Posted on 05/19/2008 3:00:25 PM PDT by LibWhacker
‘Blake is having a seizure, and they’re hurting him’
Blake Dwyer remembers pain:
The agonizing burn of electrical shock.
And shouting.
And fear.
“I thought a swarm of wasps was after me,” the 17-year-old Guyer High School athlete said. “I was trying to fight them off.”
He doesn’t remember the epileptic seizure he suffered July 18, 2007, when he was 16.
He doesn’t remember fighting to keep from being tied to a stretcher or hitting a paramedic.
His brother, Travis Baker, 17, remembers all of it. He recalls screaming at Corinth police to stop shocking Blake with a Taser. His mother, Deana, remembers hearing Travis crying on the telephone.
“He was saying, ‘Blake is having a seizure, and they’re hurting him,’” she said.
And in case they should forget Blake’s experience, they have photographs of 12 separate sets of burns from the double posts of a Taser.
Corinth police did not respond to a message asking for comment about the incident. Corinth city attorney Michael Bucek won’t release records because the city expects litigation, he said. He did say there was no internal affairs investigation into the incident.
“The only thing I can say is that we believe this is a frivolous lawsuit with no merit,” Bucek said.
No lawsuit has been filed yet. Deana Dwyer sought the advice of Denton lawyer Rocky Haire, who said he has been trying to work with Corinth police for an out-of-court resolution with no luck so far.
“Deana just wants them to acknowledge they did it wrong,” Haire said. “She tried to tell them their officers needed some training on what to do with epileptic seizures and postictal psychosis, but they just blew her off.”
Haire contacted an investigator with the Texas Municipal Intergovernmental Risk Pool, which insures city governments against lawsuits. Haire said the investigator told him that a check of the Taser shows it was fired 15 times within five or six minutes that day.
Mike Rains, a representative of the TMI Risk Pool, said there is an ongoing investigation into the incident, and talks have been initiated with Haire. He would not confirm the extent of the Taser use.
“I believe it was a number of times,” Rains said.
According to information from the Epilepsy Foundation, epilepsy is a neurological condition that sometimes produces brief disturbances in the normal electrical functions of the brain with intermittent bursts of much more intense electrical energy. The resulting seizure may affect a person’s consciousness, movements or sensations for a short time. A person suffering a seizure will fall down, froth at the mouth and jerk uncontrollably.
Postictal psychosis following a seizure may include delusions, depressive or manic behavior, aggression or bizarre thoughts and behavior.
Tasers can be used in different ways. A Taser has a cartridge that sends two prongs out on wires. When the trigger is pulled, the probes burst out of the cartridge and can travel up to 21 feet to reach the target. Then electricity travels though the wires and arcs between the probes.
That affects the sensory nerves, and the electricity overrides the central nervous system, which means the muscles can’t move. The person falls to the ground, briefly immobilized.
Or, the officer has the option of pulling off the cartridge and simply pressing the Taser against the skin. That causes electrical pain but does not immobilize and is called a “drive stun.” It is a way to control someone using pain.
Blake Dwyer had been experiencing grand mal epileptic seizures for about a year, possibly brought on, his mother said, by a concussion.
He and Travis spent the preceding night with friends. They admit they smoked marijuana from a pipe provided by one of the other boys but insist they used no other illegal substances. Blake’s blood workup the next morning showed only traces of marijuana in his system.
They were getting ready for football practice about 10:30 a.m. Travis said he saw Blake bend over to tie his tennis shoes.
“He looked up, and his eyes rolled back in his head,” Travis said. “He fell over and started frothing at the mouth and jerking. I knew he was having a seizure. I was there when he had the others, and I knew what to do.”
Travis said he had learned to calm Blake, who comes out of the seizures with postictal psychosis, a condition that accompanies seizures in some patients to varying degrees. Blake becomes disoriented and frightened, he said. He panics and tries to fight, especially if someone tries to restrain him.
On that morning, Travis began talking to Blake, and some of his fear subsided. Someone at the house called 911, and an ambulance arrived. Paramedics told Travis to step back, and they strapped Blake to a gurney.
“I tried to tell them that he’s claustrophobic and he couldn’t stand to be strapped down,” Travis said. “But they wouldn’t listen to me.”
According to the paramedic report, Blake was combative. He was making incoherent sounds and fighting against the restraints. He freed his arms and, still strapped to the gurney by the lower part of his body, he began flailing his arms. He struck a firefighter in the face.
According to the ambulance report, a paramedic found the marijuana pipe in Blake Dwyer’s pocket. Haire says Blake was wearing gym shorts that didn’t have a pocket at the time. The report stated that he was very combative and uncontrollable. After finding the pipe, the report indicates the paramedics believed he may have been overdosing on narcotics.
The ambulance team asked for Corinth police.
According to the police report provided by the Dwyers’ lawyer when Corinth police declined to release it, an officer Tasered Blake Dwyer only twice.
