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Sixty Year-Old Mentally Ill Man Dies in Isolation Cell Hours After Police Tasing
Think Progress / News Report
Published: Monday 17 September 2012
“He had recently stopped taking his medication, and his family said they called the police and his case manager the previous week saying he needed to be hospitalized, but were ignored.”
A 60-year-old man who had long suffered from bipolar disorder died in a jail cell Friday evening, hours after police tased him and placed him in isolation. Bill Williams was arrested for shoplifting at a gas station in Snohomish County, Washington. He had recently stopped taking his medication, and his family said they called the police and his case manager the previous week saying he needed to be hospitalized, but were ignored. KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reports:
“His life was so difficult. Anyway for it to end like this, and die alone in his cell, is just incomprehensible,” said Williams’ daughter, Trina Blau. “There’s a hospital right there where they could have shot him up with a sedative to figure it out. Instead, they shot him with a Taser and he’s dead.”
Surveillance video from the convenience store showed Williams jumping over the counter to grab cigarettes, and then come back for a six-pack of beer. . . .
Williams’ family said he was off his medication, and Blau called 911 Thursday trying to get him taken to the mental hospital.
“They talked to him for 15 seconds. If they would have talked to him 10 seconds longer, they would have seen he wasn’t lucid,” said Blau. “I firmly believe my dad would be alive if they would have just taken the time to listen.”
If the county medical examiner’s office determines that the Taser was the cause of death, it will add to the list of recent deaths linked to Tasers and police violence in the Puget Sound region of Washington state. In July, another mentally ill man who suffered from bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders was tased to death. And in 2010, a spate of five deaths resulting from police violence were reported in one week, including two from Tasers. KIRO also reported that just last month, a deaf woman who called 911 for help was tased in her ribs and stomach.
This past week, a Department of Justice report found a pattern of abuse against the mentally ill in Portland that included the frequent, unnecessary use of Tasers. And a 2007 study in Houston found that police unnecessarily used Tasers on the mentally ill, even when they were warned about the person’s mental health condition.
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ABOUT Nicole Flatow
Nicole Flatow is the Deputy Editor of ThinkProgress Justice. Previously, she was Associate Director of Communications for the American Constitution Society. Nicole has also worked for several legal and general circulation newspapers, including The Daily Record and The New York Law Journal, and was a legal fellow at Bread for the City, where she represented low-income D.C. residents in housing and public benefits matters. She received her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, and her B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Law from Binghamton University, where she was editor in chief of her campus newspaper.
4 comments on "Sixty Year-Old Mentally Ill Man Dies in Isolation Cell Hours After Police Tasing"
September 17, 2012 3:04pm
Guess we are going to have to introduce a law in the Oregon legislature to out law Tasers by law enforcement in the State of Oregon, or at least the city of Portland. We have mail in ballots here so every one gets to vote, including the mentally ill. Sooo,,, Time to put it on the ballot for a vote perhaps?
September 17, 2012 2:55pm
Tasing the mentally ill just makes them even more mentally ill. The symptoms will not decrease. They will increase, and an Officer with a pathological need to control will turn up the juice until it kills the victim.
September 17, 2012 1:22pm
There will be no consequences for the law. They will whitewash this episode just as they have done with countless others. The cop that fired the tear gas cannister that brought down the Iraqi vet in Seattle was never charged. The sadistic bully that threw the flash-bang device into the middle of the group that was trying to help the vet was never charged. Every so often justice is handed out equally. My bet is this is not one of those times.
September 17, 2012 9:59am
Sixty year old men in poor health need to be "served and protected". Society does not need to be protected from them. This man needed medical attention, which apparently his family was refused. Police are supposed to have training in assessing and interacting with mentally ill people. To my knowledge, this training does not include "medical assistance" via Taser.
There was more than one failure here, but a police officer fired the fatal shot and a jailer failed to get critical medical services for this man. I trust they will face the appropriate consequences.