What the hell is wrong with these cops?

Texas cops taser diabetic seizure man

By Lester Haines
Published Wednesday 20th June 2007 12:25 GMT

A Texas man who called 911 to request medical assistance for a diabetic seizure earned a tasering from local cops for his trouble, the Waxahachie Daily Light reports.

Allen Nelms, 52, was suffering said seizure “during the early morning hours of April 28 when his girlfriend, Josie Edwards, called 911 to request paramedics”.

A police officer duly turned up at the house on Waxahachie’s east side, “inquired as to what was going on”, then called for back-up. Shortly after, and as Nelms was “in his bed in the couple’s bedroom”, cops “burst in with their guns drawn and yelling at him to get on the floor”.

Edwards recalled “about six or seven police officers kicked the front door in and stormed the back bedroom where she said she could hear one telling Nelms to get on the floor”. Her statement, which forms part of an written complaint made by Nelms to the Waxahachie police department, says: “Allen was shouting, ‘Please don’t do me like this. I just need help.’ Next thing I heard some ‘zing’ noise and Allen was shouting. I asked what were they doing to him. One policeman replied, ‘We just took care of him.’ … After they did their shooting and laughing, they came out [of] the rooms. The paramedics had to pull out the Tasers.”

Nelms claims he was “struck by Taser barbs on his left side, his back and his shoulder” as he went to roll over, and subsequently handcuffed, with “paramedics intervening when the officers began trying to yank the Taser barbs from his skin”. The paramedics removed the barbs, checked Nelms’ blood sugar level, and the cuffs came off. He was neither arrested nor charged.

In an interview with the Daily Light, Nelms added: “One of the officers said I ‘lunged’ at him. I asked him, ‘How can I lunge at you from my back and on my bed?'” He said he had “never had a problem in calling for paramedics before, and there is no history of his becoming violent when he is having a diabetic seizure”.

Edwards’ statement says: “Of the 16 years that we [have] lived here and called for paramedics, police decide to come and take over and try to almost kill the man. They never asked any questions [like] did he have a heart pacer, they just wanted to have fun by shooting Tasers and handcuffing the man after he was shot.”

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