Black man, Barron Pikes, tasered to death by cops

[coda]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/22/...rss_topstories


Drew Griffin and David Fitzpatrick
CNN

WINNFIELD, Louisiana (CNN) -- A police officer shocked a handcuffed Baron "Scooter" Pikes nine times with a Taser after arresting him on a cocaine charge.


Baron Pikes, 21, was Tasered nine times by a police officer in January in Winnfield, Louisiana.

He stopped twitching after seven, according to a coroner's report. Soon afterward, Pikes was dead.

Now the officer, since fired, could end up facing criminal charges in Pikes' January death after medical examiners ruled it a homicide.
Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish coroner, told CNN the 21-year-old sawmill worker was jolted so many times by the 50,000-volt Taser that he might have been dead before the last two shocks were delivered.


Williams ruled Pikes' death a homicide in June after extensive study.
Winn Parish District Attorney Christopher Nevils said he will decide on any charges against the ex-officer, Scott Nugent, once a Louisiana State Police report on the case is complete.


"It's taken several months for this case to even be properly addressed, so one has to wonder, why did it take so long?" said Carol Powell Lexing, a lawyer for the Pikes family. "Obviously, a wrongful death occurred."


Nugent's lawyer, Phillip Terrell, said his client followed proper procedure to subdue a man who outweighed him by 100 pounds. But Williams said Pikes was already handcuffed and on the ground when first hit with the Taser, after the 247-pound suspect was slow to follow police orders to get up.
Winnfield, a sleepy lumber town about 100 miles southeast of Shreveport, Louisiana, is best known as the birthplace of legendary Louisiana governors Huey and Earl Long. It's also about 45 miles northwest of Jena, Louisiana, where a racially charged assault case sparked a September 2007 demonstration by an estimated 15,000 people.

One of the teenage defendants in that case, Mychal Bell, is Pikes' first cousin -- and his lawyer was Powell Lexing.

Nugent is white; Pikes was black. His death led to demonstrations that drew several dozen people in Winnfield, where the population of about 15,000 is roughly half African-American.

"The family wants justice," Lexing said. "This is just another example of why it's very important to stay vigilant with these types of cases, on the injustice that's been perpetrated on the disadvantaged."
But Winnfield police Lt. Chuck Curry said race "isn't an issue at all" in the matter.

"This has come down to a police officer that was trying to apprehend a suspect that they had warrants for," he said. "He done what he thought he was trained to do to bring that subject into custody. At some point, something happened with his body that caused him to go into cardiac arrest or whatever."

According to police, Pikes was wanted on a charge of possession of cocaine when police tried to arrest him outside a shopping center January 12.

"He would not stop for the officer," Curry said. "At some point in there, he was Tased to bring him under control, and several hours later, died at the emergency room."

Terrell said Pikes was fighting Nugent "on uneven ground" amid obstructions such as concrete blocks and barbed wire.

"He's fighting, wrestling with an individual who weighs 100 pounds more than him," he said. "His partner had just come back to the police department from triple bypass surgery and could not assist Officer Nugent."
Terrell said his client "used every means possible" to take Pikes into custody before pulling out his Taser, a weapon Winnfield police purchased in 2007.

"The only thing he could have done other than to say, 'OK, we're going to let you go' is to beat him or Tase him. He did the right thing," Terrell said.
Williams, who ruled Pikes' death a homicide in June after extensive study, said Nugent fired his Taser at Pikes six times in less than three minutes -- shots recorded by a computer chip in the weapon's handle. Then officers put Pikes in the back of a cruiser and drove him to their police station -- where Nugent fired a seventh shot, directly against Pikes' chest.

"After he was given that drive stun to the chest, he was pulled out of the car onto the concrete, " Williams told CNN. "He was electroshocked two more times, which two officers noted that he had no neuromuscular response to those last two 50,000-volt electroshocks."

Williams said he had two nationally known forensic pathologists, including former New York city medical examiner Michael Baden, review the case before issuing his conclusions. He said it's possible Nugent was shocking a dead man the last two times he pulled the trigger.

"This fellow was talking in the back seat of the car prior to shot number seven," he said. "From that point on, it becomes questionable [if Pikes was still alive]."

Curry said Pikes told officers he suffered from asthma and had been using PCP and crack cocaine. But Williams said he found no sign of drug use in the autopsy, and no record of asthma in Pikes' medical history.

In the year since Winnfield police received Tasers, officers have used them 14 times, according to police records -- with 12 of the instances involving black suspects. Ten of the 14 incidents involved Nugent, who has no public disciplinary record.

Nugent was suspended after Pikes' death, and Winnfield's City Council voted 3-2 to fire him in May. He is appealing his dismissal, and his lawyer says he followed proper procedures in Pikes' case. He was trained in the use of the Taser by a senior police officer who was present during the incident that led to Pikes' death, Terrell said.

Curry said Taser International, the device's manufacturer, indicates that "multiple Tasings do not affect a person." But he said he could not explain why Pikes was shocked so many times, and said whether Nugent followed proper procedure was "yet to be determined."

But a copy of the Winnfield Police Department's Taser training manual, obtained by CNN, says the device "shall only be deployed in circumstances where it is deemed reasonably necessary to control a dangerous or violent subject." And Williams said regulations regarding the use of Tasers were not followed.

"It violated every aspect -- every single aspect -- of the department's policy about its use," the coroner said.

