LF: State Trooper Facing Murder Charges After Tasing A Teen Riding An ATV

Title: State Trooper Facing Murder Charges After Tasing A Teen Riding An ATV
Source: TechDirt
URL Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2 ... r-tasing-teen-riding-atv.shtml
Published: Apr 25, 2018
Author: Tim Cushing
Post Date: 2018-04-27 09:52:30 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 18755
Comments: 104

from the height-of-unreasonableness dept

More than two dozen hours of recordings and 600 pages of documents obtained by the Detroit Free Press have uncovered disturbing details of the senseless killing of 15-year-old Damon Grimes by Michigan State Trooper Mark Bessner last fall.

Lots of killings are senseless, including many of those committed by officers authorized to use deadly force. But this one was especially senseless. Trooper Bessner decided against all policy and reason to fire his Taser at Grimes while both he and Grimes -- riding an ATV -- were traveling at 35 mph down a residential street. To add to the insanity of his act, Bessner was the passenger in the cruiser. Having initiated the pursuit, Bessner decided to end it by tasing Grimes. The result was the complete, gruesome destruction of a human being.

Grimes had been driving about 35 mph on an ATV when Bessner — a passenger in a moving patrol car — fired his stun gun at the teen during a chase on Detroit’s east side.
Grimes slammed into the back of a parked truck and flew off his ATV. The impact of the crash ripped gashes into his forehead, both cheeks and upper lip and dislocated his skull. Doctors pronounced him dead on arrival at St. John Hospital.

Bessner is now facing murder charges. There's a good chance Grimes never knew he was being pursued. Earbuds were photographed at the scene of the fatal crash. No one involved in the pursuit has been willing to go on record as to whether they appeared to be in use at the time of death. Additionally, obtained footage shows the cruiser's emergency lights weren't activated until 24 seconds after the fatal crash.

What the Free Press has uncovered with this mountain of public records is staggering. Officers arriving at the scene expressed their disgust at Bessner's actions. One officer in particular registered her disbelief at what she was witnessing.

“His pulse is weakening because he was on that fuckin' thing, and you chased his ass,” Detroit Police officer Kimberly Buckner muttered to herself as she stepped out of her vehicle, her body camera recording every step and word.
As she walked toward Grimes, an unidentified Detroit police officer reached out his hand to cover the lens of Buckner's body camera quietly saying: "They fuckin' tased his ass while he was cruisin'."

Buckner showed more compassion than other officers, though. The unidentified officer she spoke with later stated police escorts for ambulances were reserved for injured officers not "bad-ass 15 [year olds]" who ran from the cops. The officer went on to state he had "no sympathy" for the dead teenager. Another unidentified officer is captured saying, "Don't run from the State Police. You'll get fucked up."

Unbelievably, Detroit PD officials had no idea this officer -- still unidentified -- had criticized the cooling corpse of a teen shot by an officer with a Taser while riding an ATV at 35 mph. Only at the prompting of the Free Press was an investigation instigated. The officer has been pulled from patrol duty while the investigation is underway.

The Michigan State Police have a lot to answer for, and reps aren't talking. A pending lawsuit is only part of the reason for its silence. The other part is likely due to its refusal to deal with a problem trooper until he was charged with murder.

Bessner has a history of using excessive force and has been reprimanded before for using his Taser inappropriately, including using the device on handcuffed suspects. The investigation into Bessner's conduct shows that over a four-year span ending in 2017, he had 40 use of force incidents, 17 pursuits and five car accidents.

If the Michigan State Police could be bothered to police themselves, this may have been prevented. Bessner was -- at best -- a lawsuit waiting to happen. This isn't normal behavior, no matter how his lawyer spins it. It appears Bessner is going to lean hard on the Supreme Court's Graham decision, if his lawyer's statements are any indication.

