Police taser 'mental health pateint' tring to show officer Medical ID card
Taser cam:October 11/08:TEXT FROM SOURCE:Mental Health Patient trying to show police officer her Medical Alert ID necklace and repeatedly telling him her Medical ID card is in her pocket. Officer starts repeatedly using taser on Pamela. At first someone puts their hand over the camera. The hand gets removed after Pamela goes to the ground.
STORY:A prosecutor on Monday dropped charges against Pa
More..mela Brown, known as the Hula Hoop Lady of Granby Street, and police released a video showing her arrest, during which an officer shocked her repeatedly with a Taser.
Last month, Brown, 49, was charged with making excessive noise and assaulting an officer who responded to a noise complaint on the median of Granby Street near Wards Corner, where she hula hoops. Brown suffered a brain injury in 1977 when she was hit by a truck, and she has seizures and short-term memory loss.
The officer, identified in a police report as Nicholas Parks, is on administrative duty pending review of the case, said police spokesman Officer Chris Amos.
Brown appeared before Judge Gwendolyn Jackson wearing gray sweatpants paired with a heather gray sweater. Brown seemed unsteady on her feet, and she said later she had taken medications for seizures.
When asked how she felt about the outcome of the case, Brown said she couldn't remember what the judge said. She pulled out a medical identification card listing her conditions and said she had tried to show it to the officer who arrested her.
The two-minute, 40-second video taken by a camera on the Taser on Oct. 11 confirms that. For most of it, Brown repeats to Parks that her medic alert information is in the back pocket of her pants.
Amos said the video begins after the initial altercation between Brown and Parks - Brown has one handcuff on her right wrist, and Parks' hand is seen holding the other cuff. In a police report, Parks wrote that Brown pushed him in the chest, grabbed him with both arms, and pulled on the radio he had confiscated. After that, Parks wrote, Brown refused to put down the radio or provide her left hand.
In the video, Parks tells Brown again and again to put her hands behind her back. She replies excitedly that she cannot because her arm was fractured and has a pin in it. Her protests are sometimes hard to understand. Brown shows the officer a medallion hanging from her neck.
Parks fires the Taser for the first time about a minute and 20 seconds into the recording, when Brown swears. She falls to the ground, and Parks again tells her to put her hands behind her back.
When she says she cannot, Parks fires the Taser again. Brown moans. She again insists that she cannot put her hands behind her back. Parks says, "You can get your hands behind your back; you're out here all day. I know you can do it."
Parks succeeds in handcuffing Brown after a third shock.
Michael McKenna, president of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers Local 412, heard late Monday about the dismissal of charges and didn't know the reasons for it.
"I can only say that I have to back the policeman until it's proven he was wrong," McKenna said.
Chief Bruce P. Marquis had no comment on the case, Amos said.
Brown's lawyer, Howard Copeland, said Brown will change her routine, hula hooping a block farther north on Granby Street in a more commercial area, and wearing headphones that permit her to hear both her music and ambient noise, instead of a radio.
http://hamptonroads.com/2008/11/charges-withdrawn-against-hula-hoop-lady-granby-street
Less..
Added: Nov 10 2008 In: education
By: jdischord 
- Tags:
- Police,
- taser,
- 'mental,
- health,
- pateint',
- tring,
- to,
- show,
- officer,
- Medical,
- ID,
- card
- Views: 3189 |
- Votes: 4 |
- Recommendations: 1 |
- Comments: 76
