Mentally Disabled Teen Tasered Twice by Philadelphia Police, Dies at Hospital

this has happened a lot in california especially sonoma county.

"PHILADELPHIA (CBS/AP) Patrick Johnson's grandmother apparently had her hands full with the 19-year-old who family members say had the mental capacity of a 5-year-old; at least a dozen times this year she called 911 when he "acted up" and she couldn't calm him down on her own, just as she did Thursday afternoon."

now everybody read that sentence slowly..try to comprehend what it means...

she called 911 at least a dozen times when he acted up and COULD NOT CALM HIM DOWN....

now if patrick johnson's grandmother called you at home and ask you to help her contain her grandson..now what would you do???

talk to him...??hug him?? hand to hand combat???

what the fuck are you guys going to do????

(lets have a nice conversation about this.....)

tasering him was the best option at the time...they could use the baton....during the olden day..they would had shot his ass already..

a taser is a buffer..or else the officer only means would be to pull his sidearm...

(BTW..if he has the mental capacity of a 5 year old..ahhh he is wearing a graduation gown on that picture..)

All police officers should be required to withstand a taser gun at least three times before they are allowed to use them on other people...just so they know exactly what they are doing to others.

Police brutality is so awesome "right"?

When is this nonsense going to end!? Super redic. . .

"Police are waiting on autopsy results to determine the exact cause of death and whether the police stun guns contributed to or caused the death."

A silver back gorilla might have a relationally similar capacity for understanding complex situations, but if it's swinging a stick or anything else at me, I'm shooting it. The only reason this is making news is because the kid is "severely retarded" (lol, by the way). There was a dangerous retard on the loose, and police had been notified no less than 12 times in recent months to deal with him. He didn't respond, and became more violent-aggressive.

Sunrise, sunset. This isn't a big deal, folks.

He may have been hard to care for, but he had a STICK. Not a gun, not a bomb, but a STICK. And now he's dead. At 19. Unacceptable and truly sad. And yet gangs with guns roam our streets...

tasers don't kill?
guns don't kill all the time too...

here is a better idea why do any of you whiners TRY TO CONTAIN A VIOLENT MENTALLY HANDICAPPED ADULT MALE...

Notice they say that the first taser had no effect.
I wonder maybe if the taser did work, but he was slow to react.
So when the second one hit him, he got the effects of both at once.

I worked with behavioral adults with developmental delays for some years before I had my kids. I also had an elderly neighbor with a middle aged mentally ill son, whom she did not have the capacity to care for. (He ended up causing significant property damage, and a few fires, and was the reason my family moved when my oldest was a baby.) 50 years ago, most children born with obvious delays were institutionalized, usually by the suggestion of a doctor. Unspeakable conditions in those institutions, and eventually they started to close down and the residents were moved to group homes where their human rights and dignity are preserved and the staff is trained to deal with these types of situations.
I've seen lots of families struggle with behaviors like this, and its always hard when the child outgrows the parents and they can't care for them any longer.

Having the learning capacity of a 5 year old doesn't mean you are a gentle little person like a 5 year old. It can make for a very dangerous situation when a fully grown man who has a mind like that, starts getting violent.

As usual here there's a silly libertarian spin on the article and a reactionary "fuck the pigs" tone. Those police aren't really trained to handle this sort of person, from what we can see in the article they didn't behave overly violent or out of the ordinary- they responded as they would normally in a situation with an angry individual who has a crude weapon. They were there to deal with it because it was they who had been called.

If anything it's a general failure of the health institutions and whatever community services they have in the area. Why wasn't the guy in the care of someone who could handle him? Why didn't the carer have a strategy in place to deal with him when he got out of hand? Those are the more important questions here, not this childish knee-jerk reaction against the police.

Without proper care of the mentally ill these situations are inevitable!

If the grandmother had to call the cops "at least a dozen times" because she couldn't handle this kid, why was he still in her care? He should've been in some place that could've handled his specific case better, not with someone who had to resort to calling the cops on him a lot.

Were the cops aware he was mentally challenged? The article says that two 911 calls were reporting someone with a weapon. They get there. See this guy with a stick. He's acting very aggressively. He's not responding to commands.

