A Taser-related death

Questions surrounding the death of Edward Buckner, a 54-year-old patient of the Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute who died after being shocked by a Taser gun at Erlanger Hospital by a hospital security guard, must be answered. The circumstances surrounding his death are too provocative to go without close scrutiny and a public accounting.

Mr. Buckner had been sent by the Moccasin Bend facility to Erlanger to be treated for dehydration. After he was treated and discharged on Nov. 27, he reportedly became combative. Hospital security officers attempted to subdue him, and they were aided by Hamilton County corrections officers on the scene for another matter.

In the ensuing fracas, hospital security officer Matthew Shane Webb reportedly shocked Mr. Buckner with a Taser gun. The patient was subsequently placed in a van and taken back to Moccasin Bend. There, he was found to be unresponsive and was taken back to Erlanger, where he was pronounced dead.

Erlanger and police officials haven't yet said whether Mr. Buckner was examined by an Erlanger emergency medical physician and cleared for transport after he was shocked and before he was taken back to Moccasin Bend. But according to Erlanger's written policies, he should have been examined and cleared for transport. If he wasn't, that would have been a critical mistake, one that might have cost Mr. Buckner his life.

It was also learned after his death that Officer Webb had been had been discharged by the Chattanooga Police Department on Feb. 22, 2005, over a prior incident involving inappropriate use of force with a Taser against a handcuffed suspect, one of two suspects arrested by a group of policemen after a high-speed chase. The specific charges that led to his termination included using undue force, treating a prisoner improperly and lying during an internal affairs investigation.

Mr. Buckner's death raises several questions. Could he have been subdued without being shocked? Was he seen by medical personnel after being shocked? Was he conscious or lucid when he was loaded into the van in the first place? Was he monitored at all while being transported back to Moccasin Bend?

Officer Webb's work history suggests other concerns, both for Erlanger Hospital and for the City of Chattanooga. Both face potential liability issues. Mr. Webb was among 25 Erlanger officers granted a commission on Oct. 6 to carry a gun for work as a peace officer. City attorney Mike McMahan told this newspaper that the city checks officers' backgrounds and training before granting such commissions.

A question for both the city and Erlanger is whether Mr. Webb, considering the cause of his termination from the city police force, should have been commissioned by the city or hired by Erlanger.

Hospital officials said Mr. Webb passed the Erlanger Police Taser X26 training program and was certified to use the device on Sept. 4. Use of a Taser, to be sure, is not uncommon. Police officers themselves are often given Taser shocks in their training. Yet the history of Taser-related deaths under circumstances in which individuals subject to Taser shocks are highly stressed gives good reason for discriminating use of the stun-guns and post-shock examinations. A report by Amnesty International, for example, found 334 Taser-related deaths between 2001 and August 2008, and said 90 percent of those deaths involved people who were unarmed and who did not appear to present a serious threat.

Amnesty recommends the use of Tasers only as a last resort because of a reported history of multiple shocks lasting longer than the five-second standard and the number of deaths among stressed individuals and mental health patients.

Erlanger and city officials should respond forthrightly to these issues. Use of Tasers, and the authority given to people who deploy them, calls for more caution than seems evident in the death of Mr. Buckner.