Quote :

" A Clay County woman's family said it's seeking justice after their loved one died shortly after being shocked 10 times with Taser guns during a confrontation with police. ADVERTISEMENT The family of 56-year-old Emily Delafield said it would take the Green Cove Springs Police Department to court, according to a WJXT-TV report. In April 2006, officers with the police department said they were called to a disturbance at a home in the 400 block of Harrison Street just before 5 p.m. In a 911 call made to the Green Cove Springs, Delafield can be heard telling a dispatcher that she believed she was in danger Officers said they arrived to find Delafield in a wheelchair, armed with two knives and a hammer. Police said the woman was swinging the weapons at family members and police. Within an hour of her call to 911, Delafield, a wheelchair-bound woman documented to have mental illness, was dead. According to a police report, one of the officers used her Taser gun nine times for a total of 160 seconds and the other officer discharged his Taser gun once for a total of no more than five seconds. A medical examiner found Delafield died from hypertensive heart disease and cited the Taser gun shock as a contributing factor, the report said. On her death certificate, the medical examiner ruled Delafield's death a homicide."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/wkmg/20070919/lo_wkmg/14147512

Summary:
* Schizophrenic woman in wheelchair calls 911
* Police come into her home and tazer her 10 times for nearly three minutes total
* Woman dies, coroner rules death a homocide

I certainly feel for the police officers in this situation--when confronted with a person waving knives around, they certainly must feel obligated to do SOMETHING. Nevertheless, when it's the person who called 911 in the first place, saying that somebody was in her home, without her permission, I can't see why she would be tazered (tazed?) in the first place--especially not ten times.

9/19/2007 7:11:02 PM

The revolution is coming.

9/19/2007 7:16:16 PM

tricky situation

hopefully they only tazed the bad part of her schizo personality

I mean they must have tazered her instead of shooting her because they thought the tazer wouldn't kill her but just incapacitate her enough for them to somehow get a handle on the situation

9/19/2007 7:16:46 PM

so they needed to "get a handle on the situation" TEN FUCKING TIMES?

9/19/2007 7:25:39 PM

its time for people to take resposibility for their own actions
if you wanna swing knives at the police, make sure you can take a tasin'
if you wanna disturb a gathering, the taser will disturb you

9/19/2007 7:25:49 PM

^^do you think they were trying to kill her or something?

9/19/2007 7:26:57 PM

^^^ she probably just wouldn't fucking stop. my guess is that every time they stopped the TASER, she started swinging knives around again.

that said, I don't see how they couldn't hit her with the TASER and have a cop ready to restrain her/bust her ass/flip her wheelchair over as soon as they stopped the shock, before she could do anything with the knives again.


still, i wasn't there, and it's easy to play armchair quarterback when you have all the time in the world to think and nobody is trying to kill you. there's no way they were TRYING to be overly heavyhanded--I mean, her family was right there.

9/19/2007 7:58:57 PM

I would wager a good amount that it's strongly against taser guidelines to use it that many times for that length of time. The officer that did that should definitely be punished if not fired.

9/19/2007 8:02:11 PM

^^ I agree that they were tying to solve a problem, and I honestly don't think this is a case of police power tripping or anything like that. That being said, when they tazered her the ninth time, did somebody say "I bet the NEXT time it will really work!" This seems to be an issue of poor training, poor implementation, or both.

9/19/2007 8:08:20 PM

I'm just sayin, Twista, that if you are "trying to get a handle on the situation," it shouldn't take you ten tries to accomplish that...

also:
bitch shoulda gotten her ass back in the kitchen and got them cops a donut or something...

9/19/2007 8:31:06 PM

The police are supposed to be trained to use some sensitivity in this types of situations.

I think it's hilarious that anyone would think this okay or even comprehensible. Y'all are gonna feel like assholes when even the cops on this board won't defend this shit.

9/19/2007 9:07:44 PM

Tasing to death a 56 year old person in a wheel chair does sound pretty bad

9/19/2007 9:31:43 PM

Needs parody:

Police tazer wheelchair-bound shiavo to death

would also need photoshop.

