Editor: Once in awhile, there’s a story that we just cannot ignore. I know this has nothing to do about Ocean Beach, but it is an incredibly outrageous report, and goes to show at what level we have sunk to as a society.
OZARK, ARKANSAS. In a small town in this state, a police officer arrived at a home where he had been summoned for a domestic dispute. Officer Dustin Bradshaw found a ten year old girl curled up on the floor of her home, screaming and kicking at her mother, who was trying to get her to take a shower before bedtime.
“Her mother told me to tase her if I needed to,” Bradshaw wrote in his report of the November 12th incident. When Bradshaw tried to take her into custody, she kicked the officer in his groin. He then shot her with his Taser – he describes it as “a very brief drive stun to her back.”
Here is how he described it:
Upon arrival I made contact with a [the mother] and her daughter, [name blacked out]. [The girl] was balled up in the floor crying and screaming. I made several attempts to speak with her and she continued to behave in this manner. [The mother] tried to put [the girl] into the shower to get her ready for bed and I witnessed [the girl] screaming, kicking, and resisting every time her mother tried to touch her. Her mother told me to tase her if I needed to and at this point and [sic] we carried her to the shower. She refused to follow any of her mothers instructions and at this point I decided that there was not going to be a peaceful resolution to the issue. I moved her into the living room area and told her she was going to jail. She continued kicking and crying and I began to try to place her under arrest. She was jerking her arms away from me violently while I was trying to cuff her and thrashing about wildly. While she was violently kicking and verbally combative, [the girl] struck me with her legs and feet in the groin. The subject was actively resisting arrest at this time. I was having a difficult time placing the cuffs on her and administered a very very brief drive stun to her back with my taser. She immediately stopped resisting and was placed into handcuffs. She would not walk on her own and I had to carry her to my police car. She was taken to the Cecil Youth Shelter by direction [deleted].
[See copy of report below.]
Now Ozark Mayor Vernon McDaniel is calling for an investigation into whether the Taser use was appropriate. He also said Wednesday that the girl wasn’t injured and is now at the Western Arkansas Youth Shelter in Cecil. Yet he is requesting the Arkansas State Police to investigate the incident— and if they decline, the FBI.
“People here feel like that he made a mistake in using a Taser, and maybe he did, but we will not know until we get an impartial investigation,” McDaniel said. Since then, the state police has declined his request, as it only gets involved if the officer in question was accused of misconduct or targeted in an internal investigation.
No disciplinary action was taken against Bradshaw, said Police Chief Jim Noggle. He also declared that tasers are safe against unruly people who may be a danger to themselves or others. “We didn’t use the Taser to punish the child — just to bring the child under control so she wouldn’t hurt herself or somebody else,” Noggle told the press.
Anthony Medlock, the girl’s father, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that his daughter has emotional problems, but that she didn’t have a weapon and shouldn’t have been Tasered. “My daughter does not deserve to be tased and be treated like an animal,” said Medlock, who is divorced from the girl’s mother and does not have custody.
“We don’t want to do things like this,” Police Chief Noggle said. “This is something we have to do. We’re required to maintain order and keep the peace.”
Here’s part of the report:
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
This is still an outrageous story. When I was practicing juvenile law (still am actually) I was often amazed when parents would get upset when their child was arrested after they – the parents – called police. The parents couldn’t understand why their Johnny or Jose was in Juvy Hall for days or weeks after they summoned the police themselves.
This mother should have had a “time-out” herself. Perhaps the father can obtain some custody after this incident.
Everyone involved in that melee needs to be jailed and the kid needs to go live with a relative.
The cop should be stripped of any authority, and the mother sterilized.
The father needs a f****** muzzle in this situation. How dare he question the police called out to a domestic violence situation. I have been on the side of being abused and there were times I wished my abuser would get funky with the cops and get his lousy behind tazed, shot, beat….
You’re kidding, right? A 10 year old child ws tased, you don’t think her paternal parent has no right to simply voice his opinion? Check the first Amendmant of The Bill of Rights.
billray – “sterilized”? a little harsh. sunaurora – muzzle the father for questioning what the cop did? are you serious? this was a 10 year old little girl. okay, you were abused, and that’s very bad, but why come down on the father? question authority, dear one.
bodysurferbob…
Cuz he is looking for a pay out… This girl was out of control and he doesn’t live there. If he was so concerned about his daughter… maybe he should have stepped up as a father and spanked that little self centered bottom of the 10 year old so that she would RESPECT authority not question and fight it… Come on, it is like these kids taking and pulling a gun on an officer and then the parents wondering why they are attending a funeral…
sunaurora – the girl was out of control, the mother was out of control, then the cop became out of control. this country is out of control when parents call cops for something like this. you are way off here, the girl did not have a gun – you’re mixing apples and bananas here. question authority sunaurora, you might be a happier person.
umm, hey editors, why is there so much white space after the police report?
better bob?
bodysurferbob – the police report was actually a graphic and included the entire page the short report was on, so when we published it, the white part of the page accompanied it, and bingo! (hey – get a life! lol)
10 years old. 10. Am I reading something out of a Dickens novel?
