Man dies in custody after being Tased by San Jose Police

On the heels of Oscar Grant, and those who have lost their lives in the hands of police. Another life is taken this week but it’s not the first taken by police using taser guns. Taser guns are no safer than any hand gun. They initially were supposed to be non-lethal weapons, designed to subdue suspects in dangerous situations, however, they are being used more frequently in situations that are non-threatening. They are definitely not safer than a bullet and more and more deaths are being attributed to their use.

Article: Man dies in custody after being Tased by San Jose Police
Thursday, February 12, 2009

A man in his 20s died after a struggle with San Jose police during which he was jolted with a Taser, police said today.

The man, whose name was not immediately released, died in the backyard of a home on the 2200 block of Amador Drive in east San Jose after being jolted with the stun gun, said Officer Enrique Garcia, a department spokesman.

The incident began at 10:24 p.m. Wednesday when two officers on patrol in the area of Story Road and Adrian Way were directed to nearby Amador Drive, Garcia said. It was not immediately known who sent the officers there or why, police said.

When they got there, the officers tried to arrest the man in the backyard, for reasons that Garcia said he didn't know. The man resisted, "a violent struggle ensued" and at least one of the officers shot him with a Taser, Garcia said.

The man soon lost consciousness. One of the officers tried to revive him with CPR, but the man died at the scene.

The officers' names have not been released. One was cut in the face during the struggle and one suffered a leg injury, Garcia said.

The man's death is being investigated by the police homicide and internal-affairs squads as well as the Santa Clara County district attorney's office, which is standard procedure for in-custody deaths.

The cause of the man's death will be determined by the county medical examiner.

According to police watchdog groups, the death is the sixth to result after the use of Tasers by San Jose police since 2004, when all officers in the city were given the stun guns for use on patrol.

Lawsuits are pending in at least two of those cases. In a third case, the City Council agreed in December to pay $70,000 to the family of Jose Angel Rios, a 38-year-old Fresno man whose death in a 2005 confrontation with police was partly attributed to officers' use of pepper spray and stun guns.