Last November, I read a brief article about a botched drug bust in Delaware in which a Marine, just back from Iraq, was shot and killed by local police. Given that I look over dozens of these stories, I’ve tended to dismiss any that suggest the shooting may have in any way been justified. That is, for every drug raid horror story you read about on this site, I don’t use several others.

In any case, I didn’t write up the case of Derek Hale last fall because police at the time said Hale was part of a motorcycle gang known for drug activity, and because they said Hale himself was a person of suspicion in a major drug investigation. They also said he was armed, resisted arrest, and presented a threat to the raiding police officers.

It now looks like the police were out and out lying. Hale had no criminal record whatsoever. In fact, he had a conceal carry permit in Virginia, which requires a background check and a clean record. He was a former Marine, had no drugs on his possession at the time of the raid, and was essentially unarmed (police claim he had a switchblade and pepper spray in his pocket, but he didn’t brandish either, and his friends and family claim he has never owned or carried a switchblade).

A local newspaper has now interviewed several witnesses, who say what they saw differs substantially from what the police say happened:

Hale, they said, was chatting with Sandra Lopez and two children at the top of a 10-step concrete stoop. Hale was seated on the third step from the top. Mixson and another witness were standing across the street from 1403, while others were on the sidewalk in front of a row house adjacent to the site of the shooting.

The officers ordered Hale to take his hands out of the front pockets of his hooded sweat shirt.

“About a second later, they Tasered him,” Mixson recalled. “He was just sitting there. He didn’t do anything.”

A compressed air charge in the Taser cartridge launched two metal barbs, attached to wires trailing back to the hand-held device, at a speed of more than 160 feet per second. On impact, a strong electric charge was carried into Hale’s body, which caused what the manufacturer, Taser International, describes as “an immediate loss of the person’s neuromuscular control and the ability to perform coordinated action for the duration of the impulse.”

The witnesses said Hale shook violently from the charge, as if sitting on an electric chair. His right hand came out of the front of his sweat shirt and was shaking violently.

Seconds later, police repeated their command for Hale to show them his hands, and they Tasered him a second time.

Mixson and others said Hale, who was still seated on the steps, rolled onto his left side and vomited into a flower bed.

“My brother yelled at the police that this was overkill. That this was crazy,” Mixson said. “They told him to ’shut … up,’ or they’d show him overkill.”

Hale rolled back to his right, into a sitting position, still shaking, and police Tasered him a third time, Mixson said.

When Hale, still convulsing, was unable to comply with another request to show police his hands, they killed him.

More here.

Thanks to Thomas Pearson for the link.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 10:37 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.