“[Reporting officer] issued a ‘drive stun’ with the Taser to Dwyer’s upper back to gain compliance so he would stop fighting with the fireman. … Once inside the ambulance Dwyer was once again issued a ‘drive stun’ to gain compliance,” the report states.
The paramedic report also mentions two instances of the officer using the Taser.
But photographs taken the next day show 24 post burns, representing 12 separate instances of the posts of the Taser being applied to Blake Dwyer’s back and underarm.
“The police were saying he was having a ‘bad trip,’” Haire said. “But the blood work only showed trace amounts of THC, evidence of his having smoked pot the night before — no trace of any opiate or psychedelic drug that would cause a bad trip.”
Deana Dwyer said it took several days for her son to act completely normal again after the experience.
“I’m mad at him over the marijuana,” she said. “But smoking marijuana the night before had nothing to do with his seizure. He had them before, and he’s had three since.”
The paramedics took Blake to a local hospital and then he was transferred to Children’s Medical Center Dallas. A neurologist who checked Blake on July 24 wrote, “Robert [Blake] Dwyer has epilepsy with postictal confusion. (Don’t try to restrain him. Talk calmly and try to guide him to a safe area.)”
Deana Dwyer said she visited Corinth police to try to figure out what happened. She is not sure which supervisor she spoke to, she said, but she was not reassured.
“He told me he had a possible kidnapping to worry about. He told me he was going on vacation. He said he’d look into it but he was really busy right now. I called later, but they said he wasn’t in.
“Tasing Blake was one of the worst things they could have done,” she said. “He comes out of the seizures not knowing where he is and scared to death. Shocking him 12 times didn’t calm him down. On the phone, I could hear him yelling ‘OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK’ and then screaming when they would hit him again. If it wasn’t helping, why did they keep doing it?”
Blake wasn’t a criminal the police were trying to arrest, Haire said. He was a 16-year-old boy having a seizure, and he needed help.
“I have written letters to the editor commending police and firefighters,” Haire said. “I understand what a thankless job it is. I’m not trying to make their job harder. But when I saw that he had been hit with a Taser 12 times, something cracked inside. I couldn’t believe it. It is an absolute abuse of power.”
Haire said he is upset that both the police and paramedic reports stated that his client was Tasered twice when there is abundant proof and several witnesses to prove that was not true. And he believes the police should have addressed Deana Dwyer’s concerns instead of ignoring them.
Someone who knows Haire saw her plight that day in the police lobby and recommended she contact him.
“I’m trying to raise awareness. Somebody told her, ‘You need to contact Rocky Haire.’ If they hadn’t done that, she wouldn’t have complained.
“There’s not a lot of money to be made by suing a city,” Haire said. “The law is designed to make it not worth it. But we're not just going to quit on this.”
Here we go again. Because the taser is “considered” safe and is near clinical in operation, the threshold to use is low. It will be interesting to see how many people have to die before this sort of nonsense stops?
Police out of control (again) There are those who will blame the kid for smoking pot the night before. It’s just lucky for those cops the kid isn’t perfect, but there’s no excuse for this BS.
In a quasi police state, abuse of power is relative and subjective.
"Serve and protect" is a joke
If this is the whole story, the cops who did this should be strapped to gurneys and tased in the groin until their equipment no longer functions properly.
At least the “paramedics” should have known better, but since they didn’t apparently ambulance services are also scaping the bottom of the barrel for personnel.
Isn't that convenient. Guess they'll have to sue just to look at the documentation.
But photographs taken the next day show 24 post burns, representing 12 separate instances of the posts of the Taser being applied to Blake Dwyer’s back and underarm.
1) Well that didn't work. Let's try it again. 2) Repeat #1 10 times.
Actually there is substantial evidence that marijuana reduces the number of seizures in epileptics. 12 applications of the taser sounds sadistic. What exactly was this kid doing that was a danger to others (before they restrained a person they were told was claustrophobic)? If he was not endangering anyone, someone should be in big trouble. Wouldn't the parmedics know that introducing large electrical shocks might be highly dangerous to someone whose system is epileptic (a condition where electrical impulses in the brain misfire)?
My kid? A cop’s wife is going to a funeral.
It’s not clear that anyone had told the paramedics that the young man was epileptic, and apparently his seizure had ended by the time they got there, so what they were seeing wasn’t a seizure, but “post ictal psychosis”. Confronted with an irrational, out of control large young man, they really do need to get him under control before he severely injures himself or someone else. He definitely should be wearing a medical alert bracelet of necklace, though it’s doubtful the paramedics would have had a chance to read it under the circumstances.
What if they didn’t tase him enough to get him re-strapped to the gurney, and he flung himself off and broke his neck? Then his family would be suing saying the paramedics should have restrained him, since he was obviously a danger to himself, and now he’s a quadraplegic and should be compensated with tens of millions of dollars. There just isn’t a pretty answer to every situation. He’s alive and suffered no permanent injury, and should be thankful for that. I don’t want emergency personnel who are confronted with violent irrational behavior to hesitate to use a taser, because most of the time it would be the wrong decision and risk injury to the out of control person and/or other people in the immediate vicinity.
