case,
because Scott Nugent, the officer who Tasered him, is the well-
connected son of the former police chief who killed himself-and the
protégé of the current chief, who hired him onto the force.
"A lot happens in this town and it just gets swept under the rug,"
said Kayshon Collins, Pikes' stepmother, who has participated in
several local protests over the case. "What the police did to Scooter
just isn't right. They would never have Tasered a white kid like
that." The official police version of what happened to Pikes on that
brisk January afternoon reads like a sad but familiar story in
Winnfield's local newspaper.
Nugent spotted Pikes walking along the street and attempted to arrest
him on an outstanding warrant for drug possession, according to Police
Chief Johnny Ray Carpenter. Pikes took off running, but another
officer cornered him outside a nearby grocery store. Pikes resisted
arrest and Nugent subdued him with a shock from a Taser.
Then on the way to the police station, Carpenter related to the
newspaper, Pikes fell ill and told the officers he suffered from
asthma and was high on crack cocaine and PCP. The officers called for
an ambulance, but Pikes later died at the hospital.
Six months later, the Winnfield police are standing by that story.
Meanwhile, the Louisiana State Police are investigating the case, and
no charges have been filed against Nugent or two other Winnfield
police officers who assisted him in arresting Pikes, although the City
Council did decide to fire Nugent from the force in May.
Winn Parish District Atty. Chris Nevils says he expects to present the
case to a grand jury after he receives the results of the state police
investigation.
But there is already abundant evidence contradicting the official
police version of the incident.
An autopsy determined there were no drugs in Pikes' system and that he
did not have asthma, according to Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn
Parish coroner.
Moreover, Pikes did not resist arrest, and he was handcuffed while
lying on the ground, according to Nugent's police report of the
incident. It was only after Pikes refused Nugent's command to stand up
that the officer applied the first Taser shock in the middle of his
back, Nugent wrote.
Several more Taser shocks followed quickly, Nugent stated, because
Pikes kept falling down and refusing to get back up. Grocery shoppers
who witnessed the incident later told Pikes' family that he had
pleaded with Nugent: "Please, you all got me. Please don't Tase me
again."
Williams said police records showed Nugent administered nine Taser
shocks to Pikes over a 14-minute period. The last two jolts, delivered
as police pulled Pikes from a patrol car at the police station,
elicited no physical reaction because the suspect was unconscious,
Williams said.
Only after Pikes was carried into the police station and slumped into
a chair did police call for an ambulance. He was pronounced dead soon
afterward at the local hospital.
After consulting about the case with Dr. Michael Baden, a nationally
prominent forensic pathologist, Williams ruled last month that Pikes'
death was a homicide. On the death certificate, he listed the cause of
death as "cardiac arrest following nine 50,000-volt electroshock
applications from a conductive electrical weapon."
Baden said the case "could be considered to be torture."
"God did not just call this young man home," said Williams, who has
served as parish coroner for the past 33 years. "Fourteen minutes
elapsed between the first shock and the last. If somebody can tell me
anything else that killed this otherwise perfectly healthy young man
in 14 minutes, I'd like to know it."
Williams is no stranger to controversy in Winnfield. Back in 2004, his
garage was firebombed-he suspects the attack was ordered by the former
district attorney-and he says he's been shot at 19 times by people
upset with the independence of his investigations. He wears a gun
holstered at his waist even while sitting safely at his desk.
"This case may be the most unnecessary death I have ever had to
investigate," Williams said. "[Pikes] put up no fuss, no fighting, no
physical aggression. The Taser was not used to take him into custody.
He just didn't respond quickly enough to the officer's commands."
Nugent, 21, declined to be interviewed for this story. But his
attorney, Phillip Terrell, said that Nugent "acted within the ambit of
his training and Winnfield Police Department policies"-an opinion
seconded by police spokesman Lt. Charles Curry.
Yet the official Winnfield Police Department Taser policy appears to
prohibit the weapon's use against a nonviolent suspect who has already
been handcuffed.
"The Taser shall only be deployed in circumstances where it is deemed
reasonably necessary to control a dangerous or violent subject," the
policy states. It also requires that a suspect who has been Tasered
should immediately be checked out at a hospital, which did not happen
in Pikes' case.
What's more, safety guidelines issued by Taser International Inc., the
manufacturer of the device that is now used by more than 12,700 law
enforcement and military agencies worldwide, warn officers to
"minimize repeated, continuous, and/or simultaneous exposures."
Company officials, citing dozens of medical studies, insist Tasers are
safe when used properly. But few of those studies examined the effect
of multiple Taser applications over a short period of time. The U.S.
Department of Justice, in a study released in June, concluded that
"the medical risks of repeated or continuous [Taser] exposure are
unknown."
In less than two years on Winnfield's 20-officer police force, police
records show, Nugent ranked as the department's most aggressive Taser
user. Among the recipients were a 15-year-old African-American runaway
who was not charged with any crime and Pikes' father, currently
serving a prison sentence for a drug offense, who was Tasered by
Nugent last year, according to Kayshon Collins.
Joe Heard said his 15-year-old son was Tasered twice by Nugent last
August, after Heard reported the youth as a runaway and asked the
police to help find him.
"He snuck out of the house to be with a girl," Heard said. "I asked
the police to bring him home, and they did, but in pieces-he was all
scraped up and bruised. They told me the next time he runs, 'You know
we're going to shoot him.' "
This, my dear friends, is not a Taser case. As much as you (and I) may want to see this particular storm trooper strung up by his balls and beaten daily, it's not even really about his sorry ass. This is yet another case of a corrupted justice system, where the police department, the prosecutors, the judges, and the city officials are all equally responsible for allowing the administration of justice to be so thoroughly perverted.
If we allow this case to become about tasers or about one criminal cop, we do ourselves a grave disservice. This appears to be an excellent test case where the actions and actors are so evident and so egregious they literally scream for fundamental changes. Obviously it doesn't work to just changes the faces in this place. Something must be done so that this kind of situation cannot possibly exist in the criminal justice system. Either this entire community is engaged or at least aware that the police and courts are being used to oppress the town's African American residents or they should be primed to make some changes so they don't look like the 2008 version of Rosewood.
We certainly should do everything possible to keep this story out front and make sure this doesn't get swept back under the rug. But calling for this cop to face criminal charges should be the footnote to our coverage. Getting the right system in place will ensure that this dirty cop and all the other dirty ones face the justice they deserve. If all we work for is getting this one nazi locked down or getting a couple of departments to stop using the taser as the torture tool of the day, we'll be right back to square one tomorrow.
