The United States Court of Appeals has ruled that three Seattle police officers were justified when they tasered a pregnant mother three times when she refused to sign a traffic ticket. Malaika Brooks was driving her son to Seattle’s African American Academy in 2004 when she was stopped for doing 32 mph in a school zone. When she refused to get out of her car to be arrested, one officer tasered her repeatedly despite (she claims) knowing that she was pregnant.
The officers – Sgt. Steven Daman, Officer Juan Ornelas and Officer Donald Jones – hit her in the thigh, shoulder and neck and then hauled her out of the car and laid her face-down in the street.
While the baby was born two months later without injury, the mother has permanent scars from the taserings.
Judges Cynthia Holcomb Hall and Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain ruled that the officers were justified in making an arrest because Brooks was obstructing them and resisting arrest. The judges insisted that, while surrounded by police and the car turned off, she still was a danger: “It seems clear that Brooks was not going to be able to harm anyone with her car at a moment’s notice. Nonetheless, some threat she might retrieve the keys and drive off erratically remained, particularly given her refusal to leave the car and her state of agitation.”
Note, she was arrested after going 32 mph.
Judge Berzon wrote a lengthy and well-reasoned dissent, noting:
The stacked-up, unsubstantiated speculations that Brooks might have been able to retrieve the keys and might have decided to drive off (although she did not when she had the keys) and might have driven erratically if she did drive off and might have endangered people had she done so simply won’t do as a basis for believing Brooks posed a danger to someone. Indeed, if Officer Ornelas really believed she was going to take off and endanger people, all he had to do was hold on to the keys rather than drop them in the car.
Here is the opinion: Taser
George said “And instead of attempting to diffuse the situation, this genius decided to shock a pregnant woman — and keep shocking her again and again.”
George, Your bias is showing. 🙂
Ms. Eh,
I’ll have to get back to you on that, after all this is family oriented site…..
Seems to me that there needs to be another process in place when a person refuses to sign a traffic ticket. There are too many senseless uses of the Taser over not signing tickets. The officer should be able to document the refusal and send the ticket via mail.
It just doesn’t make sense to me, as a human being, that anybody should electro-shocked anyone else when they won’t sign a piece of paper. Even though signing a ticket is not admitting guilt, the parallelism to signing a confession under duress of torture are easy to make. Most folks don’t understand the process and think signing the ticket is admitting guilt. And instead of attempting to diffuse the situation, this genius decided to shock a pregnant woman — and keep shocking her again and again. It makes me wonder what he fantasized about that night before he went to sleep? Maybe when it happens to his daughter or his sister, or his mother or grandmother, when they are twitching around peeing on themseleves, crying in pain, he will take a different approach to a stranger.
Here are my sources:
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/223578_taser10.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004474548_taser13m.html
“We have a pool and a pond. The pond would be good for you.”
and
“What are you doing in this nape of the way, neck of the woods?”
Chevy had his day, true.
Bill can still hit it out of the park though.
I seriously blame the pain killers. They’ll eat your brain.
Buddha,
You have set my day on the right track. Many thanks.
Sniffing the salt and tossing the tequila over his left shoulder! These were better — well, at least funnier — days. Makes me want to watch Fletch again too. Chase was a master in his day.
My other favorite exchange:
“Do you take drugs, Danny?”
“Everyday.”
“Good.”
…
And this line:
“This isn’t Russia, is it?”
AY, Thanks for the additional information regarding the 1986 ticket.
Now here’s a bigger problem (as I see it).
In their court filings, the officers argued they were concerned that Brooks might drive away and injure the officers or others.
The judge pointed out, however, that one of the officers swore in a declaration that he had reached into the car and taken the keys from the ignition.
“In the face of this admission, Defendants’ repeated insistence that Ms. Brooks might have hurt someone with her car is wholly unconvincing, at best, and a misrepresentation to the court at worst,” the judge wrote in an order issued late Thursday. “The facts before this court show that Ms. Brooks posed no threat to anyone.”
This was reversed by the appellate court. I’ve got a big problem with that. The two circuit court judges who arrived at that conclusion are, without a doubt, incompetent. They should be removed from the bench.
One more thing I gleaned from doing a little more research:
I’m not sure if it was immediately following the arrest, or was testimony from trial, but Brooks said “They could have hurt my unborn fetus”. What 7 month pregnant woman considers her baby to be an “unborn fetus”? I have never in my life had a woman who was that far along call “it” an unborn fetus. When pro-choice women take a pregnancy test, and it turns out to be positive, do they no longer say “I’m going to have a baby?”. Even if you want to get pregnant, telling your friends and family that you’re “carrying an unborn fetus”, cannot be the same as telling them you’re going to have a baby.
