Sheriff deputies in Marin County California have once again demonstrated that it can be dangerous to call 911 for medical assistance. A 64 year old man who was tasered three times in his own home by Marin County Sheriff’s deputies has filed a lawsuit stemming from that incident.
The incident occurred on June 29, 2009 shortly after midnight when Marin County resident Peter McFarland and his wife Pearl returned home from a charity fundraising event. McFarland slipped on steps leading to his home and suffered injuries to his leg, arm and head. His wife then called paramedics from a nearby fire station who helped him in and treated his wounds.
McFarland says as the paramedics were leaving, two Sheriff’s deputies “bolted into his home.”
“The sheriffs ran up the stairs into the room here like a bunch of cowboys,” he said.
ABC7 obtained the audio and video captured by a camera mounted on the Taser. It shows McFarland sitting on a couch with the gun’s laser beam targeted on his chest. The deputy repeatedly tells him that he is going to take him to a hospital to be evaluated because of a comment McFarland made previously that he would “shoot himself in the head.”
McFarland’s wife can be heard in the video pleading with the police not to taser her husband because he has a heart condition.
After torturing McFarland in his own home, the sheriff deputies arrested him and charge him with “resisting arrest.” Those charges were eventually dismissed.
It is not clear at what point during the incident McFarland made the supposed suicidal comments, but regardless, I want to know why the police were in his home uninvited in the first place.
I cannot find the article right now. When I first read this story the comment about shooting himself went something like:
Paramedic: How bad does it hurt?
McFarland: “If I had a gun, I would shoot myself.”
The way it was conveyed in that article was that he assured the paramedics that he wasn’t serious. They relayed the information to the sheriff deputies. The sheriffs entered his house, without a warrant, although if the statement was serious they would have PC to enter to the house to protect McFarland from his house. (There is a strong argument that police shouldn’t be allowed to protect people from themselves; that is a tough one because it has everything to do with sanctity of life and whether we, as a secular society, want to protect people from themselves. However, there really isn’t much argument that police should get to enter a home when there is eminent danger.)
Problem here seems to be the sheriff deputy’s inability to accurately assess the situation. Go in, make sure everything is okay, and then leave. That simple. Of course, the liability if the man had been serious could have been part of their thoughts. But a taser? Really? How about we start training the police how to deal with an old drunk guy that can barely stand without resorting to tasers. If you, as a police officer, cannot handle that then you are unfit for that position. You should be fired and go find a new job. It doesn’t seem like it should have been that hard to control an old man without resorting to the taser. Learn to control a situation without escalating the situation. Good police officers are very good at not escalating situations.
“stop resisting! Stop resisting!”
“Stop resisting!” — because having taser-induced convulsions equals “resisting.”
Contact info for these fucking pigs here.
Un-fucking-believable. They’re pumping electricity into his body yelling “Stop resisting!” Do police need basic education on what electricity passing through a human body does? Useless.
“I want to know why the police were in his home uninvited in the first place.”
Frivolous lawsuits and liability. Someone calls 911 and says “My so and so is going to kill themselves, he/she has done x, y, and z.” If the cops don’t at least show up and try to help, they get sued. This sue happy nation is partially to blame for the issues we are now seeing with LE. Why should LE ever be responding to any calls for a possible and/or attempted suicide, outside the fact it might be a homicide someone is trying to dress up as a suicide?
Johnathan Doe, you are mistaken. Police cannot be sued for not responding. The Supreme Court has held over and over, and other state courts have as well, that the police have no duty to respond to calls, to prevent crimes, or to help citizens. So although I think frivolous lawsuits and liability contributes to a lot of problems in this country, this situation was not one of them.
This situation was clearly one in which the cops were just fucking fascist, sadistic assholes. (And I mean come on, just use common sense – if they were so afraid of being sued, would they have tasered an elderly cancer patient? I don’t think so.)
I hate frivolous lawsuits as much as the next person, and think lawsuits in the private sector are out of control and all too frequent. However police and government are areas where lawsuits need to happen more. Government officials and police have qualified immunities, absolute immunities, all kinds of bullshit that prevents them from being held accountable. No wonder they are so quick to abuse their powers – they suffer far less personal consequence than a person in the private sector, or sometimes no personal consequence at all.
Maybe the cop was yelling at the Taser! After all, the human body is a great source of electrical resistance to flowing current. He’s really a nice cop who just was trying to teach a lesson in Ohm’s law.
There is another lesson you can learn from this, be VERY careful what you say to medical people. The cops were there because the paramedics misinterpreted his initial statement. A friend of mine said a few comments about being depressed during a routine doctors exam and wound up committed against his will to psych eval for a few weeks. Surprise surprise, he was released the day his insurance coverage for that expired. In some cases the doctor or other medical people aren’t any more your friend than the cops are.
The cop asks him to stand up and put his hands behind his back. He is an old man and needs both hands for support to stand up. The guy attempts to stand up and gets tazered before he has completely stood up. Whats up with that??
