Police use Taser on deaf crime victim

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By KIRO 7 Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne
TACOMA, Wash. —


KIRO
TV’s investigative unit has discovered Tacoma police used force to
arrest and handcuff an innocent deaf woman after she called 911 for
their help.

Instead of an apology, she ended up bloody and
in jail for nearly three days without an interpreter before a
prosecutor declined to press charges.

After months of
digging, investigative reporter Chris Halsne found significant
discrepancies in the official police version of events leading up to
Lashonn White’s arrest.

Late in the evening on April 6,
White said she called for police assistance after a guest reportedly
attacked her in her own apartment.

Deaf since birth, White
used a special video-equipped phone, connected to a TV and a Web
camera, to call 911. A certified American Sign Language interpreter on
the other end verbally relayed White’s pleas for help to a Tacoma police
dispatcher.

“I said, ‘Please hurry! There’s a person here
beating me up,’” White explained to Halsne during a television
interview last month.

A recording of White’s 911 call from that evening reveals her urgency.



“Right now! This is serious!”



“She’s fighting at me, then she chokes me. She’s coming right at me!”



Computer-aided
dispatch (CAD) logs show Tacoma police officer Ryan Koskovich and his
partner, Michael Young, were outside White’s apartment complex in about
six minutes.

It also reflects that officers received texts
along the way stating, “Person doing the hitting is a Sophia” and
“Vict. is Lashonn White.”

In addition, it appears from
internal police records obtained by KIRO Team 7 Investigators, Koskovich
and his partner were repeatedly given information that the victim could
not hear a thing.

On the 911 calls, White herself made it perfectly clear.



“I’m
deaf. I can’t hear if they’re out front knocking or whatever … I
can’t—are they going to the front or back? Where are the police at?”

Dispatch: “They want her to go outside the front door.”



“Oh, they’re here? Okay, I’m on my way to meet them. I’m going right now.”



White
showed our investigative team the route up to the front door from her
basement apartment. It’s only one flight of stairs -- a 30-second trip.

To
her, what happened next defies common sense -- especially, for a woman
with no criminal record, no arrests and just one minor driving violation
on her record.

Within seconds of running outside to meet
police, Officer Koskovich pulled his Taser and fired a two-barbed
electric wire into White’s ribs and stomach.

“All I’m
doing is waving my hands in the air, and the next thing I know, I’m on
the ground and then handcuffed. It was almost like I blacked out. I was
so dizzy and disoriented,” White said.

Witnesses said
White began bleeding heavily from her knuckles and the right side of her
face swelled up immediately after she hit the pavement following the
Taser jolt.

Pictures acquired by Team 7 Investigators also show injuries to her cheek, chin, ribs, neck and arms.



Worse
yet to White was the incredible confusion that came with suddenly being
handcuffed, under arrest and without the ability to communicate with
Tacoma officers, who had no sign language skills.

“The
next thing I know, they took me to jail. Told me to stand up, you’re
going to jail. I said, ‘What? What have I done?’ I couldn’t figure it
out. I had no idea what was going on,” said White.

Officer Koskovich and his partner submitted nearly identical descriptions of the arrest in their reports.



Koskovich
wrote in part: "I yelled for White to 'stop' and held my right hand up
to signal for White to stop. White ignored my commands.”

He added, "White was making a loud grunting noise, had a piercing stare in her eyes and had a clenched right fist in the air."



Team
7 Investigators canvassed the area near the Taser incident for
witnesses because Koskovich and White’s stories are so vastly different.

Margaret
Sims’s apartment is right over the spot where White fell to the ground
after being tased. She said it was around 11:30 at night and dark, but
she heard Lashonn screaming in pain and ran to the balcony.

“I hollered down and said, ‘She’s deaf and can’t speak!’”



Sims
says she went down to the street and spoke with officers while Lashonn
was still in handcuffs. She told us during an on-camera interview that
the police officers at the scene admitted there was a misunderstanding.

“They
had tased her because he thought she was coming at him, but what she
was doing was running to him. But he said, ‘stop’ and he didn’t put his
hand up. He just said, ‘stop’ and she couldn’t understand that,” replied
Sims.

Another apartment tenant, Geraldine Warren, said she also heard the commotion and talked to police.



“They just told her to halt. She kept running, she can’t hear—she’s
deaf. I said, ‘Aren’t you supposed to say halt like that?’” asked Warren
holding up her right hand.

Tacoma police arrested
Lashonn on two criminal charges, simple assault and obstruction of a
public servant (law enforcement officer). Then they carted her off to
jail. She spent 60 hours there – also without an interpreter- before a
city prosecutor reviewed her case and asked that charges not be filed at
all.

We asked KIRO TV police conduct consultant and
former Bellevue police chief Don Van Blaricom to review the conflicting
witness and officer accounts of Lashonn’s arrest, plus the officer’s
official reports.

He told Halsne the officer’s reports “were obviously written in concert, after the fact, to CYA.”



“The
question to ask yourself is: why would she run at police in an
assaultive manner when she had asked for them to be there and was going
out to meet them?” Van Blaricom wondered aloud.

“A Taser
is a very useful device under circumstances which necessitate its use,
but it’s too easy to use and frequently used too quickly. This looks
like one of those cases,” Van Blaricom told Halsne during an interview.

State law on the employment of ASL interpreters for deaf suspects is clear.


RCW 2.42.120 (4)requires
law enforcement agencies conducting an investigation to “appoint and
pay for a qualified interpreter throughout the investigation.”

RCW
2.42.120 (5) states “If a hearing impaired person is arrested for an
alleged violation of a criminal law, the arresting officer or the
officer’s supervisor shall, at the earliest possible time, procure and
arrange payment for a qualified interpreter for any notification of
rights, warning, interrogation, or taking of a statement. No employee of
the law enforcement agency who has responsibilities other than
interpreting may be appointed as a qualified interpreter.”

White said despite her repeated requests to police for a certified ASL interpreter, one was never provided.

The
story is complex and the officers at the scene clearly had a different
point of view. KIRO 7 Investigators have tried to get their explanation
for six weeks and while we've talked to Tacoma Police on the phone they
would not respond to the allegations. We've also sent them emails and
left several messages. If Tacoma police want to explain their side of the story, we'll have a follow-up.





Please complain to the city

http://www.cityoftacoma.org/Page.aspx?nid=54

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