At a minimum, the paramedics should be able to differentiate a seizure from a drug reaction...
Excerpts from:
daily press.com
Police use Taser in arresting autistic man
May 17, 2008
JAMES CITY - James City County police officers used a Taser gun on a 24-year-old autistic Williamsburg man Thursday after police said he became unruly with employees at Wilson's Leather at the Prime Outlets-Williamsburg shopping mall.
...
Police only learned the man suffered from Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism, after he had been placed under arrest, Spearman said.
and
This reminds me of the days when they jailed diabetics because they thought they were drunks.
Oops, I "assumed" it was in the bad old days.
Excerpt from dui.com
Arkansas Police Mistakenly Charge Diabetic Man With DUI
Posted Friday, November 09, 2007
James Bludsworth was tasered and went into diabetic coma after being mistaken for drunk driving.
Ozark police found James Bludsworth slumped over the steering wheel of his vehicle 4 p.m. and suspected drunk driving. Bludsworth reportedly became violent when the officer asked him to get out of the car and at least three other police cars were dispatched to the scene. Bludsworth, 54, was hit with a taser to get him to comply and he then either had a seizure or went into a diabetic coma.
...
During booking at the Dale County Jail, however, officers noted something was wrong with Bludsworth and sought treatment for him.
The police then dropped the charge of drunk driving in Arkansas though Bludsworth still had to post a $1,000 bond and he will have to make a court appearance. Bludsworth registered blood alcohol content of 0.00 during a breath test.
No disciplinary action is pending against the arresting officer.
Same here, fully agree.
Um, did you even read the article? His brother explained, the police lied and said only twice, when there’s plenty of evidence of TWELVE applications. The article is very interesting, you should read it.
If we continually excuse poor judgment of those who have literal life-and-death power over us mere citizens we deserve the fascist dictatorship that we will exist under.
And the always insistent demand that those mere citizens like brothers and spouse step aside and leave it to the professionals goes strongly against American traditions like helping those in need and volunteering.I am so disgusted with the credo that only certified professionals be permitted to attempt any task,whether it be replacing a light switch or calming a sick relative.
2) Repeat #1 10 times. "
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Einstein's definition of insanity: Expecting different results while repeating the same action...
Or, IOW, Repeating the same action and expecting different results...
“Here in Cornith we don’t tolerate none of that epa..eppy..epo.. havin’ spells. If words don’t fazem, we get to tazem.” Little more catchy than the old protect and serve stuff.
YOU should read the article. Nowhere in the article does it say anyone told the paramedics or police he was having or had had a seizure. The only thing the brother is reported to have said to them, told in his own words, is: ““I tried to tell them that he’s claustrophobic and he couldn’t stand to be strapped down,” Travis said. “But they wouldn’t listen to me.”” The article says the brother told his mother on the phone that his brother had had a seizure, not that he told the paramedics or police.
Even if he did tell them at some point, it seems clear that the young man was NOT having a seizure anymore by the time paramedics and police arrived, and was instead experiencing “post ictal psychosis”, with symptoms indistiguishable from out-of-control crazed drug user. So paramedics and police were faced with a teenage boy who was clearly not having a seizure and who clearly WAS behaving in a way that posed an imminent danger to himself and others, and another teenage boy screaming that “he’s claustrophobic and doesn’t like to be strapped down”, and maybe was saying something about a seizure which was clearly not what was going on at that particular time, and there was evidence of drug use at the scene.
Instead of criticizing paramedics and police, who were confronted with a potentially very dangerous situation in which permanent and serious bodily harm could have been done to the young man himself, to rescuers, and to other bystanders, why don’t we ask why the parents of this 16 year old boy who had been having grand mal seizures repeatedly over the past year, were allowing him to spend the night with friends, with little or no adult supervision. There’s no mention of an adult on the scene prior to paramedics and police arrival, much less of an adult who had been thoroughly informed in advance by the young man’s parents about his very serious medical condition, so that proper information could be given to the 911 operators and to responding emergency personnel in the event of an emergency.
Tasers work. Fewer people sustain serious injuries in an altercation when the aggressor is subdued without physical contact. In this case, the aggressor managed to slug a firefighter in the face before being subdued. If I’m ever out of control due to some mental disorder, I’d much rather be tasered than wrestled to the ground (or gurney) by one or more emergency responders, because I’m much less likely to sustain a back or neck or head injury that way.
Somebody — it’s not clear who — called the certified professionals to come and help. I think it’s best for people to handle things themselves whenever possible, and if reasonable forethought had been applied to the plan for this teenage boy with a very serious medical problem to spend the night with friends, it appears there would have been no need to call 911 at all. Where were the adults? Was there an adult home while this teenage pot party was going on? Had that adult been thoroughly briefed by one of the boy’s parents about his medical condition, and what to expect and what to do if he should happen to have a seizure while there? It certainly doesn’t sound that way. If you don’t plan ahead to be able to take care of yourself and your own friends and family, then you’re going to have rely on others. And when you call in the “certified professionals”, they’re going to do things their way.
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