Bessner's attorney, Richard Convertino, agreed to an interview, but then didn't respond to requests to schedule it.
Convertino previously called Grimes' death tragic, noting the teen drove the ATV “recklessly and dangerously” and “actively resisted and evaded arrest.”
“During the pursuit, Trooper Bessner was forced to make a split-second decision under circumstances on the scene and at the moment which was tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving,” Convertino told the Free Press in the email, shortly after the crash.

If the wording in that last paragraph seems familiar, it's because it directly quotes a Supreme Court justice.

The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments - in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving - about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.

That statement in defense of Bessner's reckless actions is a bit too much on the nose. There was no need for this to be a 'tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving" situation. A teen was riding an ATV and the cops were in cruisers. If the teen posed a risk to others, the solution was not to fire a Taser from a moving vehicle at an unprotected body traveling at 35 mph. That's just a good way to seriously injure someone. In this case, the injuries were fatal and the trooper whose best call under pressure was to commit an act almost every cop would find unreasonable is now behind bars awaiting trial. I'll bet he wishes he'd responded a bit more reasonably.

The State Police gave him every chance to show them what kind of officer he could be. And in the end, he showed them he could be even worse than he was in the four years leading up to his murder rap.

What about when police use spike strips to stop a car speeding at 90mph or so? Doesn't that also include a lot of risk of a crash with injury/maiming/death? Or shooting out their tires? Or that little nudge maneuver from a pursuit vehicle to try to make a fleeing car spin out? People get injured or killed all the time as a result of these lawful police actions and those are all examples of lawful uses of deadly force in the course of enforcing traffic safety laws against an egregious driver.

I don't think you can say that this trooper went much further than those normal accepted police tactics in this particular situation.

You also don't know yet just how dangerously this kid was riding the ATV. Had he already blown through blind corners where someone on foot or in a vehicle might easily have gotten hit? Did he dodge and blast by someone just getting out of their car, almost hitting them? Maybe his driving provided ample evidence to the trooper that the yout' posed a clear and present danger to the public in the course of the pursuit.

When push comes to shove, most of the public thinks that the police can do most anything to you if you run from the cops. Especially a long high-speed chase.

Does it really mean that much that he was in his mid-teens instead of being 21 or older?

And, keep in mind, this was a taser. It is a weapon designed for non-lethal results. You cannot expect to go to trial by treating a taser use as though he had pulled out a machine-gun and blasted the kid off his ATV. These are not the same things. A taser is, by definition, intended and designed to be non-lethal.

Fast enough to get him killed when he stopped suddenly. A helmet would have helped, but, well, the Damons of this world don't bees wearin' one.

Ah. In which case, he might have killed or paralyzed himself if the ATV had popped over, pinning him underneath.

Cops also have a duty to protect the irresponsible from themselves, including the use of force to do so.

You may not like this line of argument but the trooper's lawyer will muster exactly the same arguments to a jury.

It's a long way from the easy "a kid shouldn't die on an ATV joyride" to "that trooper is a murderer and should be in prison". A very long way.

I'm sure he was "turning his life around", was "planning on going to college", and was "an aspiring nuclear physicist" (with a minor in basketball).

He was "well-loved by everyone who knew him", "would never do anything bad" and "didn't deserve to die".

Well ... maybe more. Maybe driving with no hands and squealing tires. And revving his engine.

If they couldn't convict the Trayvon killer, I don't see how you think they'll convict this trooper.

Yeah,but there is a lot of difference in being tazed when running away by foot,and being tazed while riding an ATV. How can you NOT be in a serious wreck if you are tazed while operating an open vehicle traveling 25 MPH or faster,causing you to lose control over it and fall off?

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

During the hiring process, potatoes should be weeded out. Any fucker that talks like that, with any color skin... is a potato.

Most can't afford to. They work too closely with the state troopers,and the state troopers know too much about the backroom deals they have cut and the cases where they covered up evidence,etc,etc,etc.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

I agree,and the same goes for EVERY other defendant. If the state can't prove their case,the defendant should go free.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

I think it was just a case of "I am a cop and I CAN,so I WILL!",and the thinking never got any deeper than that.

