Stun Guns Spark a Highly Charged Debate

Kevin Leroy Reighter got good and drunk that October night, his attorney says--so drunk that he knew he’d better walk the half mile to his house.

In the middle of a crosswalk, a Huntington Beach police report states, two patrol officers came upon Reighter “staggering” across a street against a red light. He seemed “heavily intoxicated” and incapable of exercising “care for his own safety,” the officers later reported.

It was shortly after 2 a.m., and the officers arrested Reighter, a 27-year-old unemployed carpenter, and handcuffed him. He “seemed very docile at this point,” Officer William Weston would write the following day.

Things would change, Weston said, during a 10-minute ride to the city jail: Reighter screamed obscenities and banged his head into the plexiglass separating the front and back seats of the patrol car. By the time police had brought Reighter to their jail, where six officers worked to subdue him, he was kicking, spitting and trying to bite.

Finally, Weston reported, Reighter was quieted. Police say this was accomplished by an officer who applied at least six bursts from an electronic stun gun. Two of the bursts lasted “approximately one minute,” a police report said.

The multiple applications of the device known as the Nova XR 5000 Stun Gun, and the length of time it was pressed to the flesh, are the foundation of the brutality claims Reighter and four others have lodged against the Huntington Beach Police Department.

Their $25-million civil rights lawsuit, filed several weeks ago, is pending in federal court. On Wednesday the five men also filed a federal lawsuit against Nova Technologies Inc., the manufacturer of the stun gun used by Huntington Beach police and many other law enforcement agencies, alleging that its product is “defective.”

The allegations of police torture in the lawsuit have prompted investigations by the Orange County district attorney’s office--at the request of both the attorney representing the five plaintiffs and the Police Department--and the FBI, which is responsible for examining allegations of civil rights violations.

The officer’s own account of Reighter’s struggle with police last fall, his supervisors admit, may be the most “damning” evidence against them in the lawsuit--the first legal challenge in Orange County to law enforcement use of a weapon described as “non-lethal” by its manufacturer.

Only a single three- to five-second blast, Nova says, is needed to disable a combatant for at least a minute. Each jolt sends 45,000 volts of electricity through the subject.

Nevertheless, Huntington Beach police administrators maintain that the police report was merely written badly and the actual conduct of the officers, including their use of the stun gun, was justified.

In fact, said Capt. Barry Price, the 185-officer department has “taken a long and hard look” at the stun gun since the federal lawsuit was filed Feb. 17.

“We’ve decided to keep using it,” Price said last week.

“Now, obviously there’s a point of reasonableness involved where you say this is stupid; this (stun gun) isn’t working on this guy,” said Price, who has supervised the department’s review of the allegations. “And certainly we are going back and looking at multiple use of these things and whether it was justified.

” . . . We are not looking at it as a situation of torture of this guy (Reighter) but the context of (the jailer) being stupid for using something that wasn’t, obviously, working.”

Price added: “We don’t barbecue people in the jail.”

About the size of an electric razor, the black plastic Nova Stun Gun looks about as harmless. That is, until a switch is pushed on the side, and a blue arc of electricity crackles and dances between its two metal rods.

When the pair of prongs at the weapon’s end are pressed against an individual’s skin for a few seconds, an electrical charge is carried to the nervous system that disables voluntary coordination. A brief burst and the combatant feels as though he’s placed a finger in a light socket; longer zaps--say, five seconds--and the target is supposed to crumple to the floor, Nova says.

Development Began in 1969

Former Nova President Dan Dowell began development of the stun gun in 1969, the company said. Dowell, whose vice presidents were mostly former police officers, perfected the device in his garage and put it on the market in 1983.

Since then, the company claims, about 500 American law enforcement agencies have purchased the stun gun, at a cost of about $115 per device, to restrain unruly or violent subjects.

Nova officials claim there are less than half a dozen reported instances of police abusing the stun gun and say almost every state in the country has law enforcement agencies armed with the weapon.

