When Brian Cardall’s wife, 6 months pregnant, dialed 911, she couldn’t have expected to end the day as a widow. Cardell, a doctoral student in molecular ecology, had an episode of mental illness while passing through Hurricane City, Utah on his way home from his parents. His wife called for help. Things didn’t turn out well.
“During the incident, a Hurricane City Police officer deployed a Taser and the subject lost consciousness,” Undersheriff Jake Adams, of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, said in a prepared statement. “The subject was treated within moments by EMS personnel, but was pronounced dead after being transported to the hospital,” the statement continued.
According to a witness, Cardall removed his clothing and stood on the side of the road, as if directing traffic.
The woman says Cardall was calm; he’d taken off his clothes and was waving his hands as if he were directing traffic next to the officers on the side of the road.
“As I looked back, he was still standing there. The kids looked back. He was still standing there. He was not running at all the whole time I was driving,” the woman said.
She was able to view the scene for about a minute and didn’t see Cardall behaving aggressively toward police.
Not exactly worthy of death. But that’s a disingenuous statement. I’m sure the officer had no intention of causing Brian Cardall any harm. After all, he was using less-than-lethal force.
Taser International is defending their safety record, saying no device is 100 percent risk free, but its safer that other options.
When it comes to the appropriate time to use a taser, each law enforcement agency has it’s own policy.Hurricane police are not commenting yet use a general use of force police when in the line of duty, similar to the Washington County Sheriff’s Department. “In the Sheriff’s Office we consider the taser to be a less lethal weapon so in our use of force continuum, we would put it on the same level as pepper spray,” says Adams.
Taser International’s statement, however, is most disingenuous. The officer involved, aside from likely having inadequate training in the handling of mentally ill individuals, was led to believe that a Taser is a quick and easy way to deal with anyone for whom reasoning fails. If you can’t order them to do what you want, there’s always the Taser.
The problem is the Taser. It’s too easy. It’s the “go-to” tool for anything that might otherwise require some patience, thought and discretion. It’s marketed that way, and used that way. Why try to calm down a mentally ill man when you can immediately subdue him? Why waste time when you have a magic weapon that fixes problems in a flash?
Before Tasers, the choice was limited. Shoot to kill or be forced to physically beat a person. The former had reporting consequences, and the latter took a certain degree of personal connection that most cops won’t want when dealing with a non-violent or otherwise non-criminal person. Sure, they will happily beat the perp, even if just for fun, but to physically harm someone perceived to be innocent is a harder, more personal, problem. Now we have Tasers.
It’s too late to change the mindset about Tasers, I suspect. Not for the officer who will live with the fact that Brian Cardall died at his hand. Not for the officer who will think of the child born without a father because he couldn’t spend the time to wait out the episode and gain control without using a weapon. The officer will live with this for a long, long time, as will the Cardall family and the unborn child. But police everywhere else will shrug this off as the anomaly, the thing that will never happen when they use a Taser.
Tasers. They are just so easy.
H/T Injustice Everywhere (@InjusticeNews)
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What makes you think the cop cares?
In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I try to assume the best of people. Even cops.
I don’t believe it is too late to change the mindset about Tasers. But in reality it is not just a mindset involving the Taser, it is how some police view their job, their duty. The view is not really to protect and serve the public. That is secondary. First in line is to protect and serve the police. I believe you have noted that elsewhere.
I suppose with me it is more than believing the attitude can change. It is a desperate realization that it must change, or else…
In entry level police training and often during in-service training, police view many videos of officers killed in the line of duty. Officers are bombarded daily with similar reports concerning “officer safety.” That is part of what creates the out of balance approach which some officers take. Police need to be exposed during entry level training and ongoing training to a proportionate amount of videos and reports of innocent and nonviolent people getting killed or injured to be reminded of the consequences of overreaction or misapplied force. I know such things are unpleasant and would be unwelcome, yet it is just as necessary as all of the reminders of police deaths.
I remember during my entry level training one incident which was shown to us of an officer who shot and killed a small child hiding in a closet thinking it was an armed suspect. The officer was charged criminally but found not guilty. He spoke later how the incident continued to haunt him daily.
The ratio of exposure was that one mistaken incident compared to dozens of incidents of police injured or killed.
During my years afterward an even more disparate ratio continued in ongoing training.
