The Taser/DNA Decision: When Cops Put Their Heads Together

As previously promised, our hinterlands correspondent Kathleen Casey snuck into the Ryan Smith hearing to find out why police chose to taser Smith in order to collect a DNA sample to make up for the one he had previously given but they lost.  I am happy to report that she emerged physically unscathed, although she did suffer something akin to TMJ from stifling laughter in the courtroom.

Unfortunately, ADA Doreen Hoffmann never made it to the witness stand as Patrick Balkin, the defense lawyer, was satisfied that she was neither asked, nor told, that the cops planned to taser the DNA out of his client, and only learned of the details after 50,000 volts was spent.. 

So how did the cops reach the decision to use a taser to persuade the defendant to give up his spit?  From the Buffalo News :



In testimony contrary to what was written in a police report, Detective Lt. William M. Thomson said he was told by Assistant Niagara County District Attorney Doreen M. Hoffmann “we could use the minimum force that was necessary” to compel Ryan S. Smith to submit to a DNA sample while he was being detained by police.


Officers discussed different methods of forcing Smith to give the sample, including prying open his mouth with their hands, but the decided the Taser “would be the safest way,” testified Officer George W. McDonell, who administered the shock.


See, you cynics.  They were just trying to protect Smith.  And you thought it was some nefarious scheme to play with their tasers and teach Smith, who refused to comply for 20 minutes, that it’s not nice to disobey cops. And McDonell was no doubt correct, that a taser is far safer than the standard beating the crap out of the perp with batons (which also happens to leave marks).


During their testimony, McDonell, Sykes and Galie said Smith had refused numerous times to submit to the swab. They said Smith told them that if they wanted the sample they were going to have to shock him with a Taser.

Ding, ding, ding.  Taser!  Say, fellow officers.  Why didn’t we think of that.  And now, he’s requested it.  Right? I mean, he did say that we should shock him with a taser, didn’t he?  That’s like giving permission, right?


McDonell testified he gave Smith a “dry stun” — referring to what police call a “less effective” shock that doesn’t shoot prongs from the Taser into the recipient — to his left shoulder for about 1 to 2 seconds. The normal length of time a person is shocked is five seconds, unless the officer manually stops the equipment, McDonell testified.

After the shock, Smith complied with their request to take a mouth swab, they said.

There nothing like a taser to get someone to voluntarily comply, ya know.


After the sample was taken from Smith, he was charged with criminal contempt, “because of the means that it took to get him to comply,” McDonell said.

After all, they were forced to taser him first, and the officers will suffer the trauma for the rest of their lives.  Someone has to pay for their psychic pain.

Now the refusal of a defendant to comply with a lawful court order would ordinary subject the defendant to criminal contempt, entitling the cops to arrest and jail him until the judge determines what to do about it.  But that would be no fun at all, and this group of cops certainly needed to have some fun after the emotional drain of watching their partner and buddy, Officer Ryan G. Warme, humiliated by the feds when he was nabbed for conspiracy to distribute crack.  Unfortunately, Warme was unavailable to testify at the hearing. 

And besides, Smith asked for it.

On a serious note, the choice of using a taser to subdue Smith to obtain his “compliance” was the product of this groups of fine police officers and detectives putting their heads together and carefully, deliberately and rationally thinking through their options and selecting the one that, in their view, best suited the situation.  This is what comes of giving police officers discretion in how best to protect and serve.

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25 thoughts on “The Taser/DNA Decision: When Cops Put Their Heads Together”

  1. martin

    Just a couple points, some cynical:

    In testimony contrary to what was written in a police report,…

    Surprise! I am skocked… Cops don’t lie!

    Any official questions? Any action? Fat chance.
    BTW, are police reports and particularly the relevant ones submitted under oath?

    They were just trying to protect Smith.

    You think? How about protecting themselves. After all, they can reasonably suspect to get away just short of 1st degree murder, ever since officer safety trumps all?

    Any idea how to overcome this LE unions’ publicity success? I mean the one making officer safety trump any violation.

  3. Kathleen Casey

    Ding, ding, ding. Taser! is an idiotically enjoyable but accurate summing up of the hearing: Groupthink as a defense to suppressing the DNA and tossing the indictment, as in the final question to the Taser-wielding officer from the prosecution during cross. (The officers appeared under subpoena by the defendant’s attorney.) It was the defendant who first mentioned the option wasn’t it? Yes. So the first question on redirect was, So you obliged the defendant by tasering him? Then the sparring. No, but… This was the safest way.

    The safest way to get the sample was for the officers to treat this suspect no differently than, we wish, any other suspect — book him on contempt, present him to a judge somewhere to set bail, remand him to custody, and then go about their business and let the court handle it. A conservative and simple chain of reasoning, and it would have been hard to discredit the officers in hindsight had they acted on it, because it is nothing more than following the rules. But no one in chain of command considered the rules as a safe way. Instead they decide to get the spit even if they have to hurt him oops use minimum force to get it. Then it escalates to this spectacle.

    It is really sad, isn’t it? I guess law enforcement will not get rid of Tasers though I wish they would, because Tasers are susceptible to being misused as in this example. Officers deal in elemental human misery day after day, protecting or trying to protect the rest of us. It is plainly foreseeable that some of them will be tempted to assault suspects with these things and will give in to the temptation. Any of us might give in to the temptation were we in their position. It is the nature of their jobs and it is human nature.

    Also to clarify the court elected to take the ADA’s recollection of her advise from the table in the well rather than on the stand under oath. Which is fine. It minimized the spectacle.

  6. Jdog

    Great minds run in the same gutter; I was wondering — at a bit of length and with some color, perhaps — as to why they didn’t just open the rule book, go to the part about where Sergeant Smithers got a five-day rip for not understanding that to hit the guy with a contempt citation didn’t involve rolling some papers around a lead pipe, and just went to the judge.

    Not like he was going to run out of spit in a few days.

    But then my computer crashed.

    Nice catch, folks, btw.

  9. Jdog

    Any chance we can settle it this way?

    You’re both wrong, ’cause you both do more than you think you do, and your modesty is very becoming, and utterly genuine, but it’s still incorrect.

    Didn’t think so. I know this crowd well enough for that.

  13. Jdog

    “I need to speak to my attorney, and I do not consent to any search.” I ain’t no lawyer, and all, but I do think that those are words to live by, and I did call two lawyers last night. (Not, actually, about what I was smoking, but on some other stuff — not consulting; they’re friends of mine.)

  15. Jdog

    True story, pinky swear: I walked into my bank, a couple years back. A cop I know (let’s call him Bob, although his name really is Dirk) was working overtime security there. Nice guy.

    “Hey, Joel, how you doing?”

    “Hey, Bob, well, I need to speak to my attorney, and I do not consent to any search.”

    Some customers’ eyes got very round; the clerks just smirked and groaned, as they’d heard the schtick before.

  17. Jdog

    Smoking is not allowed in Minnesota banks; he laughed. But we’d done this before, so it was kinda a mercy laugh.

    I’ll settle for that.

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