Lancashire police looking for samurai sword Taser blind man carrying a white stick
STILL think the police should be routinely armed? Colin Farmer is blind. He’s 61. He’s survived two strokes. The police thought his white stick was sword.
The police had fielded reports of a man walking around Chorley, Lancashire, wielding a samurai sword.
So. The police shots with bolts of electricity from a Taser gun.
Reader Dairy writes: “It is arguable who actually needs the white stick in this instance…”
Ch Supt Stuart Williams, of Lancashire Police says sorry. The officer who electrocuted Mr Farmer has had his Taser taken off him. Williams says when it “became apparent that this man was not the person we were looking for and officers attended to him straight away”.
Mr Farmer says, “It felt like I was grabbing an electricity pylon.”
Later, police arrested a 27-year-old man on suspicion of being drunk and disorderly. It is not known if he is blind. But, oddly, the police never Tasered him. He was soon released without charge after no weapon was found. Why did the police tell us that? Police looking for man with sword, electrocute a blind man and arrest an innocent man. Man with sword still at large?
UPDATE: Mr Farmer has been on Sky News:
“There is no excuse whatsoever for attacking a registered blind and disabled, retired man without warning and with such a potentially lethal weapon. This Taser could have killed me, and if something happens to me as a result of the shock I got, I hope the officer will be done for manslaughter. I am now scared of walking on my own outside and feel so jumpy I have not been sleeping since. The whole thing was like being trapped in a real life nightmare”.
He says he heard a voice. He’d been shuffling along the street. Then a voice barked at him. He thought he was being mugged.
“The next thing I knew, I felt this thump in the back. I felt this huge electric shock. It was like thousands of volts going through my body. I thought that I was honestly going to die and they were going to kill me. All my muscles turned to dust and I thought I was having another stroke. It was like being plugged into the mains or grabbing hold of a pylon. It completely disabled my body. I hit my head on the floor then this policeman came around to say I was under arrest.”
Mr Farmer is of the opinion that the police officer had been on a mission to use his Taser gun “no matter what”.
Meanwhile, police are still upset that Andrew Mitchell might have called one of them a pleb. Anyone got a word for the copper who Tasered an unarmed blind man minding his own business?
Posted: 17th, October 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comments (6) | TrackBack | Permalink
