Ex Gwinnett County Police Officer Sued: Tased Black Man 'Midair'

Source: Douglas Rissing / Getty

Either they are too incompetent to do their job correctly or they’re just plain evil. Pick one.

A former Gwinnett County, Georgia, police officer has been sued in federal court for deploying his Taser in a way that left a Black man with serious brain damage. According to WSB-TV, Angelo Black was a passenger in a car that was pulled over by Officer Chase Weber and other members of the Gwinnett Police Department for a broken tail light. After the driver of the car was arrested for a warrant, Black attempted to flee the scene prior to being frisked and jumped into a parking lot that was four feet below him.

As Black leaped into the air, Weber deployed his Taser and sent the physically disabled 43-year-old man crashing to the concrete on his head. Black’s attorney Reginald Greene says, “He was Tased in midair.”

It’s a foot chase, Black was not brandishing a weapon, and there was no need to deploy a weapon of any type at this point. Maybe if Officer Dozen-Glazed was in better physical condition, he would have had the confidence to run down the fleeing “suspect” who was in an elevated position near a wall. Another lawyer representing Black, Harry M. Daniels, says it is “strictly prohibited” for an officer to deploy a Taser on a fleeing suspect for exactly this reason.

Via Atlanta Black Star:

“It’s simple. Either Officer Weber was reckless or he just didn’t give a damn,” said Daniels. “Officers like him think that a taser is a [blank] check that they can use whenever, however and for whatever reason they want. That’s reckless, dangerous and illegal… Still, at the end of the day, the taser didn’t cause Angelo Black’s brain damage. Officer Chase Weber did.”

Gwinnett County Medical Center has diagnosed Black with brain injuries that have caused “ongoing emotional distress with significant PTSD-type symptoms including sadness, anxiety, stress, anger, depression, frustration, sleeplessness, nightmares and flashbacks.”

We hope this brotha makes the county empty their entire bank account.