Winnfield has seen a spate of high-profile corruption cases in recent years. One of Nevils' predecessors as district attorney, Terry Reeves, killed himself amid allegations of embezzlement and extortion. The town's current police chief, Johnny Ray Carpenter, is a convicted drug offender who received a pardon from former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards who himself is now serving a federal prison term for racketeering.

And Carpenter's predecessor, Gleason Nugent -- the father of Pikes' arresting officer -- committed suicide in 2005, after allegations of fraud and vote buying in the race for police chief, an elected position in Winnfield.

Now Nevils is awaiting the state police report on Pikes' death, which will be presented to a grand jury for possible charges against Nugent -- a possibility Curry said would be a blow to the department.
"It's one of these no-win situations," he said. "No matter the outcome, nobody's going to win in this case."

[Lector Malibu]

Yup , I remember hearing about this. Flat out murder in my eyes. And as usual they are dragging feet and stalling witch is nothing short of spitting in the family's face.

I'm so sick of these stories. They are repulsive on every level.

[Raoul_RedRat]

Well there must some kind of hatred behind this murder, sadistic motherfucker tazing him so many times. Sadism aside, I think there is no need for tazing to apprehend someone whether he is heavier or not if unarmed.

And what's up with this, "His partner had just come back to the police department from triple bypass surgery...". Why are you still out on the street with such a condition?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

There is nothing out of the ordinary here. This is how the pigs operate every second of every minute of every day. This is not an aberration but the general workings of this system.

[Harrycombs]

Why in the world would a cop even think they would need to taze someone 9 times. I think he might not of known how that weapon works. I'm not sure if the cop was either a sadist or an idiot. Either way its pathetic and should be tried with manslaughter or homicide.

If drugs weren't illegal, this wouldn't have happened either

[Decolonize The Left]

Why in the world would a cop even think they would need to taze someone 9 times. I think he might not of known how that weapon works. I'm not sure if the cop was either a sadist or an idiot. Either way its pathetic and should be tried with manslaughter or homicide.

If drugs weren't illegal, this wouldn't have happened either

Oh, he knew how the taser worked... in fact, it even says in the article that he received training.

But basically,

There is nothing out of the ordinary here. This is how the pigs operate every second of every minute of every day. This is not an aberration but the general workings of this system.

- August

[Saorsa]

If drugs weren't illegal, this wouldn't have happened either

If the pigs weren't brutalising black workers and using drugs as an excuse, they'd find something else. I wholeheartedly agree that drugs should be legal, but that alone would not stop this shit from happening. Only the destruction of the capitalist state apparatus which the pigs are a part of can do that.

This isn't just an American phenomenon either, shit like this happens all over the world, even in countries with vocal liberal-nationalist sectors that like to think they live in a safe and happy place where the police are nice and gentle. A court here in New Zealand recently found four pigs not guilty of brutally assaulting a Maori man in a police cell - http://comradealastair.wordpress.com...ice-brutality/

[FreeFocus]

There is nothing out of the ordinary here. This is how the pigs operate every second of every minute of every day. This is not an aberration but the general workings of this system.

/thread

People can march all they want, if they decide to do so for Pikes as they did for Sean Bell. I'm all for justice but addressing these occurrences as separate, isolated events is naive, if not ignorant, and ineffective. Rather, as NHIA stated, that's how the system works, and it's designed to work in such a way: police are the primary instrument used for state violence domestically. Power tripping, which happens with nearly all police, is no surprise. Well, that's what happens with hierarchy; I wish all of the people marching for and and supporting justice for victims of police brutality would look at the larger picture and see the links between all of these seemingly "separate" incidents.

[Sam_b]

I wish all of the people marching for and and supporting justice for victims of police brutality would look at the larger picture and see the links between all of these seemingly "separate" incidents.

What makes you believe they don't?

[FreeFocus]

What makes you believe they don't?

The fact that once an incident happens, there's an outrage, people march a little bit, and within a few weeks it's over, more or less. People may say things like "there's too many, they've killed Diallo, Bell, Pikes, assaulted Louima, Rodney King," but people seem to want merely more oversight by the police, failing to realize that it's the very nature of the institution, the very nature of hierarchy to produce such tragedies.

[Sam_b]

but people seem to want merely more oversight by the police, failing to realize that it's the very nature of the institution, the very nature of hierarchy to produce such tragedies.

Thats a failure of the left to communicate our position, not of these people.

[KurtFF8]

If drugs weren't illegal, this wouldn't have happened either

Exactly, this is yet another example of the true consequences of the "war on drugs". Nothing positive comes out of it. If we as a society view being on drugs as a problem for the people on them, then why do "we" (the state in reality) continue to treat the problem as if the people on them need jail time instead of help. (And of course that shows another example of the difference between the state and the people).

[Comrade B]

I think there is no need for tazing to apprehend someone whether he is heavier or not if unarmed.

The cops love using their toys here. At a backyard concert a cop was breaking up a month or so ago in my home town, the cop was yelling at a kid with a hand on his taser, waiting for an excuse to zap the kid.

[godfailed]

Reminds me of that 'Don't taze me, bro!' kid.


rip dude

[Comrade B]

Reminds me of that 'Don't taze me, bro!' kid.

I remember that thing, saw the video of it on Keith Obermann or something
I thought it was so comically John Kerry the moment, while the security is totaly kicking the shit out of the kid, John Kerry is sort of muttering, "hey now, that isn't necissary, let him speak" in his oh so remarkably uninspiring voice. What an utterly pathetic man. Still...would have been better than this halfwit we have now

[Dean]

Truly disgusting and offensive. Just more reason why I oppose the police and have no sympathy for them - they have none for us.