If any of you have a better idea on how they should've responded to that sort of situation, I'm all ears.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taser_safety_issues

Increased use of force
Critics claim that risk-averse police officers resort to using Tasers in situations in which they otherwise would have used more conventional, less violent alternatives, such as trying to reason with a cornered suspect.[12]
Current British police guidelines allow Tasers to be used pre-emptively, even where the suspect has no weapon. Where originally Tasers were only used when officers or the public were being threatened with a weapon, currently Tasers may and are being used without warning to surprise suspects before being arrested. On the 9th of April 2008 on BBC 1, the program “Traffic Cops” showed police surprising a pedestrian by shooting him with a Taser without warning, before arresting him on suspicion of theft. The suspect had no weapon and was talking with a bystander and posed no threat, when officers leapt out of a car and taserd him. The suspect was later found to be a completely innocent pedestrian. The police maintained that it is lawful to tase people before making an arrest, just in case they are not cooperative.
[edit]Comparison to alternatives
Supporters claim that electroshock weapons such as Tasers are more effective than other means including pepper-spray (an eye/breathing irritant), batons or other conventional ways of inflicting pain, even handguns, at bringing a subject down to the ground with minimum physical exertion.[13]
Supporters claim that electroshock guns are a safer alternative to devices such as firearms. Taser International uses the term "non-lethal" as defined by the United States Department of Defense - which does not mean the weapon cannot cause death, but that it is not intended to be fatal.[14] Non-lethal weapons are defined as "weapons that are explicitly designed and primarily employed so as to incapacitate personnel or material, while minimizing fatalities, permanent injury to personnel, and undesired damage to property and the environment."
[edit]"Non-lethal" designation
While they are not technically considered lethal, some authorities and non-governmental organizations question both the degree of safety presented by the weapon and the ethical implications of using a weapon that some, such as sections of Amnesty International, allege is inhumane. As a consequence, Amnesty International Canada and other civil liberties organizations have argued that a moratorium should be placed on Taser use until research can determine a way for them to be safely used.[7] Amnesty International has documented over 245 deaths that occurred after the use of tasers.[15][not in citation given] Police sources question whether the taser was the actual cause of death in those cases, as many of the deaths occurred in people with serious medical conditions and/or severe drug intoxication, often to the point of excited delirium
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Because tasers are considered to be non-lethal does not mean that anyone
cannot die from being tased. Cops don't ask people if they have health issue before tasing them. They usually don't care.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/taser-related-deaths-accelerating/

The law has its limits when using deadly force.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine#Origins

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_v._Garner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge#Aftermath

I'm sick of these stories about police killing unarmed people with tasers. This won't stop until one of them are charged with MURDER, and PROSECUTED.

Where my man KSirys ?

I don't think i've ever read so many idiotic responses, individuals with disabilities react differently when confronted with pain as they many times encounter various mental connectivity issues. Furthermore one taser on its own has the capability to kill a man and is most certainly lethal, add into the equation another dumb cop with a taser and you multiply the probability of death. This kid 19 and most likely quite easly restrained by using one's own force, there was no need to use a lethal even semi lethal forms of sedation. And as for the idea of "retard strength" that term was most likely invented by some backwoods mountain dew drinking chin strap wearing idiot whom most likely got his ass beat by an individual with the mind of child. People like you deserve pain beyond death, and I hope if you are wrongfully granted the opportunity to reproduce that your child dies from a similar fate.

Sadly just another reason why police need to be better trained for all sorts of situations, and why they need to resort to less lethal means when no one's life is in danger.

police are not qualified for a situation like this. Sadly neither are paramedics. The child was no real threat to anyone granted no one wants to be punched in the face, it was just a bad situation that no one was prepared to handle. What could have helped? POSSIBLY a small injection if properly restrained with hand cuffs of an antipsychotic or sedative and that is something the grandmother would surely know if her grandson was allergic to. I mean when someone is manic and they get the police called on them is it wise to lock this person up or bring them to a hospital? Its not these peoples fault, they truly dont know any better and thats how we need to treat them in situations like this.

Sounds like the boy must have had some physical problems as well, if tasers killed him.

It seems like an unfortunate sequence of events with no one person to blame.

Because we are all in danger from some mentally retarded kid with a stick.

Prescription drugs? I Am just asking.

Unforgivable.