LOS ANGELES, Calif. – The ACLU of Southern California has strongly urged Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens to revise the department’s inadequate Taser policy in order to restrict and guide future use of these potentially lethal weapons.

In a 10-page letter to the sheriff released today, ACLU/SC Orange County Director Hector Villagra strongly recommended that the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD) limit the use of Tasers to situations where death or serious bodily injury is threatened – whether to a deputy, the public or a suspect. If the OCSD is unable to adopt such strict limitations on Taser use, Villagra noted, it should at least revise its policy to ensure safer, more effective and more accountable use of Tasers.

“The department’s current policy does not take into account the persistent and unresolved concerns about the safety of Tasers, or the rising death toll associated with their use,” Villagra said. “Until it is clear through independent and comprehensive research that Tasers don’t pose an unreasonable risk, a more prudent policy must be adopted.”

Nationally, 320 people have died since June 2001 after being shocked by Tasers. In Orange County, five people have died since 2005 after being stung with the weapons, including Jason Gomez, a 35-year-old father who died in April 2008 after turning himself into authorities.

In addition to urging limits on the use of Tasers, the ACLU/SC letter recommends the department prohibit multiple or prolonged shocks that can impair breathing, and ban the use of Tasers by more than one deputy on a single person.

The suggested revisions would amount to a significant rewriting of the OCSD’s current policy on Tasers, which in places is vague or refers only obliquely to potential problems. With little independent research available on assessing Tasers’ safety, and the manufacturers themselves warning of possible dangers, it’s crucial for the department develop a policy that ensures safe and effective use of these powerful weapons, Villagra noted.

Many of the recommendations are based on practices proposed by groups of law-enforcement experts, including the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). For example, PERF recommends that individuals who are shocked with a Taser receive medical monitoring. At least two municipal police departments also suggest that law-enforcement officers be required to check the response of a subject once a shock has been administered.

The Taser can be a deadly weapon, and as such, the ACLU/SC believes that deputies need to be held accountable when they use it. All data on the use of Tasers, including how many times a deputy triggered a weapon and what type of shock was used -- be it the dart or the Taser gun -- needs to be available for public scrutiny. The ACLU/SC believes OCSD supervisors should also be called out to the scene every time a Taser is used, to establish proper oversight.

“The ACLU/SC hopes that Sheriff Hutchens will adopt our recommendations not only for the safety of the public, but for the credibility of the department,” Villagra said.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - Lawyers for a United States citizen who was illegally deported to Mexico are calling for the Obama administration to carefully review immigration procedures to ensure that no U.S. citizen is illegally deported again.

It has been 20 months since Peter Guzman, a U.S. citizen from the Los Angeles area, was illegally deported to Mexico - setting off a frantic search for him by his mother, Maria Carbajal - and nearly a year since Mr. Guzman and Ms. Carbajal filed a legal action against the federal government and two agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Yet the government continues to delay justice for Mr. Guzman and his family. Most recently, government lawyers filed a frivolous appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in an unjustified attempt to further delay the case.

"The deportation of a United States citizen is unconscionable and must never happen again," said Jim Brosnahan of Morrison & Foerster, which jointly represents Mr. Guzman and Ms. Carbajal along with the ACLU of Southern California.

Added Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU/SC: "The attempt by Bush appointees at the Justice Department to evade discovery through this appeal is a clear attempt to sandbag the new administration into defending the policies of the last eight years of treating skin color as a proxy for illegal immigration status -- even, as here, in the case of U.S. citizens."

Mr. Guzman was born in the United States and has lived his entire life in the Los Angeles area. He attended school in Lancaster, California, where he now lives. Mr. Guzman suffers from cognitive impairments that limit his ability to perform certain functions, like reading or recalling basic information like his telephone number. Even so, Mr. Guzman worked in the construction industry and lived with his mother, Ms. Carbajal.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and ICE chose to ignore substantial evidence of Mr. Guzman's U.S. citizenship, including documents in their possession and Mr. Guzman's own statements, and instead wrongly insisted that Mr. Guzman was not a U.S. citizen. ICE illegally and unjustifiably deported him from his country of birth on May 11, 2007. Mr. Guzman, who was entirely unfamiliar with Mexico, wandered lost in that country for more than 85 days.

Ms. Carbajal desperately searched Tijuana and the surrounding areas for her lost son. She searched shelters, churches, jails, hospitals, alleys, beaches, canals and even Tijuana's morgue. During the nearly three months Mr. Guzman was missing, Ms. Carbajal lived in constant fear for her son's life. The U.S. government offered no assistance to Mr. Guzman's family during their search, and ICE has never apologized to Mr. Guzman or their family for these horrific acts.

The dawning of a new administration should bring about a renewed commitment to the protection of the civil rights and civil liberties of United States citizens, Brosnahan and Rosenbaum said.

A gang injunction that would cover a 10-square-mile, unincorporated area of South Los Angeles and could prohibit even nongang members from taking part in everyday activities is overly broad and unconstitutional, the ACLU of Southern California argued today in an amicus brief filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney's injunction targets members of the Florencia 13 gang, but certain provisions are written so vaguely that they enable the recommendations of individual enforcing deputies to wrongly include siblings on the gang injunction, prohibiting them from activities as innocuous as riding together in the family car.
'This injunction allows police officers to impose parole-like restrictions on people with little or no investigation. That gives enormous discretion to police officers and carries huge potential for abuse, whether malicious or not,' said Peter Bibring, staff attorney for the ACLU/SC. 'We already see police in other injunction areas placing people under an injunction for little more than being related to someone in a gang.'
Individuals under the proposed injunction would be subject to strict curfews, prohibited from associating with certain people, banned from the area's largest park and prevented from wearing 'gang apparel,' although the injunction never specifies what that is. The rules are so restrictive and cover such a large area -- encompassing schools, churches and the homes of family members -- that it would be nearly impossible for someone to comply without moving out of the area.
The ACLU/SC is asking the District Attorney's Office to amend these and other provisions of the injunction that criminalize legal everyday behavior of gang and nongang members alike, and create burdens of proof that are virtually impossible to meet.
Certain provisions of the injunction are so broad that a youth buying milk for his or her gang member sibling could be construed as a gang associate 'acting '_for the benefit' of a gang member, Bibring pointed out.
In creating this and similar, far-reaching injunctions, law enforcement agencies have developed a double system of justice in which a single deputy can unjustifiably and tragically ensnare a nongang member in the criminal justice system. With little or no investigation, individual deputies need only suspect someone is a gang member before serving him or her with the injunction and placing them under its restrictive provisions. The result is a person who is bound by the rules of the injunction and subject to arrest before he or she is even given a hearing in court.
Equally troubling is an opt-out provision in the proposed injunction that is written so broadly that someone who is unemployed, not in school or who has committed a minor nongang offense in the last five years wouldn't qualify to be removed from the injunction's provisions.
Touted as a tough and necessary crime-fighting tool, aggressive injunctions have been widely used in Los Angeles County and across the state in poor and minority neighborhoods to crack down on gang activities. But in doing so, law enforcement's drive to impose injunctions has eroded community trust, separated childhood friends and endangered the basic rights of nongang members to move freely and associate with whom they like.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Yaffe is expected to hear the case Jan. 16.