Mother of Taser victim sues Hamden Police Department
In a case that speaks to enduring tensions in New Haven, a Hamden mother announced this week that she is filing suit against the city police department over the April death of her son.
Seven months ago, on Sat., Apr. 22, police officers found 26-year-old David Mills three miles up Dixwell Ave. from New Haven, raving about demons. When he started kicking and biting the Hamden officers, one shot him with a Taser, the controversial stun gun introduced this spring into the hands of 50 New Haven patrolmen. Mills died that night.
His mother’s lawsuit has re-ignited the debate over the ‘less-lethal’ weapons, which the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) adopted this year in hopes of replacing conventional firearms with less dangerous alternatives. But representatives of Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union have raised safety concerns, citing over 20 instances nationwide in which Tasers have played a role in suspects’ deaths.
Mills’ mother is suing both the city of Hamden and the sergeant who wielded the weapon: the former over the issue of instruction—whether the department adequately prepare its officers to wield Tasers—and the latter over the use of excessive force in subduing her son. A Hamden police department spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit.
According to the Hamden medical examiner, Mills’ death was accidental, and the New Haven State’s Attorney has retroactively approved the degree of force used by the sergeant. But the debate over instruction echoes in New Haven, where 50 Tasers were introduced this summer in a pilot program to reduce, not increase, deadly incidents. “It’s a program designed just to see how well it works,” said Kay Codish, director of the New Haven Police Academy. “We’ll see if it makes sense for the entire department to have them.”
This summer, Codish said, the 50 officers equipped with Tasers—mostly supervisors in the 450-person department—received between eight and twelve hours of training on how, and more importantly when, to use the stun guns. “The training comes straight from the Taser Corporation,” Codish said, “but if we want to exceed their expectations, we can, and often do.” The department hopes to guide officers’ trigger fingers, offering them the education they need to avoid the kind of tragedy—and scrutiny—that arose in Hamden.
One solution may be to take a more proactive role in developing use-of-force policy. According to guidelines drawn up by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), the Washington-based criminal justice nonprofit brought in by New Haven to conduct an audit of the NHPD, “departments should not solely rely on a training curriculum provided by a CED manufacturer.” As the Hamden lawsuit progresses and the debate over Tasers unfolds, questions of training and standards may prove central. The Yale Herald.By Alex Hemmer
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