Stun gun was only way, police say (framingham mass)
By Jennifer Kavanaugh/ Daily News Staff
Thursday, March 30, 2006
FRAMINGHAM -- Police said they had to use a stun gun to subdue a knife-wielding, suicidal man before he hurt himself or the officers who had come to check on his well-being Monday night.
A 27-year-old man was taken to MetroWest Medical Center for treatment of self-inflicted knife wounds and a psychological evaluation, Lt. Paul Shastany said. He said the use of an electric-shock weapon helped police prevent the man's suicide.
"This had the ingredients of a major tragedy," Shastany said of the incident, which took place around 8:30 p.m. on Monday.
Shastany said police got a call from a woman worried about the safety of her daughter's ex-boyfriend, who had apparently become despondent over the breakup of the relationship. The department has not released the man's name because he has not been charged with a crime.
The man had recently moved, and the woman had only a new phone number for him. Tracing back the number, police went to 10 Pine St. and heard loud music. They banged on the door, and the music lowered, but the man on the other side of the door refused to let them in and said, "I want to die," Shastany said.
When they forced the door open, the officers encountered a 400-pound man holding a knife in each hand and challenging them to come at him, Shastany said. The man stabbed himself a couple of times in the chest, Shastany said, and held a knife up to his throat, drawing blood.
"It was a stalemate," Shastany said. "They knew that if they approached him, he would brandish the weapon on them, or stab himself."
So police waited for another officer to arrive with a Taser. The device used by Framingham and other departments subdues a person by shooting 50,000 volts of electricity into them for five seconds. Police say the weapon helps immobilize agitated or belligerent people and provides a less dangerous alternative in defusing tense situations.
On Monday, police hit the man with one shot of the Taser, after which he fell backward on the bed. Officers then restrained him, Shastany said. He was taken to the hospital, though the seriousness of his injuries was not known.
Shastany said about 17 officers, less than a fifth of the department, are trained and allowed to use the devices.
Massachusetts police departments that use Tasers have to file a report with the state Executive Office of Public Safety. Those reports come in quarterly.
For the period between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31 of last year, 10 of the 14 departments required to file reports actually did, and in those reports, three uses of Tasers were reported, said Andrew Plunkett, deputy chief of staff for the state public safety office.
The state has guidelines for the training of law enforcement employees. All officers certified in the use of the devices had to be shocked themselves first to get a sense of the power involved, Plunkett said.
The use of Tasers and other electronic stun gun weapons, however, is not without controversy. In a report, Amnesty International stated that more than 150 people have died in the United States over the past five years after they were shocked with such weapons.
However, in many of those cases, authorities cited other causes that led to the deaths of those people. The electric shock was listed as the primary cause in three cases, and as a contributory factor in 23 others, the organization said.
This week, Amnesty International renewed a 2004 call for a ban on the devices to allow time for a study of the devices' effect on people.
"The mounting death toll of people shocked by Tasers makes the need for a full, independent and rigorous inquiry more urgent than ever, said Susan Lee, director of Amnesty International's Americas Programme in a statement.
Plunkett said his office has no records of any deaths caused by police use of Tasers.
Shastany said he is aware of the concerns about Tasers, but in this case the device kept a man alive and protected officers from being attacked.
"It's a tool we use for immediate problems," Shastany said. "They believed this guy was in the process of killing himself."
(Jennifer Kavanaugh can be reached at 508-626-4416 or at jkavanau@cnc.com.)
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too bad new jersey do not allow tasr... instead they shoot the guys.
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