Police Near-Tasing of Combat Vet Spurs Training

Let's hope this inspires similar training across the country.

Jason Riley at the Courier:

The man’s clothes were dusty, and he had difficulty speaking. Questioned by a Louisville Metro Police officer inside Mid-City Mall, he couldn’t provide his own address.

Judging the man to be a homeless panhandler, the police officer asked him to leave, and a confrontation ensued — a Taser was drawn, other officers were called and the man was taken down and handcuffed for several minutes.

But the man cuffed and threatened with jail in the Jan. 29 incident was neither homeless nor panhandling. He was a Purple Heart and multiple Bronze Star recipient and a Kentucky National Guard lieutenant colonel going on a routine errand.

Lt. Col. Donald Blake Settle has a poor memory and difficulty speaking as the result of injuries, including a traumatic brain injury, incurred in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan and a vehicle rollover. And on this day, he had stopped to chat with an acquaintance while shopping for a gift card.

His case has resulted in an internal police investigation, sharp questioning from Fort Knox officials, and a potential lawsuit. But it also has prompted a new mandatory training program for police on how to deal with military veterans coming home with traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. 

SNIP 

“Unfortunately this is real familiar,” Eddie Reynolds, outreach director of the Brain Injury Association of Kentucky, said of Settle’s experience. There are more than 250,000 Kentuckians with brain injuries and they are seven times as likely as the average person to have a run-in with the law, he said.

Let's also hope this training addresses broader issues of taser use. Veterans with TBI aren't the only citizens getting tased for unconventional behavior they can't control. And slurring your words in public isn't a crime. Neither is objecting to unreasonable demands from police.

Cops used to know how to talk to people. Long past time to end taze first, ask questions later.