I don’t know where to start. While it is obvious that the officer (Yes. One officer tasered her. Not three as the Professor’s version insinuates.), may have found an alternative method of getting Brooks out of her vehicle, we should be provided with the facts in the first place. Many of the comments above are not based upon the facts. In addition, by deciding to forget about the facts of the case, we end up missing some of the other associated problems.
1. Officer Juan Ornelas, testified he clocked Brooks’ Dodge Intrepid doing 32 mph in a 20-mph school zone. (Not 25 mph)
2. Officer Donald Jones joined Ornelas in trying to persuade Brooks to sign the ticket. They then called on their supervisor, Sgt. Steve Daman. (The first officer called for backup, and then they called the sergeant for a determination of what to do. So far pretty good procedure.)
3. The sergeant authorized the arrest. Brooks continue to refuse.
The officers testified they struggled to get Brooks out of her car but could not because she kept a grip on her steering wheel.
And that’s when Jones brought out the Taser. Brooks testified she didn’t even know what it was when Jones showed it to her and pulled the trigger, allowing her to hear the crackle of 50,000 volts of electricity. The officers testified that was meant as a final warning, as a way to demonstrate the device was painful and that Brooks should comply with their orders.
4. When she still did not exit her car, Jones applied the Taser.
In his testimony, the Taser officer said he pressed the prongs of the muzzle against Brooks’ thigh to no effect. So he applied it twice to her exposed neck. (No mention of “shoulder” in this version) Afterward, he and the others testified, Ornelas pushed Brooks out of the car while Jones pulled.
5. It is reported that Brooks weighed about 240 lbs. I don’t think any officer would be able to tell if a 240 lb woman sitting in a car was pregnant. Nothing in ANY OF THE REPORTS indicates that she informed the officers that she was pregnant.
6. She told jurors the officer also used the device on her arm, and showed them a dark, brown burn to her thigh, a large, red welt on her arm and a lump on her neck, all marks she said came from the Taser application. (Still not a “shoulder”)
7. This tazer application did not involve firing the taser. No barbed projectile was fire into her. The keloid (or wart-like) that can form from being shot by a taser is not applicable in this useage. IOW Brooks was likely playing to the jurors.
So lets throw the whole pregnant thing out. I can’t fault the officer for tasering a pregnant woman if that condition was not obvious to the officer. The answer to this part is pretty easy. When the sergeant arrived and made the determination to arrest her, and she did not comply, she should have expected reasonable force to be used. Get out of your car. Get handcuffed. And go to jail. (For those who would suggest they wait her out. How long should they wait her out? If they used more force to push and pull her out of the car, and that would have resulted in he losing the baby, what then? Should officers not be able to touch women because they might be pregnant?)
(continued in next post)
The relevant tequila reference is at the two minute mark.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfZ9KTXK5sY&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
In a shot glass? salt, shot, lemon…repeat
Ah, but do you “Cannucks” know the correct way to serve it?
Not only have we got Tequila AY but we know the correct way to drink it 😀
Yaw’ll have flip flops in Canada? Next you’ll say you have Tequila.
eniobob,
I can’t complain, we’ve had a wonderfully mild winter, and reports this morning indicate that the temp will be back up in the + teens by Easter weekend. I’m not pulling the winter gear back out or putting the flip flops back into storage yet 🙂
Canadian Eh!
“The temperature went from +12 on Thursday to -18 ”
Never,ever will I complain again about the the weather here on the East Coast in winter.:-))
Ok, This is a 1983 action and the Defendants won.
footnote 4 says this: 4 Brooks has had a previous encounter with Notices and Citations to Appear. During a 1996 traffic incident, she refused to sign both the Notice and the Citation to Appear because she did not think she was guilty of the traffic offense underlying the Notice. In that case, the ticketing officer’s
supervisor instructed the officer to give Brooks both tickets and allow her to leave, even though the law would have permitted custodial arrest.
AY,
It would seem that all aspects are there but the swastika as warning to people!
My quandary is this considered a criminal infraction or a civil? If civil and not signing the ticket criminal? It seems to me that the officer could have just given her the ticket and just left. Do we have the SS at work?
I am just amazed that two judges can state with a straight face, that tasering a pregnant woman for any non-violent misdemeanor is insane. Dredd might be right. We could be going over the edge, at least when it comes to protecting rogue policemen.