Cop Commits Suicide After Stun Gun Death

[ThePhoenix]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/10/02/taser.officer.dead.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

A police lieutenant committed suicide Thursday, days after he ordered another officer to fire a stun gun at a naked, distraught man who then fell to his death, police said.

The body of Lt. Michael Pigott, a 21-year police veteran, was found in a police locker room at a former airfield in Brooklyn, New York, dead apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Paul Browne, deputy commissioner for public information. He used a weapon that was not his, police said.

Pigott had been stripped of his gun and badge and reassigned to desk duty after the September 24 case in which police, summoned by the mother of an emotionally disturbed man, fired a Taser stun gun as he perched on a ledge.

The man, Iman Morales, fell 10 feet to his death as onlookers screamed. An onlooker's video of the encounter was seen on news stations and posted on the Web.

Almost immediately, police said the use of the stun gun appeared to violate department guidelines, which explicitly bar their use "in situations where the subject may fall from an elevated surface."

[varkam]

1. No winners here.

[Demit]

2. That's very sad. What a sad story, the whole thing.

I hope it leads to police thinking twice before they use those things, from now on.

[RedLetterRev]

3. Two tragedies

two wastes of human life. Does the sadness have to keep going and going?

I grieve for both families.