It appears that cops get no training whatsoever in dealing with the mentally ill. I’ve told my parents that if they ever call the cops on my schizophrenic brother, they will be responsible if the cops kill him. Cops have killed at least two mentally ill people here in the last couple of years.
That’s long been my recitation of the cops’ prime directive, get home alive. But here, where there was no threat at all, it’s still Taser first.
Whether it’s no training, inadequate training, the prime directive or just expediency, cops are the last people you want to call when a mentally ill loved one needs help. Far too many have been hurt or killed when all they needed was help.
I remember watching a documentary on PBS years ago. The subject was policing the City. They interviewed a cop on the beat in midtown, kind of as a throw-away. He said, “Do you think these are your streets? These are not your streets. These are MY streets.”. Even now, probably 20 years later, that statement still resonates. In our family, whenever we hear a news story about abuse of power by the police, one of us will turn to the other and say, “You think these are your streets?”
I have a couple of issues with this post. First, “less-than-lethal” is a misnomer. “Less lethal” is more accurate. Less than lethal implies some kind of guarantee and that simply isn’t the case.
Second, taking a negative stance on “getting home alive” or even hinting at it is patently offensive to those of us putting our lives on the line daily. Take a different perspective on it…if I respond to assist you and I take an unnecessary risk or put myself foolishly in harm’s way and I am too injured to continue or, God forbid, I am killed, who else will help? That is one of the reasons why we take the stance of we come first in situations that are inherently dangerous. Just something to consider for those who don’t walk in my boots.
Less than lethal isn’t my characterization, but Taser International’s. That’s their pitch and their sticking with it.
As for the prime directive, that’s a great rationale but total BS. You’re not saving your butt first because you’re a great humanitarin. You’re saving your butt because you want a saved butt. You’re putting lipstick on pig (to borrow an overused expression of late).
You have your opinion and nothing I say will change that. I can dig it, but it doesn’t change what I believe. Not sure how a dead cop is helpful, but that’s just me. Do I want to save my ass? Your goddamn right I do, but there’s a myriad of reasons as to why. Pigeonholing me into one is narrow minded and near sighted.
Re: Taser…I’m not a rep so I can’t speak to their characterization. If it is as you say, I believe they are inaccurate and should change their verbiage.
Obviously, my attribution isn’t to you personally, since I don’t know you and, even more obviously, you post anonymously. But it fails to explain those instances where a cop acts pre-emptively, well before there’s risk if any of harm. I’m stereotyping cops rather than pigeonholing you.
We’ve got some other cops who hang out here. They disagree with me on occasion too, but for the most part acknowledge that most of what we attribute to cops is accurate, and themselves take issue with bad and dirty cops. The first problem is always getting past the easy excuses and acknowledging the bottom line. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make it home alive, but not if it’s at the expense of doing the job, which includes both the protect part and serve part. And that’s where the problem lies. If getting home alive is more important than protect and serve, then that person is in the wrong job.
Not sure how a dead cop is helpful, but that’s just me.
Ah. The old “excluded middle” gambit, with perhaps a bit more flair and economy than usual. Well played, sir. Well played.
It was good, as is your rejoinder.
I wonder if anyone here has listened to the recordings of the 911 call and the police recording of the events of that day. Brian was screaming, ranting, running naked across a highway, and threatening the safety of himself, his wife, her unborn child, and their baby that was with them. And lets not forget the safety of the passing motorists and the officers themselves. The man’s wife was so terrified, she locked her baby in the car and had to keep her husband from getting to the child.
The cop-hating author of this report is unresponsibly painting a picture of the officer as someone who lacked “patience, thought and discretion.” The officer is made to look like a fool who has no regard for people of mental illness and is a criminal in his own right.
This is ridiculous. An enraged person, mentally ill or not, who is posing a significant risk to dozens of people doesn’t leave you with the opportunity to sit down and reason with them. Should the officers have sat in the middle of the highway and tried to chat? Of course not! The proper action was to immediately subdue the man so that no one else would get hurt. And yes, this may be at the price of the individual himself getting hurt.
Further, you can’t use something like pepper spray at the side of the highway with cars flying by. Impaired vision doesn’t stop a crazy person from running or flailing. The safe thing was to subdue him completely. The cops had no way of knowing if he had a weapon or if he would fight them.
