The victim, Randy Koch, a 42-year-old tree service worker from Louisiana who was in town helping with Hurricane Ivan cleanup, had been arrested for DUI and was refusing to take a Breathalyzer test. What happened next, captured on jail surveillance video, revealed a disturbing pattern of excessive force that civil rights organizations said was becoming all too common 20 years ago.
Koch’s case wasn’t isolated. The incident occurred against a backdrop of mounting concerns about Taser misuse in Northwest Florida. Officer McPhail himself had a troubling history—he had been suspended four days the previous year for inappropriately using his Taser on bartenders at McGuire’s restaurant while working off-duty. Reports also surfaced of another videotape showing McPhail violently assaulting a detainee, breaking the man’s wrist in the process.
- The abuse extended beyond Pensacola city limits. Local attorney Patrece Cashwell represented Harold Fountain, a 47-year-old man who lost sight in his left eye after being shocked eight times by an Escambia County sheriff’s deputy simply for refusing to leave his own porch. Witnesses reported seeing “flames popping off” Fountain during the attack.
A National Crisis
By 2005, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had documented 86 deaths involving Tasers across the United States and Canada since 1999. Florida led the nation with 16 Taser-related fatalities. The weapons, which deliver nearly 25 times the voltage of an electric chair, were being used far beyond their intended purpose of subduing violent, resisting suspects…