So how could this man be resisting arrest? The cop himself says around 2:50 “you are not under arrest”.
It is important to recognize the important role of psychiatry in the justice system. Cops are obligated by law and custom to prevent people from committing suicide, and your doctor is obligated to notify authorities if you intimate that you have considered killing yourself. Thomas Szasz warned decades ago against the approaching “therapeutic state,” which now dominates American life. From the drug war to suicide prevention, “mental health” is the pretext for much of contemporary American law.
What law obligates cops to prevent people from committing suicide? I have never heard of this. Supreme Court law holds that cops do not have any duty to respond to calls or help anyone.
If you want to talk about lawsuits, the reason doctors will overreact to anything suicide related is because of lawsuits. Cops can’t get sued for shit they do, but doctors and psychiatrists sure can. Doctors and psychiatrists can even get sued for harm that happens not to the patient, but to an entirely unrelated third party. We have lawsuits to blame for that. Cops overreacting? Not so much. Mostly just due to governmental immunities, combined with a dash of sadism, a lot of self-importance, a serving of utter lack of compassion and a big dose of idiocy.
Attempting suicide is illegal throughout the U.S.. Police do not hesitate to enforce laws against suicide, to subdue the person attempting or threatening suicide, and to arrest him. He will almost certainly be imprisoned in the psychiatric ward of a hospital or similar facility. The police will not acknowledge the right of person to kill himself, and they will use force to compel the person to be “treated.” This applies even if the person attempting suicide presents no threat to others. The police, and most Americans, do not agree with Thomas Szasz’s view that “Suicide is a fundamental human right. This does not mean that it is morally desirable. It only means that society does not have the moral right to interfere”
this is fucked up on so many levels.
The sickest and most disturbing part of all this is the precedent being set. No longer do cops need (or even care) if they’re in life-threatening situations or not. Non-compliance to any command given anywhere for even nonviolent situations is now enough reason to electrocute another human being into submission.
Suicide is illegal, but still, from what I understand there is no obligation of police to help anyone. Rape, murder and theft are illegal too, but courts have held that police have no duty to respond or to help.
Basically, police respond and do as they please. Like Rich says, non-compliance to any command given (with no regard to whether that command is just or reasonable) has become a very dangerous thing for citizens. All police seem to care about is submission for the sake of submission, and obedience for the sake of obedience. It’s completely frightening.
Jenn,
The police will always respond to a suicide call. It is considered an act of violence no matter how it is performed, and no department will fair to respond when called.
Preventing someone from killing himself is not a “help” to him. Nor is arresting and imprisoning him, and forcing him to undergo psychiatric “examination” and “treatment.”
How the police “help” such people is well depicted in this Marin County case, though the man they “helped” wasn’t trying to commit suicide. But you can see how they treat people suspected of simply wanting to kill themselves. This is a quite typical police reaction to such a situation.
I’m surprised they didn’t “take out” the dog first off. Instead of saying “Stop resisting” when Tasering, it may as well be more accurately “Stop existing!”
Pigs are gonna keep pulling this bullshit until they make some ol’ boys turn the tables, tear them a new holster and fuck cops with their own Taser. In Florida last year a carrying Joshua Cartright shot deputies to death after they Tasered him.
I heard a great (but sad) interview on Fresh Air with this husband who begged and begged to get his son committed for psych eval. and treatment cuz the kid (well, early 20′s I think) was definitely really suicidal. The system was not cooperative. A doc eventually told him to lie to the cops, tell them he threatened him (the dad) with violence. Even that had limited success.
The kid eventually killed himself. It was a very sad story, and this father was clearly anguished about it. So, wtf, I guy tries to get help for his son and nobody is interested. This old man says something off hand, and the cops “help” him by tasing him.
Makes no sense.
Russell,
Using lies and violence to prevent someone from killing himself is not “help,” not medicine, and not effective. The son was an adult. He owns himself and has the right to kill himself without interference if he presents no threat to others. It speaks volumes about psychiatry that a “doctor” instructed the father to himself commit a crime by lying to the police. If the son had presented an actual threat, there would have been no motive to lie.
Personal freedom flies out the window when “mental health” is the pretext for dishonesty and violence. The son of any parent willing to behave thusly is very likely to be profoundly unhappy.
If what his wife said was true, Joshua Cartright is a douche bag and the cops should have shot him rather than using tasers. From what I read here: http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/DomesticDisputeCausedDeputyShooting he beat his wife and threw her down on the floor. Confronting someone at a gun range is a HORRIBLE idea, they would have been better off to grab him somewhere else, when he didn’t have a gun ready in his hand. Yeah, if cops get a report that someone beat their wife they are going to expect fast compliance and no bullshit when they show up to arrest the suspect. Totally different case than this one, where the old man wasn’t wanted for harming anyone and had only used a metaphor to describe his pain.
@Jenn, No police department wants the news headline “man kills himself after cops walk away from suicide call”. Some cops may not care if someone kills them-self or not but ALL will avoid the shit storm that will come down from their superiors if the afore mentioned headline makes the papers. I don’t expect this to change anytime soon.