The author’s depiction of an apathetic police force is completely false and is propaganda to try and incite emotions against tasers. Lets separate the issues. Cops are looking for the solution to keep the most people safe.
With that said, and the speaking to the actual issue at hand, tasers save many more than they harm. You only hear about the anomalous cases where someone was harmed. Also use your brain and try to research how many of these people were also using illegal substances that would increase their risk of injury from the kind of stress a taser introduces to the body.
In the end, I don’t care for tasers one way or another. I do, however, care that the names of good officers are being dragged through the mud of some ignorant authors who don’t have the integrity and sensitivity to get their facts straight first.
Can you see anything with your head so deeply embedded? If not, just picture in your mind’s eye a world where the answer to all questions didn’t involve a cop, beating, choking, kicking, tasing or shooting someone. I know, it’s just so silly to a fella like you.
I don’t speak for the site owner, but speaking for myself: claims about what the 911 tape would or wouldn’t show might be just a leetle more persuasive if they came along with a link to said tape and/or were posted by somebody with more of a name than “Ken.” Nothing wrong with being named Ken, doll, but if you’re going to try to exonerate the cop (who, for all I know, may well deserve exoneration) a little taste of, oh, facts to accompany your capering and denuncationisms might be a nice touch, ya know?
Now I have to take issue with your position on this, Jdog. There’s no suggestion that Brian was armed or threatening anyone with physical harm. There was ample suggestion that his wife was excited, upset and afraid, and he was having a psychotic episode. I’m convinced, and a link to the 911 tapes wouldn’t be needed to convince me further.
The problem is that people having a psychotic episode don’t need to die for it. They don’t need to be “subdued” unless they are threatening harm to another (no basis for a claim of that here) or the police officer had something more important to get to (I leave that to your imagination) and had to end the run immediately.
That said, here’s a link to the tape.
Well, you can take issue my position, honest, but up until now I haven’t formulated one. All I know is what I read in the papers/bits, which isn’t exactly supported (nor, for that matter, is it directly disputed) by the troll’s posting, which is why I called what I think is his bluff, above.
But, since you asked . . .
Nobody should die for having a psychic episode, sure; as to whether or not somebody should be subdued, I think it’s entirely possible (but unproven, to put it gently, in this case) that a naked (or, for that matter, clothed) guy dashing in and out of traffic (or reasonably appearing to be about to) ought to be subdued, if gentler methods (“Hey, buddy, can we chat for a minute?” say) didn’t work or there is an immediate, pressing need. Not because the nakedness and armwaving is icky, but because of the other risks of the (hypothetical, at least) situation, involving him getting nailed by a car and a whole bunch of folks, including him, getting dead over that.
And, in a situation where a reasonable person (by definition: somebody who sees stuff the way I do) reasonably thought that he had to subdue a guy, I think a Taser might be a reasonable choice as a tool, under some circumstances, and that could result in the tased getting dead, which is why I think Tasers should be deployed only with a little thought and consideration about what happens when they go bad, as well as when they don’t.
Now, honest, I think that “Ken”‘s description of the naked guy dashing about into highway traffic is likely to be fictional, and even if it were accurate that wouldn’t, for me, be a blank check for tasing, but I think it is not impossible that that’s the case here, and I’d rather call his bluff than assume it.
You can issue with any or all of that; we’ve disagreed before, and the world hasn’t —
grble sput [CARRIER LOST]
Wow, what does my name have to do with my credibility? I apologize for neglecting to post the link the the recordings of the events that transpired that day. They are both quite lengthy and self explanatory. There is no bluffing going on here. I was just speaking from a more informed opinion than that of the reckless author.
From what I heard, the man’s wife was both afraid for his safety and for herself and for that of her child. During the 911 call, the dispatcher repeatedly tells her to not let her husband endanger her. Also, you can hear him screaming in the background. At one point, he is attempting to get in the car and retrieve the baby and she yells at him not to touch her.
Listen to the tape. My description was fairly objective. I’m not a cop lover nor do I lack sympathy for people with mental illness.
Now I concede that the seriousness of the episode is up to interpretation. I certainly do not have they credentials to know if this man would have actually caused any harm. My entire point was that the police officers had even less to go off of and they had a situation that needed to be resolved quickly. They approached what appeared to be a dangerous situation and an individual who would not heed their orders to lay on the ground. For the safety of everyone involved, the man was subdued.