I’m with you Margaret. I can’t quite wrap my mind around all this. For starters, why would a mom call the police because her 10 year old kid is acting up and doesn’t want to get a shower? That’s downright weird. Maybe this child does have some kind of problem, but…. a taser is the answer?
I just wanted to throw up when I read this.
There’s an old saying in Arkansas: “If she’s old enough to have sex with her cousin, she’s old enough to be tasered.”
well if the child doesnt want to take a bath y does she let her be smelly let her be made fun of………..do you want to be tasered well that was just unnecessary and stupid good he should loose his job
Mariah – I totally agree with you. Thanks for visiting and leaving a comment. Come back any time.
what is with this family, and the legal system n Arkansas, and why has there been no intervention in an obviously sick situation? or is Arkansas just a world apart from what we would like to think of as civil society? you take a kid to jail for not showering and crying on the floor? and the police have been called before?
that mother should *never* have been granted custody of this poor kid, and the police that collude with this sick family should be under investigation. but what the heck, I’m one of those California decadent types who thinks people, including children, have some rights.
I wish I thought there was hope for this kid, and maybe bringing this to mational, and international attention, will give her a sliver of a chance, because she has NONE living with that mentally ill mother in that brain-damaged, trigger-happy police
“protected” part of the US.
you shouldn’t go to jail for not taking a shower; the natural consequence is that you stink and no one wants to be around you. if you;d let the kid cry it out, she’d either get up off the floor or stay there and cry for a while.
no wonder the kid has “emotional problems.” I would too if I had this abusive and violent nutjob for a mother. or if I;d been raised with a parent, like sunarora, who thinks the problem is that the child should be spanked for “not respecting authority.” pretty hard to respect authority when authority acts like this.
Why didn’t the cop just say, ” hey lady, sorry you can’t get your kid to take a bath, but this isn’t a police matter.”
Tasering was unnecessary and wrong. Using police resources to deal with disruptive child is also wrong.
They should have waterboarded the kid and they could have taken care of bath time all in one fell swoop. :D
More stomach churning news on the topic- the taser was not used to punish the girl, only to subdue her. Punishment? Handcuffed and charged with disorderly conduct as a juvenile. She’s 10 years old.
And the cop is suspended with pay for a week- not because of bad judgment, but because he didn’t have the camera on the taser turned on.
Tell me it aint so. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/19/cop-tasers-10-year-old-gi_n_363620.html
Amen, Judith and same to Annagrace.
And look at Sen. Blanche Lincoln from Arkansas and her blithe ignorance of her state’s situation regarding health care–go ahead, Blanche, vote no, keep your state firmly planted in the dark ages.
speaking of Arkansas, maybe we oughta hear from our former President from those parts, William Jefferson Clinton. come on, Bill, you willing to tell the state that made you their governor that there’s just too much white-trash behavior going on with the support of the poilice and the court system? imagine if Chelea CLintion was having a bad day as a fifth grader (Chelsea was 12 when her family mo0ved to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave). my saner side says this poor sick lady uneducated lady who should ebnver have been enbtrusted with a child really can;t help being the idiot she is – her own parents probaly raised her just as barbarically. but the chief of polivce and the court system treating the kid as a criminal; come on Bill, Halli=ary, or even Clhealsea, you’re from there – SAY SOMETHING to live up to the Marian Wright Edelman CHIldren’s Dewfense business of the Rpesidential Inauguration of ’92…what would Marian say? or Maya ANgelou?
what happens if one of the Obama girls is having a craby day and says despite Madame Michelle’s instructions, “no I’m not going to make my bed before school?”
let’s hear it from the people with a little clout. speak up for the children whjen the police and the courts are keeping them down.
This story is just too funny. I know I shouldn’t think so but right or wrong I do. White trash from all ends. Truth is this 10 year old will just grow up to be a trailer park queen and nothing more. Sorry but everyone in this story, the cop, mom, dad and yes the little brat are cultural inferiors in every respect.
Goatskull, show a little compassion for the child already! Maybe you are the type of New Ager who honestly believes that we all “choose our parents” to fulfill some kind of karmic destiny, but that, and what you say about the kid being on her way to living as a “trailer park queen” is just too elitist and deterministic for me. I HAVE sometimes thought that a kid born to such an ignorant mother in such an ignorant town with a thoroughly corrupt police force (if that’s not a redundancy right there) has a major strike against her. most of us are where we are, in life as well as geographically, due more to the accidents and coincidences of life than anything else.
you’re not coming off as much of a child advocate here, goatskull. kid really can’t help it if she was born into circumstances bordering on neglect and abuse from day I.