AND.....,the truth is if the kid hadn't died,the cop would have gotten away with it because there would have been an agreement to drop any charges against the kid if his family would give a written guarantee they wouldn't sue. Unfortunately for everyone involved,the kid did die,though.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

It may qualify for depraved-heart murder under Michigan law. As second-degree murder, that would carry up to life in prison.

But thanks for digging out that statute. You can never make assumptions about the laws of any state. They can vary quite a bit.

Proving objective or subjective awareness of the risk the trooper's behavior created should not be very difficult, legally.

I quoted, and you requoted, from a general legal text which is generally applicable, but which is not specific to Michigan.

I also quoted a Michigan court opinion setting forth the standard to be met in Michigan to provide a showing of objective or subjective intent.

An objective unsderstanding would be decided using the reasonable man standard.

Denying a subjective understanding would require denying the trooper had sufficient intellect to be a trooper and be qualified to use a taser. In general, there will be law enforcement training records contradicting any claimed lack of knowledge of what the taser will do.

A more reasoned approach might argue that the use of the taser was justified because the yute posed a clear and present danger to the public and there was no less dangerous, yet effective, way to stop him.

This is what I expect from the defense. As part of that, they will try to dirty up the yout's record as much as possible. And it does seems likely that a kid who flees cops in an extended chase on an ATV at 35mph in an urban area is going to have some kind of record for other behavior. Should we expect this to be the yout's very first time getting in trouble ever? Probably not a "first encounter" with the law or with authority figures.

I sat on a jury and was told that the defendant's past could not be disclosed nor considered when determining guilt or innocence for the crime in question. The defendant's criminal past is considered for sentencing, however.

That said, I don't understand how the testimony from the other female accusers was admissible in the Cosby case.

I agree, Murder is overcharged. This was reckless manslaughter, and should be tried and convicted and punished as such.

In my opinion, that's more of a citizen-on-citizen crime. What comes to mind are people who throw rocks from overpasses onto the traffic below.

But cops get involved in many law enforcement scenarios that could injure or kill citizens -- a high speed chase, for example. A shoot-out with a gunman in a crowd. A hostage situation. A suicidal person standing on a ledge.

In all those examples, we can sit back in our armchairs weeks later and criticize the cop's response -- perhaps even charge the cop with murder? He should have done this. He should have done that.

I would appeal the shit out of that decision by the judge. Even if each and every one of those women had won a case against Cosby (which they did not), their testimony (to illustrate a pattern) would be inadmissible.

Now, I understand the logic of the prosection -- the current case fits Cosby's profile.

But the law says each case stands on it's own. Past behavior does mean anything when it comes to the current case.

So if you have a record of burglaries and get tried for another one, they can and do bring up your record of burglaries because those reflect the habits of a career criminal.

What they can't bring up in your burglary trial is that you got arrested for pot smoking, for domestic violence, for assault, etc. Because those are entirely unrelated criminal acts.

If you couldn't bring up past criminal behavior, all those three-strikes laws would be moot. So of course you can bring up the record of similar criminal convictions.

I'm speaking generally here; as always, each state has its own variations and so do the feds.

Well, yes and no. If you or I were driving along some road on a sunny Sunday afternoon and fired a taser at some kid on an ATV just for the hell of it, yeah, we'd be charged with that.

But a State Trooper doing the same thing while enforcing the law and in an attempt to prevent injury? Maybe not.

These women were testifying about Cosby's alleged behavior that was never proved beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. It's gossip. Why should we believed it ever happened to them?

Second, if I toss a coin 25 times and it comes up heads every time, what are the odds it will come up heads the 26th time? Yeah. 50-50. Past behavior is no indicator of current behavior. If it was, we can avoid the time and expense of trials and go straight to conviction.

The three-strikes law deals with convictions. Past behavior is considered during sentencing, not conviction.

Most of those accusations were the result of civil trials so they would not be admitted.