Now Jdog, you and I have the same opinion. The police didn’t use the taser without first giving him ample opportunity to comply with their orders. They didn’t carelessly use the taser as a first resort.
I’d thank you not to insult me because of my name. “Jdog” is so much more distinguished and appropriate.
And SHG, in what is my “head embedded?” I do not trust the police implicitly just as I don’t trust the irresponsible meanderings of an under-informed writer on a ridiculous blog. Just what “sort of fella” do you assume me to be? I was simply stating that you do not have the facts warranted to slander the officer in such a way and perpetuate distrust in our police in general.
Here is where I heard the tapes, from the news company the originally broke the story:
Listen to the full tapes and judge for yourself. And that’s my whole point: learn the facts and THINK before you judge and slander others.
Ken, I’m glad you asked. The problem isn’t with the name Ken, but your showing up here, posting under a first name only, and electing yourself genius. You have no credibility. The link to the 911 tape was posted and it changes nothing, despite how much you think otherwise. As for your belief that “I was just speaking from a more informed opinion than that of the reckless author,” you’re wrong again. Hope that clarifies things for you.
I only disagreed with your position about the significance of the 911 tapes. Sheesh.
SHG,
I “showed up here” because I was searching for legitimate information on the story. Of course, I kept looking.
Since when do you leave your full name on a blog comment? Are you serious? SHG, Jdog, Jane, Motorcop? Everyone posts under first name, or even things that aren’t their name at all!
I didn’t claim to know it all or elect myself genius.
Truth is, I work for Taser International and go around to blogs and try to write stuff to salvage the reputation of Tasers when they kill someone and make people upset. My job is to make it seem like using Tasers was good and reasonable, all the while concealing my identify and pretending not to care about Tasers one way of the other. And for this, Taser International pays me money. It’s a good way to make a buck. So obviously, I can’t tell anyone who I am or you will all know I’m a shill for Taser.
Dear “Ken”: While I do, upon occasion, use a nickname here, let me clear things up for you: my name is Joel Rosenberg; it’s difficult to discover that, unless you’ve mastered the art of clicking on a link — every comment of mine, here, takes you to one of my web pages, where my name is prominently mentioned, you anonymous, clueless waste of protoplasm.
Strong language to follow.
Hi Ken,
Previously you said, “An enraged person, mentally ill or not, who is posing a significant risk to dozens of people doesn’t leave you with the opportunity to sit down and reason with them. Should the officers have sat in the middle of the highway and tried to chat? Of course not! The proper action was to immediately subdue the man so that no one else would get hurt.”
From my point of view, your assessment is not accurate. I listened to the audio of the officer engaging Brian Cardell. Cardell was not posing any immediate threat to the officers.
Judging from the sound of passing vehicles it does not appear that Cardell or the officers were in the middle of the highway at the time. Even if he was in the middle of the road, police have the ability to stop traffic. They do so for many other situations. Defusing techniques would have worked much better with Mr. Cardell rather than aggressive commands to get down. In fact the loud multiple commands to get down on the ground issued from multiple officers was completely opposite what is recommended in dealing with an EDP.
Some agencies try to incorporate effective techniques for dealing with EDPs but for many agencies and officers it is not a top priority
You also said “The cops had no way of knowing if he had a weapon…”
He was naked, remember? I think the officers had a pretty good idea if he was armed or not.
My bad. I’ve listened to the tape, and about the only thing I can conclude from it is that she was (understandably) scared, but doing (in my amateur opinion) a pretty good job of giving good information, while under stress. Ditto for the dispatcher, who comes off as professional and human, and concerned, and doing as well as I think he could, focusing on keeping her and the baby safe, while getting all the information he could. The psychotic guy sounds off the wall, but I can’t tell from the tape whether he’s really endangering anybody, for sure.
Sometimes people do a lot worse under much less stress. Which reminds of a story, as do most things.
As to the cop’s actions, it doesn’t enlighten anybody, I think. I’m not sure — either way — if they’re wrong to wait to be sure if multiple cars arrive on the scene at the same time, but I’m tempted to be critical. As Karl suggests, in his gentle way, the chances of the crazy, naked guy pulling out a machete and going all choppy are kinda minimal.
Why are you beating up on Ken the Shill. You should be nicer. Like Jdog.
You’re making me laugh. 🙂
But that is good, because I needed to laugh today.
I’m here for you, bro.