Janice Wells called the Richland Police Department when she feared a prowler was outside her clapboard house in the rural west Georgia town. The third-grade teacher had phoned for help. But within minutes of an officer coming to her backdoor, she was screaming in pain and begging not to be shocked again with a Taser. With each scream and cry, the officer threatened her with more shocks.
“All of it’s just unreal to me. I was scared to death,” Wells said in an interview with the AJC. “He kept tasing me and tasing me. My fingernails are still burned. My leg, back and my butt had a long scar on it for days.” The officer in question is Ryan Smith of the Lumpkin Police Department. Smith was called to back up an officer from the Richland Police Department because the sheriff’s office in the county, Stewart, had no deputies to send.
Smith resigned as a result of the incident. The other officer involved, Tim Murphy of Richland PD, was fired for using pepper spray while trying to arrest Wells. Wells is considering filing a lawsuit, according to her attorney,. Some have speculated there was a racial component to the altercation between Wells and the policemen; Wells is black and the officers are white. Smith, who quit eight days after the incident, remains unrepentant.
“I did what I had to do to take control of the situation,” Smith told the AJC about his decision to repeatedly discharge his Taser. Yet his former boss, Lumpkin Police Chief Steven Ogle, was shocked when he saw the video. “I couldn’t believe it,” Ogle said. “You don’t use it [a Taser] for punitive reasons, to prod someone. It was evident it was an improper use of force. He was an excellent officer other than that incident.” Smith resigned just as Ogle started the process to fire him, the chief said. Smith now works for the Chattahoochee County Sheriff’s office.
I’ll just take my chances with the criminals thank you.
The worst thing about this, aside from the woman being teased, is that the copper is back on another precinct working as a deputy!
Hopefully people now know his name and know what he looks like to keep an eye on him.
This is just fcked up.
Harrowing…
“I didn’t do nothing!”
I can’t believe the headline isn’t
“Woman tazed for bad grammar!!!!!”
You blog guys are slipping.
Bad Cops, Bad Cops,
what you gonna do?
You better shoot them,
before they shoot you!
#4. My guess is that the woman got tasered for the crime of being black.
Sheople who think the govt, cops, and L.E.O. are the good guys deserve exactly what they get….
I hope she cleans their clock financially with a lawsuit.
What the hell happened to psych evaluations for police hiring, to avoid power trip idiots like these two?
I wonder if we can make a device that absorbs the shock of a taser gun or better yet sends the charge back at the person doing the tasering? I hate these things its just a way for cops to punish people for kicks.
Violence/Tasers
Call the police For Safety.
Not what you should get.
The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood. Shoot them in the belly. When you put your hands, into a bunch of goo, that a moment before was your’re best friends face, you’ll know what to do…..
Time to wake up people and see things for what they are, not as you wish them to be…..
Like it or not, we have crossed the Rubicon…
IF U DONT WANT 2 GET TASED BY THE POLICE U SHOULDNT LIVE NEAR PROWLERS AND THEN CALL THE POLICE THEYRE JUST DOIN THEIR JOB U DONT KNOW ALL THE FACTS WOULD U RATHER SHE GOT SHOT INSTED?
carry on.
The two cops belong in the Georgia State Prison.
#12: Well, obviously the sheriff knew the facts and the cop’s bosses knew the facts and fired the one cop’s ass and the other was about to be fired before he quit. Guess you should know the facts (oh, say, like reading the article for example) before commenting.
With so many people out of work, you would think it would be easier to find qualified people to be cops. But in story after story, that apparently isn’t the case.
#6 My guess is she got tasered for the crime of not being a cop.
The Chattahoochee County Sheriff quickly snapped up this guy and put him back on the streets? Unbelievable.
I read the linked story and came away even more confused as to the back story but what is clear is the woman was lying on the ground in a submissive position when the officer decided to taze her. And taze her again. And again. Possibly up to 12 times!(It was so wild, he managed to taze HIMSELF!) This was clearly an unreasonable use of force and probably torture.
She will sue, win big and probably move to Oakland.
we do not need cops. this sorta shit is all they do. get the damn liberals to shut up about gun bans and let us all defend ourselves and our property.
video shows nothing but the end of the incident. anything could have happened leading up to that. video doesn’t prove either party right or wrong.
I am with #6…she was black.
Their faces need to be on fliers all throughout Georgia…some people should not wear uniforms
Personally I think that Cops should have camera’s built into their badges that transmit the Video/Audio to a secure location. This way we’ll have a complete record of what actually happens. Too much is missing from this incident. From reading the article, it sounds like the police came up to her and started tazering her instead of calming her down. For no reason whatsoever. Arrest the victim and don’t bother looking for the criminal? Something is missing here. However, obviously, the Cops shouldn’t of tazered her or pepper sprayed her in any case.