Taser warning won't change HPD, sheriff's office policies

By JAMES PINKERTON and PEGGY O'HARE
james.pinkerton@chron.com
Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle

Houston police and Harris County sheriff's deputies won't have to change the way they use Tasers to subdue suspects, despite an advisory from the stun gun's maker warning law officers against firing it at a person's chest because of a “low risk” of an “adverse cardiac event.”

Officials from both law enforcement agencies said Wednesday that the memo from Taser International doesn't shake their confidence in the 50,000-volt stun gun's effectiveness as a nonlethal means of gaining physical control of belligerent suspects.

Taser's advisory, issued in a training bulletin Oct. 12, marks the first time the manufacturer has suggested any risk of cardiac arrest resulting from its product.

Taser officials said no cases of cardiac arrest have been proved to have been caused by the device. They have long pointed out the stun gun is not risk-free.

The “refined target zones” — preferably from the sternum on down — will help “avoid any potential controversy,” they said.

An Amnesty International report says 334 people have died after being struck by Tasers in the U.S. between June 2001 and August 2008.

Chest not primary target
The Harris County Sheriff's Office has always trained deputies to aim for areas other than the chest when possible, said spokesman Alan Bernstein.

“This is because our agency considers the most effective target to be an area of large muscle mass, such as the back,” Bernstein said in an e-mail.

Sheriff's deputies have used Tasers more than 1,100 times without directly causing a “cardiac incident,” Bernstein said. He added that deputies, about 1,100 of whom are armed with Tasers, have been notified of the bulletin as a way of “reinforcing our prior training.”

The Houston Police Department has reviewed Taser's advisory but will not change its existing 52-point policy on using the device, said HPD Executive Assistant Chief Charles McClelland. Around 5,000 HPD officers carry the devices, he said.

“We're completely confident in our training and our policy that we have, and at this time we see no reason to modify either,” McClelland said. “We've always trained our officers to avoid sensitive areas, such as the face, neck, groin, women's breasts — those type of areas. But we also train our officers to deploy the device in large muscle masses,” such as the back.

A manufacturer's directive will “carry weight,” but will not override a police department's or a sheriff's office's general orders, said Charley Wilkison, spokesman for the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas.

“Taser is probably responding to political pressure and legal pressure, and they're deflecting and sending this back into the police departments,” Wilkison said.

Memo called ‘overdue'
Tanya Eagleton of Crosby thinks the manufacturer's concession is long overdue.

Her brother, Kenneth Ray Eagleton, a 43-year-old long-haul truck driver, was jolted with a Taser on his chest and abdomen by Harris County deputies trying to arrest him after finding him disoriented, thrashing in his car and holding a knife in June 2006.

He died days later at a Baytown hospital, his death ruled an accident due to complications of rapid breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue, with kidney failure resulting from cocaine intoxication. His family is suing Harris County.

“I feel like it's good news,” Tanya Eagleton said. “It's overdue — way overdue. If you're just trying to calm somebody down, (the Taser) doesn't necessary have to be used in the upper body.”

Lawyers for Harris County argue the family failed to show the deputies were inadequately trained or supervised and said the Eagletons offered no evidence showing any use of force caused their loved one to die.

Medical conditions
Ida Green, 73, thinks the Taser devices should be outlawed. Her son, Mark S. Green, 46, died after Harris County sheriff's deputies Tasered him four times after he ran naked around an apartment complex in the 200 block of Dominion Park, banging on doors and windows, breaking into one stranger's apartment and climbing into the front seat of an officer's patrol car.

Mark Green's death last Christmas Eve was ruled a homicide due to acute cocaine toxicity complicating a violent struggle, as well as hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office said. His mother said he had suffered a heart attack and had two stents placed in his chest about six months before his death.

The Taser “should not be used on anybody when you don't know the (medical) condition of the person they're using it on,” Green's mother said Wednesday from her Ohio home. “It's dangerous to the victim.”

james.pinkerton@chron.com

peggy.ohare@chron.com