Here's the deal.
You can read the
police report to get their side of the story.
Here's the short version: An officer is trying to handle a traffic accident, with four people involved. One of the people involved becomes verbally aggressive with the police officer and the two citizens on the "other side" of the accident. The police officer makes repeated attempts to get the aggressor to quiet down and wait at his car, but the aggressor refuses. The officer decides to arrest the aggressor.
But the aggressor does as aggressors often do, and resists arrest. A physical fight begins, and the fight winds up between two parked cars. While the officer is still fighting with and trying to arrest the aggressor, the aggressor's pregnant girlfriend approaches the officer from the rear. She puts her hands on the officer, in an attempt to pull him off her boyfriend.
It is at this point that a
second officer arrives, summoned by the first officer's radio call for
emergency assistance and finds the first officer in a fight with two people. It is the second officer who Tases the original aggressor first. The girlfriend continues to physically interfere with both the officers, and refuses to follow the officer's orders. The
second officer then Tases the girlfriend.
Let's reframe this discussion a little bit. You're at work when you get a panicked call from your spouse or significant other, kid, or whomever it is you care about. That call says "Come quick, help me, I'm being attacked!" You rush home to find your loved one in a confined space, with no route for escape, being attacked from the front and the back. When you rush to the fight, one of the fighters says "don't hurt me, I'm pregnant/I've got a bad knee/I've got a slipped disk/etc."
What do you do?
The police were called to give service to citizens at that location.
The police were prevented from giving service by the aggressive acts of one of the people involved.
The officer decided to arrest the aggressive actor, since he had at that point broken the law.
The actor physically resisted arrest and assaulted the officer when the officer tried to arrest him.
During the arrest, the officer was assaulted
from the rear (which is a big deal in any fight situation) by a second person.
The second person was also refusing to follow the
lawful orders of the police officers.
Furthermore, the officer used a "Drive Stun", which is a option of the Taser which does
not fire the darts, and does
not affect the central nervous system. Instead, it "causes significant localized pain in the area touched by the Taser, but does not have a significant effect on the central nervous system. The Drive Stun does not incapacitate a subject but may assist in taking a subject into custody." (Source:
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Use of Force General Orders)
This officer did just about as little as he could to put an end to this situation. There's nothing to see here, please move along.
Then they get to beat up a pregnant lady. Funny thing no one will point out is no one cares about her rights because it was an obnoxious black lady.
