Wife of Cop Who Killed Himself Over Taser Death Sues NYPD

Saturday, November 14, 2009

This article on Foxnews is about a Mother who called the police because her grown son was acting strangely and she was afraid he was going to hurt himself. When the police arrived he ran out of his Mothers apartment and dashed around until he slipped out the fire escape and on to an overhanging platform all the while naked. Police were on the fire escape above him out of reach and also 10 feet below him on the ground. When the man picked up a long glass floreswcent light bulb and began pointing and jabbing with it, the supervising officer on the ground gave the order to another officer to tase the man. After being tased the man fell to the ground, where he hit his head and died. The supervising officer later commits suicide and the wife of the officer is suing the police departmant in order to clear her husbands name.

Wow, the wife of the dead police officer must really believe in her husband because after reading the article and the background information to the incident, it does seem to me that the police officer was in the wrong for his choice to tase the man. However I thought the whole article was riddled with choices.

The first choice was the Mother who called the police. She also had the choice of calling an ambulance. Her son was not doing anything criminal at the time, which is what the police are used to dealing with. Her son might have been helped by ambulance personel in his mental condition at the time. The second choice is when the supervisor of the police gave the order to tase the man. If he was worried about his officers safety he should have had them back off and not confront the man and certainly not tase a man standing on a 10 foot elevated ledge. And the officer who was given the order could have chosen to refuse the order to tase, which could have saved the man's life. The supervising officer who chose to kill himself after the incident, put his family through shame and scrutiny could have chose to live, clear his name or live and put his family through scrutiny and serve punishment. The wife of the dead policeman could have chosen to let the matter drop after the death of her husband and let the department take the heat for the victims death, but instead chose to clear her husbands name and now everything is going to come out and she may not be successful.

I'm suprised at why I focused on how many choices were presented in this article which prompted my 'what if' reaction. The most dumbfounding thing in the whole article was the very last line in which the author of the story wrote about the suicide note, "I love you all I'm sorry for the mess!!" he wrote to his family, signing the letter with careful, flowery script, "Michael Pigott." What in the world was the relevance to be biased in his description of the signature? Instead of just saying the note was signed, was I supposed to feel something about the man who killed himself leaving a flowery signed suicide note? I remain dumbfounded.