Nicolas,
But the son was a threat – to himself. He ultimately did kill himself. My point is that the father could find no way working in the system to get help for his son, even though cops like this can claim the ability to grab this guy based on nothing.
I agree that we own ourselves, but please, you are telling me that even if I’m so mentally ill that I refuse any treatment whatsoever, even from my family, and continue to refuse that help until I put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger, well, that’s appropriate and preferred? That seems ridiculous to me. How about a medical system that takes people’s health seriously, and a version of libertarianism that helps precent mentally ill people from taking their own lives.
As I understand the legal definition of the word “threat” a person cannot be a threat to himself/herself, only to others. In other words the law couldn’t/shouldn’t apply here, because no one can “threaten” themselves. Opinions?
Russell,
I am saying that no person forfeits his right to self-ownership because others label him “ill.” The mind is a metaphor, and metaphors do not become ill except metaphorically. If the young man had a genuine illness, we would be talking about a brain disease, not a “mental illness.” In some cases, such as Alzheimer’s, people lose their capacity for self-control because they do have neurological diseases, but nobody calls such diseases “mental illnesses.” By their very nature, and because they are metaphorical, there is no organic test for any “mental illness.” In fact, psychiatry is the only branch of medicine that relies on no biological tests to confirm diagnoses. Over time, everything from masturbation and homosexuality to epilepsy and gastric ulcers have been classified as “mental illnesses,” but either due to changes in social attitudes (homosexuality and masturbation) or scientific research (epilepsy and ulcers), many former “mental illnesses” are no longer considered so. Many others have taken their place. (Tellingly, psychiatrists VOTED that homosexuality was no longer a disease.)
Suicide greatly upsets most people who know the person who has killed himself. It is obviously an extreme act. It is so extreme that most people believe that no rational person could do it. Hence it is, ipso facto, presumed to be evidence of what people call “mental illness.” In fact it would be very hard to find a psychiatrist who didn’t conclude that ANY person who killed himself was “mentally ill.” Therefore, psychiatry presumes that all people who consider suicide have lost their capacity for self-control and should be detained and forcibly treated. Which is why the man in the video is treated so harshly — for his own good (in the view of mental health authorities).
I disagree. I believe that, barring relevant evidence of organic disease, it should be assumed that all adults are responsible and have the right to exercise self-control, including the right to terminate their lives. There is nothing more fundamental than the right to suicide. But in a culture where behavior is medicalized, rights are replaced by diagnoses and forced treatments. The person becomes the patient. Americans are so enamored of medicine that many of the same people who oppose the right to suicide support the empowerment of doctors to take lives. They do this in the mistaken belief that self-killing is a medical matter. But it is no more a medical matter than homicide. The outcome, if the attempted killing fails, may become a medical matter, but that is altogether different. A car crash victim may need medical attention, but we do not need doctors to tell us how to drive cars.
Suicide may cause some people, such as parents, great anguish, but it may be a tremendous relief to the person who takes his life. To him suicide is not a problem but a solution.
Do I think a person who threatens suicide should be offered help and dissuaded from killing himself? Yes. Do I think help should degenerate into compulsion? No.
Rich,
I agree with you. Unfortunately, many bystanders consider suicide to BE a threat to themselves, just as many non-users consider the use of intoxicants to be a threat to themselves. Many issues are, in the end, about who owns us. Just as every person who attempts suicide is presumed to be crazy, every person who uses an illicit drug (and gets caught) is presumed to be an “addict,” even if he has smoked but one joint in his life.
As a result of the medicalization of everday life, we get seduced to follow futile pathways to destinations like “medical marijuana,” as if putting control of marijuana and our lives under the control of doctors is a step toward liberation. In fact it is one more step toward what Szasz calls the therapeutic state, by which he means tyranny in the name of health.
I don’t think the police care too much about PR, as evidenced by this very case we are all discussing. They don’t have don’t have a duty to help, as the Supreme COurt as held, and they respond to things as they please. They don’t give a rats ass about publicity; they are the government. They didn’t mind the bad publicity when they tasered this elderly cancer patient, or when they tasered a 10 year old for not taking a bath (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/18/national/main5697860.shtml). Or when they tasered an innocent man to death while screaming the N word (http://www.examiner.com/anti-establishment-in-national/racist-police-officers-yell-the-n-word-taser-innocent-black-man-9-times-until-he-dies). Or when they beat the shit out of a kid who was doing absolutely nothing (http://www.examiner.com/anti-establishment-in-national/racist-or-power-hungry-police-chase-down-beat-up-honor-student-with-no-criminal-record). Or when they tasered an 86-year old bedridden grandma (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/06/officers-taser-86yearold-disabled-woman-bed-lawsuit/).
They are the government. The last thing they fear is bad publicity, I’m sure.
The cops should be sued. At best, If I were the victim would personally have a nice conversation with that officer.