But stun guns have been shrouded with controversy since they hit the market:

- Two New York City police officers were sentenced to prison terms July 17, 1986, for torturing a teen-ager with an electric stun gun at a Queens station house. The youth had been carrying one marijuana joint when the officers tried to force a confession from him. The widely publicized trial was watched by law enforcement agencies around the country. A total of five officers were indicted on unrelated torture charges that involved stun guns.

- Last September, a Daly City day-care center was shut down because its operators had allegedly been punishing 10 children, including four babies, with 50,000-volt bursts from stun guns. Police in the San Francisco suburb said Maxie Santiago, 69, was charged with 10 counts of inflicting cruel and inhumane corporal punishment with the stun gun and with an equal number of misdemeanor complaints of assault and battery.

- In December, Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner charged two Huntington Park police officers with torturing a 17-year-old boy. The officers, who had arrested the youth on suspicion of stealing car components, were trying to get him to confess, Reiner said. The officers have been bound over for trial, and the allegations prompted Reiner to launch a sweeping investigation of the Huntington Park Police Department. Records show that there are more claims by citizens alleging excessive force by police officers against Huntington Park than against 11 other cities in southeast Los Angeles County.

Such cases, as well as those pending against the Huntington Beach Police Department, have led Nova to offer special training sessions for law enforcement officers in order, a company spokesman said, “to provide standardization.”

Unlike handguns and chemical Mace, use of stun guns by anyone, police included, is not regulated by government. Nor are there are training or certification requirements for their purchase.

Nova instructor Dennis Kaufman, a retired police officer, has been traveling for several months around the country teaching officers proper techniques in employing the device. He says the company is fighting an image problem.

“Let’s face it,” Kaufman said. “Over the years, electricity has been used for what? Abuse, interrogation, torture. And it’s going to take some time to change that perception.”

In Orange County, a majority of the police agencies have authorized their officers to use stun guns. Usually, individual officers in those departments are allowed to decide between arming themselves with the stun gun or chemical Mace or a police baton.

Agencies that employ the stun gun say that merely threatening to use the blue arc of electricity on someone is often enough to subdue them.

“And that’s a lot better than rolling around with them on the grass,” noted Westminster Police Officer Larry Woessner. “Or getting hurt.”

Threatened Use Effective

Added Lt. Bob Chavez of the Santa Ana Police Department, where the device was used only once during an 18-month test period: “The threat of it is almost more effective than the actual use of it.”

Anaheim police and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, the two largest county police agencies, have banned on-duty use of the weapon, however. And smaller departments such as Brea, San Clemente and Seal Beach have concluded that the potential for officer abuse, the perception of police abuse or litigation was too great.

“When the city has to settle out of court because it costs too much to fight the suit, then the weapon becomes a liability,” Brea Police Lt. Cliff Tremble said. Tremble examined the Novas a few years back and recommended that they be used by supervisors in the 76-officer department.

“We don’t use them,” Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Dick Olson said. “It seemed like every time you heard of an agency using them it was bad news. . . . At various times we have reviewed what was on the market and we just did not (see) the use for them.”

FBI agents do not use the stun gun, although the U.S. Marshals Service, which transports federal prisoners, stocks one of the weapons in each of the 94 federal districts throughout the country.

At California Highway Patrol headquarters in Sacramento, “an informal evaluation” was made of the stun gun and its distant cousin, the Taser gun, which fires electrically charged darts.

“The big problem with both of them that we see is there’s a difference in response (by various individuals) that makes the effectiveness questionable,” said Ken Milton of the CHP public affairs office.

“The close-range stun gun sometimes had a battery problem. If the battery was bad, apparently it could burn the person struck,” Milton added. “I don’t know why.”

Some officials said many police officers are not entirely comfortable with the crackling electric gun. Consequently, police say, even officers issued the stun guns by their department may hesitate to use the device, opting for their night stick or Mace.

In Huntington Beach, there are a number of officers “who have been trained with these devices and are still not comfortable with them,” said Sgt. Al Burkett, who supervised the department’s stun gun research and training program.

Four-Month Test Period

During a four-month test period in mid-1985, about a dozen officers in details such as beach patrol, drunk driving enforcement and the jail--jobs involving regular contact with the public--were issued the Novas, Burkett said.