9/19/2007 9:46:04 PM

they shouldve just shot out the tires

9/19/2007 10:09:03 PM

^[/thread]

9/19/2007 10:51:17 PM

Wait, she was in a fucking wheelchair?

How is a person in a wheelchair at threat to anyone? Just go up or down some stairs and you're set.

9/19/2007 11:18:16 PM

^ that's what they thought about the Daleks, too. Until the Daleks screamed "ELEVATE!"

9/19/2007 11:24:49 PM

^^I feel you totally.

But if she was a threat to herself, it is their duty to act to protect her.

Before I said that this wasn't comprehensible, but I can maybe understand...

If they had spent hours with her and one of them became extremely frustrated (probably a little mental illness of their own), I can see them being like, "JESUS CHRIST, JUST FUCKING ACT RIGHT!!!" Taze, taze, taze, etc...

Still, most people have to be a full-time caregiver of someone for at least a week before they start in with the physical abuse.

[Edited on September 19, 2007 at 11:32 PM. Reason : sss]

9/19/2007 11:32:16 PM

I wonder if when she was swinging her hammers and knives she was yelling "Don't tase me bro!"

9/19/2007 11:36:42 PM

Quote :

"But if she was a threat to herself, it is their duty to act to protect her."

sooooooooo, they "protected her" by KILLING HER? riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight

9/19/2007 11:49:24 PM

If I had to subdue some like that, I'd probably try to run up behind her and grab her arms. I might be poked, but I doubt it'd do any real damage.

Depends on fierce she was, I guess.

9/19/2007 11:53:22 PM

^^Dude, I'm not defending the tazering. Can you read?

^That's what I was thinking I woulda done too, but it's hard to ask that of cops. Not everybody can be bad ass.

9/20/2007 12:04:59 AM

Here's another article about it:

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/021307/met_7960731.shtml

I find it more than a little odd that it took so much zapping to stop a nearly dead woman.

9/20/2007 12:12:34 AM

^
JESUS CHRIST, IT'S COMIN RIGHT FOR US!!!

9/20/2007 12:21:29 AM

Quote :

"one of the officers used her Taser gun nine times for a total of 160 seconds"

i think i've found the problem

9/20/2007 12:38:46 AM

maybe they were trying to "fix" her. No, too early?

9/20/2007 8:16:56 AM

While I think the one cop is probably going to be fired over the incident, I do find this interesting:

Quote :

"On the day after the incident, Emily Delafield's brother, Arnett Chase, said he and other family members believed police acted properly and it was the least-dangerous way to stop her from hurting herself or others. ... Luedtke and Acres arrived at the house and decided not to use police batons or pepper spray on Delafield, who was on oxygen due to her medical condition. The officers discussed using Tasers with the family, including some who agreed with their use, authorities said. ... Ryan Delafield, who was not there when his aunt was shocked "

So the only person that seems to have a huge issue with this is the person that was not there. Honestly, I'd like to hear from some of the other family members.

I'm not defending the actions currently as I haven't read enough on the case, and it certainly seems excessive at first read, but if the family members who were there don't have an issue with how the incident was handled, then maybe there's more to this than meets the eye.

9/20/2007 9:31:00 AM

^ What what about the claims in the original post:

Quote :

"A Clay County woman's family said it's seeking justice after their loved one died shortly after being shocked 10 times with Taser guns during a confrontation with police."

Who do we believe?

1. Media A or Media B? Are they even giving us the correct story?
2. Or is it mearly another case of family members trying to profit off of a loved ones death by bringing a lawsuit? (no relation to OJ)
3. Or the conspiracy theorists who believe the "revolution" is coming. And a "police state" is rising.

9/20/2007 10:15:21 AM

Well certainly he is family, and so to say her family is seeking justice is correct, I would just be interested to hear from other family members. It's not so much who should we believe as much as are we getting the whole story. Certainly one would think this would have been bigger news back in April of last year when this happened rather than now, so why the new media attention?

[Edited on September 20, 2007 at 10:48 AM. Reason : edit]

9/20/2007 10:47:31 AM

Quote :

"Or the conspiracy theorists who believe the "revolution" is coming."

You need to learn the definition of "conspiracy theory".

