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CROSSPOSTED: Electronic Village blog
Less than a week ago a family lost their husband, father and son … Brian Cardall … because a Hurricane police officer was too trigger-happy with his taser gun. Brian Cardall was working toward his PhD at Northern Arizona University in molecular ecology. He was driving with his wife and daughter back to Arizona last Tuesday when he became disoriented.
Brian Cardall was bi-polar. In the middle of a desert road his mind began playing tricks on him. He was unarmed. He needed help. Instead of help … he was killed because a police officer was too lazy to use commonsense and too quick to use his shiny new taser gun.
Instead of patiently getting Cardall under control to help him … this Hurricane police officer (does any villager know his name yet?) electrocuted Cardall with 50,000 volts of electricity. Cardall dropped. Cardall died. Now a 2-year old baby and his unborn sibling will grow up without a Daddy.
Was it justified? You can judge for yourself. The Cardall family released the following 911 recordings on the death that occurred last Tuesday.
The recordings reveal Cardall’s wife’s pleas for help from authorities … and the preoccupation with the authorities for painting Cardall as a druggie posing a danger to the 2-year old child.
Duane Cardall, Brian’s father, said the family has listened to the tapes released by the Washington County Critical Task Force to the family. But even after that, they don’t feel there is any way a taser should have been used.
In a press release late Friday afternoon, Hurricane City attorney Peter Stirba stated that, "Ms. Cardall reports to dispatch that Mr. Cardall has taken all his clothes off and is naked, she is afraid he is going to jump in front of a car, and that he is chasing after cars that have pulled over to help, and she is afraid he will ‘freak out’ on one of them."
The Cardall family today says they stand by their earlier statement and that,
"While Mr. Stirba may have provided his interpretation of the recordings in his Friday afternoon news release, we feel he has omitted numerous highly significant facts, which we feel the public should know."
I remain convinced that we need to push for congressional hearings on the 22 taser deaths in America so far this year.
You’ve heard the 911 tape from Cardall’s wife. What say u?
2 Comments
Tasers are lethal weapons; they are not an alternative to the use of any other lethal weapon, they just leave less blood. The Brits are having serious second thoughts about following the American model and issuing their 10,000 Tasers. The US should rethink them too.
They aren’t just used on physically dangerous, otherwise uncontrollable subjects. They are frequently used in panic, in retribution, to release fear, and to render unconsciousness. Officers may not mean to kill, they intend to incapacitate, but they are knowingly not choosing a weapon that can readily do just that. Which amounts to reckless endangerment.
I think the same trigger happy cops that would inappropriately use their gun are the same ones reaching for the taser before trying anything else.
Just recently we saw a 73 year old woman that a cop clearly tasered out of anger and then tried to say that he did it to protect her. He was a big burly guy so he should have had no problem controlling a 73 yr. old woman without resorting to the taser.