welcome back to the civil rights lawyer Channel as a result of the footage you're about to see a police officer was placed on leave and now has been charged with a crime take a look trust me the balls knock it off or I'll do it in your foot yeah knock it off I will [Music] yeah so this is a case where a female police officer had actually tased this guy in the butt and also threatened to tase him in the bowls and this happened in Vancouver Washington and I pulled this footage off the police activity channel so thank them and I'll put a description in the link the original raw footage is also out there I'll put a link to that as well this involved in Officer Mendoza who was the one who did the tasing and also an officer Gabriel Patterson and they responded to a Walmart of course in Central Vancouver lost prevention employees at Walmart had requested that officers trespass a man and a woman that they didn't know whom they said they saw concealed merchandise and leave without paying and when the officers arrived they approached two people who appeared to match the pair's description that they were given and told them that they weren't free to leave immediately hey go ahead and stop for me now before we proceed any further let's just understand where we are Constitution the officers have received a call from loss prevention and there's an allegation that there are two shoplifters that are leaving with merchandise a description is given we're not given a whole bunch of details on on how closely that description matched these individuals and they immediately detain them that means that the fourth amendment is implicated and they must have the officers must have reasonable suspicion that some crime is committed the crime would be shoplifting the only potential Reasonable Suspicion based on facts that they have is an allegation that these two individuals match the description given by the loss prevention officers so really we need to look at the substance of the call of the 911 or other phone call from loss prevention how closely does the description match if there is no match it's possible that there is no Reasonable Suspicion here for a detention and therefore everything that happens afterwards has to be thrown out in criminal court because it's an unjustified seizure under the Fourth Amendment just push me in the box so the two police officers immediately took this guy to the ground initially he complied and then he got up and he tried to run and I believe he said afterwards that he felt like they were harassing him and that it was unjustified so he wanted to get away and that's why he was resisting but they take him back down again onto his stomach and then the female Officer Mendoza can be seen using her taser on this guy's back and you can hear him groaning before eventually saying I'm done okay take care of these yeah you think you got me but I let you control point there until I got one running to the north I'm relaxing this is for a stupid theft left of what we're gonna figure it out all right you can roll for me to you yeah yeah I got you myself foreign Officer Mendoza can be seen pulling this guy's pants down and putting the taser against his butt and she's heard saying knock it off or I'll do it in your nuts the guy can then be seen rolling onto his back and then Officer Mendoza presses the taser to his genitals and at one point the officer again tells him that she will use the stun gun on his genitals if he doesn't stop the guy then can be heard repeating I'm done I'm done I promise yeah knock it off I will cross again investigators later determined that Officer Mendoza held the taser to this guy's genitals for 24 seconds then officer Patterson can be seen putting handcuffs on the guy who's heard then asking the officer to put his you know what away and then Mendoza pulls up his pants so when I say [ __ ] you roll over roll the [ __ ] over oh now okay you do exactly what I say what I say now you're past that man yeah your other hand you're putting the small on your back your other hand put it in the small on your back I'll take care of it put it in the small of your back and do it now I'm gonna help you okay okay thank you thank you thank you okay we are code for some medical country and we need a supervisor after the struggle the guy complained of being unable to breathe and officer Patterson cut the man's sweatshirt away from his face he's black male complaining of not being able to breathe on your side on your side I could just run my neck yep I see that yeah I see that oh on the west side west side of Walmart will you please put my dick away right next to us yeah thank you we have two cover cars rolling up 97 everyone else slow down we have a female other units are coming in check for a female her description of the call she took off running yeah Northbound behind Walmart then he was taken to an area hospital for treatment officer Patterson the other police officer wrote in his police report that the man was taken to the hospital for a drug overdose and that the officers had administered Narcan at the scene which clearly doesn't appear to be the case for the body cam footage he also wrote that Officer Mendoza used her stun gun on this guy's leg he didn't really say where she actually in fact did use it he does not say that it was used on the man's butt or held against his genitals in an interview with investigators officer Patterson said that he believed that his colleague had used a stun gun on the oreste's lower back area he said that he never saw the man's genitals exposed but he heard the guy asked the officers to put his blank away he said he didn't know what the man was talking about the other officer Patterson has not been placed on leave but he's under an internal investigation the other officer is colleague I'm in Mendoza she has been placed on administrative leave and now she has been charged criminally so as I mentioned the justification for the initial detainment itself is shaky is very questionable we would have to go again go into the substance of what the police knew specifically which we don't know but let's talk about the more important thing here the use of the taser now there's a lot of case law out there on tasers and they all basically say the use of a taser is a serious use of force the case law makes clear that tasers are proportional Force only when deployed in response to a situation in which a reasonable police officer would perceive some immediate danger that could be mitigated by use of the taser in other words it's an excessive and unreasonable use of force for a police officer repeatedly to administer electrical shocks with a taser on an individual who is no longer armed even if armed who has been brought to the ground and who has been restrained physically by other officers and who is no longer actively resisting arrest immediate danger is the key distinction generally where police officers taze suspects who have already been secured that almost always is going to be excessive force so tasing suspects in response to minimal non-violent resistance is excessive force so here where it appears that this guy is just trying to run away and if that's the case that is minimal non-violent resistance now if he's attacking the police officers if they have some reason to think that he poses some serious immediate safety threat if the 911 said that he was armed or threatened somebody with a gun or was a carjack or something like that that might be different but here we have and remember the gram factors you look first at the severity of the crime at issue here this is very low the severity of the crime at issue is shoplifting very very low they have no additional information of which we're aware that this individual might be armed or dangerous moreover there's two different officers here and this guy appears to be you know before really she's doing the tasing he appears to be under the control of the other officer and at one point is handcuffed so this very clearly would be a excessive force violation and that's likely why the charges that were originally charged against against the sky were dropped by prosecutors and instead the prosecutors have now charged this female Officer Mendoza with assault and there's an internal investigation occurring I'll put the link to the the news article on this but it goes into how surprise surprise the police Union is now fighting back against this and that's part of the problem that we have in this country is that there's no accountability just like doctors lawyers judges all are accountable when they screw up police officers have not been and they have these unions and they have qualified immunity the qualified immunity I think would be unlikely in this case because there's just so much laser case law out there so thanks again to the police activity channel for letting me use the footage the raw footage is is out there this Police Department did release it so they did do a good job of you know releasing the actual information to the public so I do give them credit for that so if you like going through this sort of footage and understanding the constitutional rights that are at play in each of these you know police videos that we watch online then subscribe both here and at the blog at the Civil Rights lawyer.com and remember that video footage has taken down more corrupt government officials and bad police officers than lawsuits ever have and ever will I mean this is the one thing that the government fears is its citizens seeing these acts of government misconduct that's why this genre of stuff you see on YouTube and elsewhere is so important under the First Amendment this may be the most important thing out there because if we were for further restricted from putting this sort of footage out there then people would not know the actual acts of misconduct that their government engages in they wouldn't know how important it is to understand your rights and to use your rights remember freedom is scary deal with it foreign foreign