When I and maybe others said "The revolution is coming", that's just a prediction based on events transpiring in the country recently for the past few years or so. It is not a "conspiracy theory."

9/20/2007 3:14:41 PM

Quote :

"2. Or is it mearly another case of family members trying to profit off of a loved ones death by bringing a lawsuit? (no relation to OJ)"

someone swinging deadly weapons is putting everyone around them in danger. mentally ill or not, she was a threat to others and needed to be put down.

9/20/2007 3:30:18 PM

Meh, she was half-dead and limited to a wheelchair.

9/20/2007 4:05:53 PM

and what do the police do when they find your missing autistic son?

...you guessed it--i mean, they have to get a handle on the situation somehow, right?

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/5150740.html

9/20/2007 4:24:03 PM

^^ and aparently enough of a threat that the family members present agreed that tasering her was the best course of action. Whether 9 shocks were appropriate I don't really know but so far only the lawyer and the guy who wasn't there seem to be complaining.

^you mean when they find your autistic son darting in and out of traffic. I think I would prefer they taser him rather than chase him through traffic on foot, safer for all involved.

9/20/2007 5:17:05 PM

that's a bit like saying i'd rather get hit with a baseball than a bowling ball

9/20/2007 5:36:27 PM

Well, such a choice wouldn't need to be made if the kid wasn't running in and out of traffic and if the center he was staying at had kept a better eye on him. But since neither of those were true, the decision had to be made to tase him, chase him or shoot him. Life doesn't always give you perfect choices, it's your job to choose the closest to perfect.

9/20/2007 6:10:42 PM

She was schizophrenic. Clearly, the officer was merely trying to administer electroshock therapy.

She's no longer schizophrenic = success!

9/21/2007 3:11:13 AM

Quote :

"1337 b4k4: I'm not defending the actions currently as I haven't read enough on the case, and it certainly seems excessive at first read, but if the family members who were there don't have an issue with how the incident was handled, then maybe there's more to this than meets the eye."

Nope.

You don't need to read any more into the case to know that tazering a person nine times for long periods of time is WRONG. It doesn't "seem" excessive--it IS excessive.

If you're interested in getting a better understanding of the situation, then I'm sure you'll want to read more. But withholding (?) judgment on the act itself doesn't make you seem thoughtful...it makes you seem like a pussy knee-jerk police sympathizer.

9/21/2007 5:12:43 AM

You're right I do sympathize with the police. I feel they have a crappy job that requires them to clean up the messes other people make and make hard decisions no one would want to make. If it was safe to grab this woman someone surely would have done so before the police were involved. But they didn't . They called the police and agreed with their assesment that tasering her was the best option. From there on out it is simply a question of whether a better option presented itself. That's why I want to hear from the other family members, not the one that wasn't there. He says she was half dead, the actions of the family present and the police suggest otherwise. And yes I know according to you the Police can do no right but you could at least pretend to give them the bennefit of the doubt.

9/21/2007 8:52:32 AM

i think the police did what was right here, but i wasn't there and have only rudimentary second or third hand knowledge, as we all do. it's easy to make judgments about what is right and wrong when we weren't there, based only on the results of an action.

far too often we sit back and decide whether someone was right or wrong solely based on the end result. if the police thought that she was going to die, do you think they would have used the taser? based on the corcumstances surrounding this incident, it seems like the cops were thoughtful and tried to work through the best possible solution with a woman who was dangerous to herself and others and had been before.

the worst case scenario ended up happening for her, but that's going to happen sometimes.

9/21/2007 10:21:26 AM

^^I sympathize with the police, too. But NINE times.

Nine times?

NINE TIMES.



[Edited on September 21, 2007 at 5:05 PM. Reason : sss]

9/21/2007 5:04:48 PM

Quote :

"After a 13-minute standoff, Luedtke fired her Taser when Delafield raised the knife as if to throw it. When the shock did not appear to have an effect, Luedtke told investigators she recycled her Taser up to four times. Acres shocked Delafield two minutes later after Luedtke's shocks appeared not to be having an effect."

Apparently schizoids are impervious to tazers.

9/21/2007 5:12:33 PM

Tasers suck, basically.

9/21/2007 5:14:01 PM