Those officers documented “between 100 and 200” instances in which they used the stun gun, Burkett said, adding that “batteries were the primary, the only problem.” Burkett added that none of the people stunned with the gun during the test period complained or sued the department.

In late September, 1985, Burkett said, the department purchased about 100 of the Novas, and gave officers the option to carry them. Jailers, however, who are civilians, must arm themselves with the devices, Burkett said.

According to Nova, more than 250,000 of the devices have been sold to civilians and police officers seeking a method of self-defense that temporarily cripples a mugger or prisoner, yet leaves no lasting injury. Gun stores say it is sometimes difficult to keep the stun guns on the shelves.

Critics, including some police officers, are concerned that the stun guns provide police with an easy way to inflict pain while leaving little or no evidence of their misconduct.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which often gets involved in cases of alleged police brutality, has no formal policy on stun guns, said Ronald V. Talmo, legal director of the Orange County ACLU chapter.

“The opposition is not with the stun gun but with the lack of training of police. . . . We want them to be trained to use more restraint,” Talmo said.

While there has been no federal government study of the stun guns, many police agencies have commissioned studies that showed that the electric guns pose no permanent harm. Dr. Theodore Bernstein, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, did a study for Nova in which he concluded that the stun gun was less dangerous than, say, an electric fence or a cattle prod.

Eric Anderson, Thomas Lyday, Gregory Miller, Kevin Reighter and Scott Singer charge that the stun gun was used on them by Huntington Beach police just that way--as a cattle prod.

Their attorney, Marc Creighton Block, has alleged in the lawsuits and in interviews with the media that his clients were tortured by officers and jailers.

All but Miller, a 17-year-old from Reseda, received jolts from the stun gun inside the city jail. Miller was stunned with the device last Fourth of July near a beachfront public restroom.

The Police Department acknowledges that the five plaintiffs were arrested and shocked with the stun guns but deny the men were stunned more than was necessary to subdue them.

Huntington Beach Capt. Price said none of the five arrested men was stunned “20 or 30 or 40 times,” as the lawsuit alleges. Nor, he said, were any of the five men stunned with more than one gun simultaneously, or while they were handcuffed, as their attorney has alleged.

“We don’t use them as a cattle prod,” Price said. “That is just complete bologna. . . . We have a little over 12,000 prisoners in the jail a year, and in excess of 35,000 of what we call hostile confrontations.

“Last year, we got 43 (citizen) complaints,” Price added. “Of those, 16 were for excessive force. The balance was service complaints. The cop didn’t get there fast enough, the cop didn’t smile enough.”

Capt. Grover (Bill) Payne, who becomes Huntington Beach’s chief of police April 17, said “I can’t imagine anyone getting a thrill out of zapping someone.”

He added that the stun guns will continue to be used, lawsuits or no, because “we feel it is the most humane way to subdue a prisoner.”

Kevin Reighter calls the device brutal, his treatment by police torture.

“I was lying on the ground, looking up at this blue spark, and once they touch it to you, you start shaking like you’ve got the shivers,” said Reighter, who added that he is seeing a psychiatrist and undergoing medical tests for possible nerve damage.

“Then it starts to feel like, well, you can feel it burn. You can smell your skin burning. It’s like a hot ice pick going into you. All you can try and do is try to squirm away. . . . “

On Friday, the charge against Reighter of resisting arrest was dismissed, and he was sentenced to three years’ informal probation for being drunk in public, his second such offense.

HOW A STUN GUN WORKS

CONTACT PROBES SEND JOLT OF 45,000 VOLTS

CAPACITORS INCREASE VOLTAGE

POWERED BY 9-VOLT BATTERY

About the size of an electric razor, a stun gun looks about as harmless. But when the weapon’s prongs are pressed against the skin for a few seconds, an electrical charge of 45,000 volts is carried to the nervous system, affecting coordination. A brief burst and the combatant feels as though he has placed a finger in a light socket; with longer contact, even a hefty man should crumple to the floor.