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.
# 18 polybot said, “video doesn’t prove either party right or wrong.”
Dear Manybot. We must have watched different videos. I saw a couple of cops on their feet discharging an instrument of torture into someone either lying or sitting on the ground. In other words, someone who was not a current threat to either police officer. It sounded very much like the officers were using the Taser to force someone to do something. Which is nearly the very definition of torture. While the linked story is confusing, it is clear they were trying to arrest this woman for some reason and that she may have resisted. So,it is quite possible the initial pepper spraying was appropriate. However, once on the ground and not a danger to the officers, there is no reason for using the Taser. It is not intended to be an instrument for forcing compliance.
And people wonder why many believe racism is sadly alive and well in America. Can anyone tell me when was the last time there was any kind of incident like this at a white-owned household?
According to the article, she had a friend stay with her to protect her from the prowler until the police arrived. The police assumed that it was a domestic situation and not a prowler, so they demanded to know the friends name. (He left as soon as the police arrived.) She didn’t give it because it had nothing to do with an investigation of a prowler, so they shocked her to get it out of her in violation of the 5th amendment.
The sheriff, who she knew by first name and called in the first place, arrived after the tasings and had to bail her out himself. He fired the deputy and the local cop got fired by his department.
The sheriff did the right thing here. Too bad a sheriff from another county hired the bad cop that obviously doesn’t listen to people who call the police and find out what is really wrong instead of jumping to conclusions.
#4
By the accent of the cops and woman, I say it’s common there.
as I recommend to Boobo, check out A Way with Words weekly.
He arrested her because she wouldn’t tell him who her friend was? Since when is that illegal? The chunky white-haired cop acted like he couldn’t freaking believe it — “She told me she wouldn’t tell me nuthin’!” he kept repeating, like it was the worst thing he had ever heard of happening in the world ever anywhere any time.
Man, he must have had a flashback to Jim Crow. Or forgot he wasn’t wearing his sheet that night.