Despite arguments about whether a taser deserves its place in the pantheon of less-than-lethal weapons, a Pensacola cop proves that any weapon in the hands of a blithering idiot can be lethal. Warning: If you’re allergic to abject stupidity, read no further.
From Liveleak, Via Turley, Officer Jerald Ard saw teenager Victor Steen riding his bike at a vacant construction site. He ordered Steen to stop, but the kid rode away. Ard, in his cruiser, wasn’t going to let some kid on a bike get away. But what went through Ard’s mind as he came up with his most ingenius plan to nail the teen is just beyond stupid.
Like John Wayne behind the wheel. There’s another video at liveleak which shows Ard running over, and killing, Steen. But the Fox news video neglects a post-killing detail of some significance. After Ard runs Steen down, he gets something from his cruiser and goes under his car to Steen’s lifeless body where he remains for 40 second. Paramedics then find a 9mm pistol in Steen’s pocket.
Needless to say, the court found that Ard had committed no crime. Victor Steen is still dead. On the bright side, the PPD determined that Ard violated police policy.
After reviewing the video evidence in this incident, I believe that the pursuit did expose the subject to unreasonable risk of harm or injury. At times in the pursuit, Officer Ard drove his cruiser so close to the suspect’s bike that it would have been difficult if not impossible for him to stop if the suspect fell from the bike. I also found it disturbing that Officer Ard attempted to tase the suspect on a bike as he rode next to him. If this action would have been successful, it is very possible that the suspect would have sustained serious injuries from the fall.
It appears that nobody told the reviewing officer that Ard ran over Steen, and the potential for harm wasn’t exactly speculative.
Putting aside the allegation that ard planted a gun so that there would be a way to smear Steen in the process of excusing his having tased a kid on a bike for not stopping upon command and then running him over, it’s incomprehensible to me that anyone, officer or otherwise, could have been so mind-bogglingly stupid as to to this.
Was Ard so filled with rage at the prospect of Steen getting away that he was prepared to do anything it took to bring him down? Did Ard care so little for the life of another that he gave no thought to the potential harm of his actions?
It’s already been clearly established that the taser has become the go-to weapon for any situation short of a threat to a cop’s well-being. From annoying to irksome, the taser will quickly bring a situation to an end. So what if a few eggs get broken while making a taser omelet. It’s hard being a cop, you know, and it’s harder still being a patient cop, or, God forbid, having to exert physical energy running after a suspect rather than pulling the trigger of the taser. Have you even considered the repetitive stress implications to the police officer’s trigger finger?
But this one is just too stupid for words.
Victor Steen’s family is suing for his death.
Attorneys Bill Cash and Aaron Watson of the Levin Papantonio law firm plan to file the suit. They filed a notice with the city in January that they planned to do so, and must wait six months.
“This ain’t the old wild West,” Cash said. “This is Pensacola in 2010.”
While the family will seek $10 million, Florida law caps the amount that governmental bodies must pay at $200,000. If a jury award exceeds that amount, the case is taken before the state Legislature, which can decide whether to override the cap and pay the full amount.
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Sigh. In Pensacola, it seems, it’s neither the crime nor the coverup.
A bit of good, albeit orthogonal news: our MPD cop with a part time job robbing banks was sentenced to eight years (the judge really didn’t wanna, as he was having hard times, was just getting his life together, etc.), but it was the minimum for a gun crime.
And Jason Andersen, one of the Minnesota Strike Force Gang (err… I guess, technically, that’s Gang Strike Force) was indicted by the feds for violating the civil rights of a guy whose head he apparently misstook for a soccer ball.
We take our good news as it comes. Even if it’s not all that good.
I wondered whether the gun was checked for prints. I then read in the liveleak article that the gun had been checked for prints and that no fingerprints had been found.
Some people will find it a relief that this teenager was stopped before he discovered the gun in his pocket and decided to use it. Of course, there are those who will lament the passing of a teenager so devious that he wiped all the prints off the gun before putting the gun into his pocket. Obviously, such a peron would be planning, if stopped and frisked and the weapon found, to be able with feigned innocence state ‘I’ve never seen that before, my prints won’t be on it.’
My proposal to cover the difference between any potential damage award and the statutory maximum is simple: Each member of Steen’s close family (parents and siblings) gets 5 shots at close range at Ard with a Taser, to be administered at a time and place of their choosing, without warning (while he’s off-duty of course). So next time Ard is eating lunch with his kids at McDonald’s, he gets a taser to the face. Reaching for that can of peaches at the grocery store? Bam, tasered. Just picked up a fresh cup of coffee? Tasered. You get the idea.
Running from a policeman who is willing to plant evidence seems like a rational decision, even though it didn’t work out for the runner here. I think about situations like this one every time some Internet commenter says, “never run from police.” When the policeman is willing to plant evidence, there is no safe option.
The problem is that you never know if the cop is inclined to plant evidence at the point in time you make the decision to run. Then again, you have the theoretical right to run if the cop has no reasonable suspicion to believe that a crime has been, is or will be committed.
Yup. It would be really convenient if bad cops would be required to have neon signs blinking Bad Cop over their heads, but the legislation has been stalled in Congress.
I’m not a law-talking guy, of course, but isn’t there some case law [Unfortunate Guy v. Catch22] that says that running away from a cop is, in and of itself, sufficient cause for a stop? (And that’s skipping the entirely hypothetical possibility that a dishonest cop who wants to make a stop and has nothing resembling reasonable suspicion will fib that the stoppee made a “furtive motion.”)
There may be some law around somewhere, but in New York, running away alone isn’t sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion. Of course, no cop has ever testified since that the perp just ran away. Whether he reached for his waistband or used a gang symbol with his cowlick, it’s always something.
You are being too hard on this police offer who shows the new professionalism. Is it not obvious that this kid might have been holding a cell phone gun? What other reason is there for a kid to ride a bike in a construction site and than leave once the cop yelled at him, I mean that never ever happened to me as a kid well not more than a dozen times.
What kind of bike did you have?
Probably a high-caliber, semiauto, military-style assault bike — you know: like the guy that Pogan pushed. Got off lucky.
I suppose the rational person has to weigh the probability that the policeman will plant against the probability that he will catch you. You cannot know for sure either of those probabilities in advance. You have to guess. Steen’s guess may well have been rational. Officer Ard may well have been likelier to plant (had Steen surrendered immediately) than he was to catch Steen. It seemed kind of fluke-y that he caught Steen. It did not seem fluke-y that Ard took the floppy object under the car before the paramedics came. It wasn’t really fair to make Steen make that choice, though.
I bet Steen didn’t think all that much about it. He was just a kid on a bike avoiding an unpleasant situation.
Stumbled upon this while looking for something else. FYI, Steen’s family settled the case for $500k, and Ard remains a cop.
I know, a totally fair and just result all around.
It could have been worse. It usually is.