MARTINSVILLE
It’s been about three months since a 17-year-old died here after being Tasered by a police officer.
The Danville/Pittsylvania County chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and other African-American community leaders are calling for a moratorium on the use of Tasers.
The Rev. Avon Keen, leader of the local SCLC, and other leaders held a meeting Saturday to discuss the issue at the Blue Ridge Regional Library in Martinsville.
The SCLC and other members of a panel plan to push for a ban on their use until there is adequate research on their dangers and how they should be used, Keen said. Keen said they want to approach local enforcement agencies about the idea and take it statewide and national.
The SCLC’s effort comes three months after 17-year-old Derick Jones died when a Martinsville police officer Tasered him when Jones “moved rapidly” toward him, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on Jan. 9. Police were called on Jan. 8 to a home on Rives Road after receiving a report of a young man using the bathroom in the street and a later call of young men fighting.
Tentative results from a U.S. Department of Justice study finished in June found no conclusive medical evidence that Tasers cause injury or death, even after numerous instances of people dying after the officers Tasered them, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. During Saturday’s meeting, Torrey Dixon, a civil-rights attorney in Durham, N.C., said about 300 people across the U.S. have died after being Tasered. Dixon said there needs to be a push to build large-scale, non-violent resistance to call for ending the use of Tasers.
A Taser is a handheld electroshock weapon that affects control of the central nervous system when used on someone. It’s meant to be a non-lethal alternative to traditional police weapons.
Keen calls for five recommendations to be made to law-enforcement agencies regarding Tasers, including a ban on their use until adequate research on their dangers and proper use; that a federal task force made up of law-enforcement, human-rights organizations, attorneys, law professors and members of the public to establish set standards on how Tasers should be used; that law-enforcement agencies restrict use of Tasers on the elderly, children and pregnant women; law-enforcement agencies restrict use of Tasers in potentially flammable situations, near dangerous heights and not on a person’s face, eyes or head; and law-enforcement agencies require officers have at least 8 hours training per year on the use of Tasers.
Keen also wants to see youth educated in schools about the Taser and how to react when approached by a law-enforcement officer.
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http://www.godanriver.com/gdr/news/local/danville_news/article/sclc_calls_for_ban_on_taser_use_by_police/10219/
Other Information: http://www.martinsvillebulletin.com/article.cfm?ID=18370
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