Feds look into Meriden police's use of stun guns

MERIDEN - Tasers are a standard part of Meriden Police patrol equipment and they are used on average three times per month, but allegations of police brutality and nepotism in the department have caused federal investigators to examine records involving the stun guns over the last four years.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul H. McConnell of Hartford requested the Taser records in June as part of a probe by the state's attorney and FBI into the department.

The city has also hired its own attorney to investigate in the wake of the allegations, which were raised by two officers in an April 1 complaint letter to the city.

Three lawsuits have been filed against Chief Jeffry Cossette, his son, Officer Evan Cossette, the city and other members of the department over alleged brutality by the younger Cossette.

One of those cases involves a Taser. Federal investigators are also looking at the department's internal affairs unit, requesting copies of all of its reports over the last four years, including files related to at least one specific case in which a stun gun was used.

Tasers were introduced to the department on a limited basis in 2001. Chief Cossette, who assumed the role of chief in 2005, moved to have them issued to all on-duty officers in 2007.

Tasers have significantly reduced injuries to officers and suspects, Cossette said last week in an email. He had said in 2007 that compensation claim costs from assaults on officers dropped dramatically after stun guns were introduced.

Yet one local man has died after being shocked, and others have filed complaints over Taser use.

Tasers were used in less than one percent of the department's 9,433 arrests since 2009. More than 55 percent of Taser strikes were directed at minorities, which is disproportionate to the city's population.

About 10 percent of the city's nearly 61,000 residents are black and about 29 percent are Hispanic, the two minority groups on which stun guns were reportedly used since 2009. (Meriden police did not complete a use of force summary report for the last quarter of 2009, Capt. Donald Parker said, and the Record-Journal was still waiting last week on fulfillment of a Freedom of Information request for the four years of records given to federal investigators).

Police supervisors in their quarterly summaries indicated no problems with how force was used in the department.

Of the 9,433 arrests made by Meriden police from January 2009 to the present, "a Taser was deployed to effectuate an arrest on 81 occasions, or .85 percent of the time," said Chief Cossette, in his e-mail.

"When you pick and choose numbers, rather than the global picture, you can create any scenario that you want," said the chief. "There was no racial or ethnic indication of impropriety ..."

Tasers "are fully deployed within the Patrol Division," said Chief Cossette. "They are issued to all new officers as part of their standard equipment. Tasers have significantly reduced injuries to officers and suspects since their inception.

"If a suspect chooses to fight with officers, there is a possibility that they may be tasered, to avoid injury to the officer or themselves, regardless of race," Cossette wrote. "There are documented cases within the Meriden Police Department in which Tasers were deployed on suspects armed with a knife, in which deadly force would have been justified. Serious injury was avoided as well as the traumatic effects that an officer must endure after he utilizes deadly force."

Meriden's disparity is far less glaring than in cities such as New Haven, where 84 percent of stun gun usage in 2008-09 was on minorities, according to analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, but there are still concerns.

Groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have called for restrictions or bans on the devices, at least until more study is done and increased regulations are in place.

The Connecticut ACLU prompted introduction of a bill in the General Assembly this year that would have started a study of electronic defense weapons with an eye toward standardizing training requirements and guidelines for police about when to use them and on which populations they should not be used.

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