Blog #45: Police Sued: They Failed to Recognize Epileptic Confusion and Tasered Man

(This blog was originally posted on April 24, 2014)

 

On January 26, 2014, a Connecticut newspaper, the New Haven Register, reported that a man sued the town of Hamden and the Police Department after he was tasered by two officers because he “refused” to cooperate with their orders to exit his crashed vehicle. He claims that at the time he was suffering an epileptic seizure and was unable to follow their directions. The victim said the police require better training to recognize and deal with people having epileptic seizures.

According to the news article the man experienced a seizure while driving on city streets. His car then picked up speed and hit a stone wall and a detached garage. The passenger, his sister, told the arriving emergency services that her brother had epilepsy and that he had just had a seizure; he was unresponsive and slumped over the wheel at that time. The police ordered the man to exit the car. When he failed to comply, they tasered his neck. The man “screamed in pain” and bit the officer’s arm. He was again tasered.

The police reported a different scenario. They claimed the driver was uncooperative and would not exit the vehicle. He became confused, and after “10 minutes” of discussion, the man finally exited the car but tried to manually remove the car from the wall. An officer intervened. The driver jumped back into the car and tried to start it. The officers claimed that they tried to restrain the driver’s arms and remove him from the car, but he resisted, bit the officer’s arm and violently lashed out. The police resorted to the taser. The driver still resisted. Police were able to gain control, remove him from the vehicle and then they applied handcuffs. Following the incident, the sister said her brother “becomes violent when he has epileptic episodes and can’t control himself…a similar incident occurred when he fought with medical staff attempting to assist him.” The police officers decided against pursuing criminal charges because of the man’s “state of mind” when he resisted them.

This incident describes classical post-ictal, confusion-associated violence that often follows a complex partial seizure, a very common form of epileptic seizure. If a person is experiencing a complex partial seizure and he is physically restrained, he may savagely resist any person attempting to restrain him. Furthermore, he will have no memory of it afterward.

Since one percent of the population has epilepsy, education and training of police to deal safely and properly with this common condition is essential.

 

 

Lance Fogan, M.D. is Clinical Professor of Neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. DINGS is his first novel. It is a mother’s dramatic story that teaches epilepsy.