However, if Cosby's conviction for this case stands on appeal, then I think it could be cited in other future criminal trials as part of a pattern of criminal conduct by Cosby over the course of years.

You're only proved that you don't understand statistics properly. Apples and oranges.

Sure but both prosecutors and defense attorneys will try to drag in past behavior on the sly to muddy up a victim (like a rape victim who wears racy clothes or an assault victim with a history of fighting) or to keep a jury from finding out about other unrelated charges or convictions. And a judge tries to keep the trial balanced so someone doesn't get convicted on the basis of crimes he may have committed years ago.

So, let's say you put O.J. Simpson on trial again for some crime. His lawyer would never allow the prosecutor to start talking about his murder trial (he won) or his civil trial (he lost). Or his involvement with extensive satellite TV piracy. Or even his conviction in Nevada when trying to recover his old memorabilia from some crook. A jury might just convict him based on his other crimes or even the perception that he got away with murdering his wife and her lover. Some people still think that's why he served that much time in Nevada prison, not the actual charges he was convicted of.

35 mph on a city street is only 10 over. It’s not recliess or dangerous enough to justify a killing. Second degree murder is overcharging. This is manslaughter at worst. Detroit won’t riot if the cop is acquitted. Rioting burned out of Detroit long ago. The city is 94% black and about 2% Hispanic. And the whites who live in the city ain’t Lord-of the-manor types, if you know what I mean. Detroitcops are famously corrupt, in the “part of the local criminal community” sense”, not an occupying army.

Moot point. As far as I can tell, all of those civil suits are pending. One was settled out of court. Meaning, from a legal standpoint, his record is as clean as yours and mine.

If a woman wants to accuse Cosby, let her come forward separately in court where discovery and cross-examination can take place. It's supreme bullshit that she should be allowed to testify at another trial when there is zero proof that anything she says is true.

"Witnesses said the trooper pulled close to the ATV and fired his Taser during the chase, and they believe it might have caused Grimes to crash. Witnesses said the teen was trying to get onto the sidewalk when he hit the pickup truck."

Unless, of course, there is an exception to the general rule. And the applicability of exceptions is within the discretion of the judge.

Should be. State troopers should not be empowered to cause certain injury to prevent a very theoretical injury. 35 mph on a 25 mph street simply is not that fast or that dangerous. There's no indication that it was a crowded street.

Truth is, the troopers were pissed that the guy did not stop, so they stopped him, in a manner that anybody could foresee would cause serious injury or death. And it did.

Our society has indeed empowered them to do things like this, but as the incidents pile up, our society may decide that it is time to start taking some of that power back. And the place where that power is most logically taken back (given political realities) is the courts.

You're making a self-righteous argument assuming facts not in evidence, at least not yet.

The witnesses and the accident scene evidence indicates that the yout' had slowed down to try to get on the sidewalk and that he flipped his ATV by trying to corner too fast, throwing him into the back of the pickup and his ATV striking another part of the pickup tailgate and ending up flipped over in the middle of the street.

Maybe young Mr. Potatohead didn't even get hit with the taser at all and just rolled his ATV trying to take the corner too fast. At this point, we don't know.

But even the witnesses (Detroit residents of a high-crime cop-hating neighborhood) say that the yout' had slowed down and was not going 35mph at the time of the crash.

And was Mr. Potatohead even wearing a helmet? The only photo we have of him (so far) on the ATV is this one:

He may be dead only because he tried to corner too fast and wasn't wearing a helmet.

There's a lot of dumbass counties and towns that are relaxing laws against running ATVs on public roads. There are now more people getting killed riding ATVs on paved roads than off-road. And the ATV manufacturers specifically oppose allowing ATVs to be ridden on public roads, saying they are inherently unsafe and unlicensed and not equipped or designed for public roads.

The real murderers of this kid are his own parents, giving a young idiot such a dangerous vehicle and then failing to supervise him in any way.

All I can say is "God bless Saint Darwin", the patron saint of dumbass helmetless riders.

from the height-of-unreasonableness dept