Grainy video of Taser victim solves nothing
We don't have all the facts, so let's not rush to judgment
The black-and-white video of a 24-year-old Chicago man getting Tasered outside a bar in Ohio is about as inconclusive as a video can be.
Kevin Piskura, 24, was pronounced dead late last week, five days after the incident outside the Brick Street Bar in Oxford, Ohio, near Miami University. (Piskura graduated from Miami of Ohio in 2006 and moved to Chicago.)
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According to police, Piskura's roommate was getting tossed out of the bar around 2 a.m. April 20 when he began fighting with bar staffers. A police officer who was passing by ordered the roommate to stop and the roommate complied, but Piskura got involved in an altercation with the officer.
The video, pulled from the Taser X26 used by the officer, is grayish and grainy. You hear the officer shout "Taser, Taser, Taser!" three times before Piskura is shocked in the chest with the device. (The whirring, clicking noise accompanying the video sounds something like an old movie projector, but it's actually the Taser.)
Piskura rolls on the cobblestone brick street as the officer says something that sounds like, "Stay down, stay down, stay down!" to Piskura, and "Back up, back up, back up!' to the crowd. For the duration of the video, we see blurry images and hear general crowd background noise, including someone laughing.
Some people who are Tasered are soon on their feet, shaking it off. Others never recover. Piskura was taken to University Hospital in Cincinnati -- he died five days later.
Piskura's family released a statement filled with grace and reason.
"Today, we lost a son, a brother, a family member and a friend. The medical staff and everyone here at University Hospital were heroic in their efforts to save Kevin, and for that we are eternally grateful. . . .
"No one feels this loss more deeply than we do; however, we still request that people refrain from rash judgment and wait until the independent investigation of this event is complete."
Of course, as with any case that attracts nationwide attention, some people will indeed rush to judgment and decide it's Piskura's fault for mixing it up with the cop and refusing to heed his warnings -- or the cop's fault for Tasering Piskura in the chest. Or the blame should be placed on police who use Taser devices instead of some other method of submission, like a baton or pepper spray or old-fashioned physical restraint. (Not that a choke hold can't be fatal.)
Scroll through the "Comments" section beneath a Cleveland Plain Dealer story about Piskura's death, and you'll see how a story like this can polarize opinion:
"This is what happens when thugs refuse to adhere to the law. I suspect a little too much beer and a big dose of stupid is to blame here. The kid got what he deserved. . . . It's too bad he died, but he is no different from the inner city kids who are shot dead by police under similar circumstances."
"You make me sick. . . . I am one of Kevin's friends. He was a FAR cry from a 'thug.' This was a case of some cop using his new technique that he learned in training. Kevin wasn't a violent, dangerous person. . . . I'm not saying Kevin wasn't acting stupid at the moment. But what was the point? Now Kevin's gone. We've all lost an amazing friend, a smart, goofy, funny, caring person. Someone who would have done anything for anyone. One of the last 'good guys' out there."
"The officers tried very hard to calm him down, and he resisted to the point where he was throwing fists . . . they warned him multiple times that they were about to Taser him. . . . I'm very sorry for the family, but the media needs to get their story straight. The Oxford officers didn't do anything wrong."
"Remember the days when armed cops would arrest an unarmed drunk in a bar without shooting or tasering? These tasers . . . allow 'weak' cops to use a deadly weapon instead of other solutions such as talking, waiting for backup, etc."
The police officer who fired the Taser has been put on paid leave pending an investigation. Given that a young man has lost his life, it might be hard for some to find sympathy for that officer, but put yourself in his shoes. You try to break up a bar fight, things get ugly, somebody refuses to back down, you subdue the assailant. But you never expect him to die.
As the family said, we shouldn't rush to judgment. But this seems reasonable:
If Kevin Piskura at 2 p.m. that afternoon had been able to see the actions of Kevin Piskura at 2 a.m. that night, he would have told himself to back off.
If we could somehow be assured that Tasers would never be lethal, we'd all feel more comfortable about cops using them.
