This one comes from Mobile Alabama, where police used both a taser and pepper spray to deal with a deaf and mentally disabled man who couldn’t understand what they wanted him to do.
Officers who used pepper spray and a Taser to remove a man from a store bathroom found out only later he was deaf and mentally disabled and didn’t understand they wanted him to open the door, police said today.
A spokesman for the Mobile, Alabama police department said the officers’ actions were justified because the man was armed with a potential weapon: an umbrella. But relatives of Antonio Love, 37, have asked for a formal investigation and said they plan to sue both the police and the store. […]
Police spokesman Christopher Levy said today store workers called police complaining that a man had been in the bathroom for more than an hour with the door locked. Officers knocked on the door and identified themselves, but the person didn’t respond. Officers used a tire iron to open the door, but the man pushed back to keep it shut. Officers sprayed pepper spray through a crack trying to subdue the man, Levy said. They shot the man with a Taser when they finally got inside, he said.
Officers didn’t realize Love was deaf or had learning disabilities until he showed them a card he carries in his wallet, Levy said. He was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct, but officers released him and took him home after a magistrate refused to issue a warrant.
Makes you wonder how police ever survived before tasers were invented. How did they ever manage to deal with these stressful situations where someone refuses to leave a rest room stall without the ability to peper spray him and then send 50,000 volts coursing the poor guy’s body just because he he was wigged out by a bunch pf people using a crow bar to force the door open. Oh, and lets not forget the umbrella. That would have scared the crap out of me. How did those boys in blue ever manage people armed with deadly umbrellas back in the old days? I guess they just had to pray Bat Man was on the case.
