Last summer, Carthage, Miss., police officer Blaine Musgrove approached Vivian Burks as she sat in her car reading the Bible. Musgrove smelled marijuana and a second officer demanded to search the vehicle. When Burks, a 65-year-old great-grandmother with no criminal record, tried to get back into her car, the officers grabbed her and ordered her to place her hands behind her back, body camera footage shows. When she did not immediately comply, Musgrove pressed his Taser into her back and shocked her, sending her to the ground in a heap. He then shocked her three more times as she twisted her hands to avoid being handcuffed and begged the officers to stop, repeatedly shouting, “I’m sick!” The officers called an ambulance and then left her moaning for help until the paramedics arrived, the New York Times and Mississippi Today report.
In many places, the repeated shocking of Burks — who was not acting aggressively and was largely under the officers’ control — would be considered an improper and dangerous use of a Taser. In Mississippi, police agencies have their own rules about Taser use, and many departments have vague, outdated policies that allow officers to shock virtually anyone, for any behavior they see as threatening, with little fear of repercussions. Cases like Burks’s have occurred all over the state without raising alarms. Under national standards, officers are told to use Tasers only against people who are an imminent threat. To reduce the chance of causing injury or death, they are advised to avoid shocking people who are elderly or who have heart conditions and to avoid shocking anyone for more than 15 seconds. Tasers are designed to make it easy for departments to monitor when officers violate rules. Each device electronically logs when it is triggered and for how long, creating a digital trail that can be used to flag excessive use. Dozens of departments across Mississippi do not know if their officers use the weapons properly because they do not examine Taser logs, Several Mississippi agencies said they did not know they had access to the logs; at least six did not have the cable needed to extract data from a Taser, until The Times purchased a cable so departments could provide reporters with copies of the logs. Reporters analyzed 100,000 Taser log entries from 36 departments.
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