By Robert Stevens
31 August 2011
In
the space of just seven days, three more people have been killed in
police operations in the UK involving the use of lethal Taser guns and
pepper spray.
On August 16 eight police officers came to arrest
Dale Burns in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, a 27-year-old father of two
young children. (See “
British police kill unarmed man with Taser”).
During
the arrest an officer discharged a Taser device three times, and
another used pepper spray. Following the arrest, Burns, a body-builder,
complained of feeling unwell and was taken to Furness General Hospital
where his condition deteriorated. At around 9 PM he was pronounced dead.
On
August 22, Jacob Michael, a 25-year-old man from Widnes, Merseyside was
at his home when police arrived at around 5.15 PM. Officers used pepper
spray on Michael and then subdued him with massive force, inflicted by
up to 11 police officers. Following this attack he was taken into
custody and rapidly became unwell. Later that evening he was taken to
hospital where he was pronounced dead.
The following night Great
Manchester Police officers used a Taser on Philip Hulmes, a 53-year-old
truck driver from Bolton. The police claim that Hulmes had begun
stabbing himself in the stomach when they broke into his house. After
using a Taser on Hulmes, he was taken to the Royal Bolton Hospital where
he died about half an hour later.
Taser guns are deadly weapons
and deliver a 50,000-volt electric charge through two dart-like
electrodes that remain attached to the gun by 21-foot-long insulated
wires, enabling the handler to administer repeated shocks. The victim
experiences an excruciatingly painful five-second cycle that causes
neuromuscular incapacitation—the disruption of brain control over the
muscles of the body.
Tasers were introduced into Britain in 2004
and were used by 10 police forces in trials. Since 2008 they have been
available for use by all police forces in England and Wales. Tasers have
been in widespread use in the United States since 2001. Since then,
more than 460 people have died in the US after being hit by a Taser,
according to Amnesty International.
Until the death of Dale
Burns, no deaths had been officially attributed to Taser use in the UK.
In 2006, however, 47-year-old Brian Loan died several days after being
shot with a Taser in County Durham. His death was recorded as
attributable to heart disease and not the Taser attack.
Another
death not recorded as caused by a police Taser attack was that of Raul
Moat in July last year. Moat had been hunted down by police in a
week-long manhunt and, following a six hour standoff, he supposedly
killed himself. But immediately prior to this police are believed to
have fired two Taser shots at Moat. These possibly resulted in a muscle
spasm, causing him to involuntarily pull the trigger of the shotgun
pointing at his head.
One eyewitness account strongly suggests
that overwhelming and potentially lethal force was used by the police
immediately prior to Jacob Michael’s death. There are also unanswered
questions as to what the police were doing in his house. An article in
the
Liverpool Echo on August 27 states that, according to the
Independent Police Complaints Commission, who are investigating the
death, the police received an emergency 999 call that cut off without
anyone saying anything. Police then traced the call to Michael’s
address.
This is flatly contradicted by a neighbour of Michael, Ann Blease, who told the
Daily Mail,
“His mum told me Jake [Jacob Michael] was the one who rang the police
himself, saying that someone was threatening him with a gun.”
According
to her eyewitness account, Michael was attacked by up to 11 police
officers who punched and kicked him while he was on the ground. She
said, “What the police did was outrageous. He was handcuffed, on the
floor with his legs restrained and they didn’t even have the decency to
pull up his pants.
“They seemed to be kneeing him in the back of
the head. I counted 11 cops. They were all sat on him, giving him a
kicking and giving him side digs. There was one woman officer, the rest
were men, and she was getting her kicks in as well.”
The
Mail
report claims that the “police said they were arresting him on
suspicion of affray but there was a struggle and Michael was blasted in
the face with the spray.
“Despite him being temporarily blinded
by the effects, Michael managed to run out of the house and got to a
grass verge before being tackled and brought to the ground by other
police officers who were waiting nearby.”
Ann Blease described how Michael was then brutally set upon:
“They were chasing him in the street. I saw it because they chased him in front of my house.
“They
started chasing him and hitting him in the back of the legs with
batons. They said, ‘Why don’t you stand up and give yourself some
dignity’, to him. But he couldn’t even stand up after they’d hit him
with the batons.”
She continued, “They had banged his head on the
floor and they were giving him punches. He was already handcuffed and
he was restrained when I saw him. I don’t know what happened in the
house, I just saw when they were on the street.
“He was shouting,
‘Help me, help me’. He wasn’t coherent. I don’t know why they were
bringing him in for affray. It doesn’t matter, he didn’t deserve that.”
Following
his harrowing ordeal, Michael was bundled into a police van and taken
into custody at Runcorn police station in Cheshire. According to
reports, he was so ill that paramedics had to be called. Michael was
then taken to Warrington General Hospital by ambulance, where he was
pronounced dead.
An initial post-mortem carried out on August 23
failed to establish the cause of Michael’s death. Michael was a fit,
amateur rugby player.
In the case of Hulmes’ death, the
Guardian
reports, “It is thought a concerned relative called police to the house
at 8.30pm. Police were told that Hulmes, who was armed with a knife,
had locked himself in, was making threats and had begun to stab himself.
“Officers
arrived and smashed a hole in the door. When they spotted his injuries
they called for Taser-trained back up. After further failed attempts to
talk him out of the building they broke in and used the stun gun.”
If
this is true, then why did the police use a Taser, imposing unbearable
pain on a man already apparently seriously injured and in severe
distress?
The IPCC, despite its name, is in no way independent of
the police. Ignoring the many unanswered questions surrounding Hulmes’
demise, the IPCC released a one paragraph statement on August 25, just
two days after the latter’s death. Saying it had “now assessed
information available following his death”, it added, “We have decided
there is no requirement for an IPCC investigation into the police
action.”
It said that a post mortem found, “that the man died from stab wounds sustained prior to the police arriving” at his address.
This
is not the first time IPCC has exonerated the police following a death
where a Taser was used. Last year, the IPCC exonerated Nottinghamshire
police for an incident in June 2009 in which several of its officers
subdued a man in the city centre while one used a Taser on him three
times and another officer appeared to repeatedly punch the victim in the
neck and head area.
The use of Tasers by England and Wales’ 43
constabularies has increased exponentially over the recent period, and
they are increasingly the weapon of choice. Home Office statistics
reveal that Tasers were deployed 1,279 times over a three-month period
between January and March 2010, compared to 594 times between April and
June 2009.
Following the three deaths, the Association of Chief
Police Officers (Acpo) representing police chiefs in England, Wales and
Northern Ireland, has refused to hold a review into their use. Acpo in
Scotland also said it had no plans to review the use of Tasers or pepper
spray by police.
Commenting on the deaths, campaign group
Inquest noted that there had already been five deaths in circumstances
that involved police use of force excluding firearms this year, compared
with four throughout 2010.
Inquest found that between 1997 and
2007 there were over 530 deaths in police custody in England and Wales.
Not a single police officer has been convicted in connection with these
deaths. Many of these were the result of police gunfire.
From
1990 to 2011, police shot dead 53 people; 21 of the killings having been
committed by London’s Metropolitan Police. The latest fatality at the
hands of the Met was Mark Duggan, the 29-year-old father of four who was
executed by police officers on August 4 in Tottenham, an event that
triggered the recent widespread disturbances in London and other cities
and towns nationwide.
