On November 26th, a 35-year-old woman was shopping at Best Buy in Daytona Beach, Florida when there was some sort of communication breakdown, and a police officer who was at the store tasered her. We wrote about it here, and it turns out there’s a video of the event here. At the time there were few details, but the full story has since been pieced together and resolved, and last week the Florida state attorney said “charges won’t be pursued because there is no evidence that Beeland committed a crime.”
From the Daytona Beach News Journal Online:
Elizabeth Beeland, 35, a yoga teacher and holistic healer, was shopping at the electronics store on Nov. 26. As she went though the check-out line to pay for a gift she had purchased for her father, she received a disturbing telephone call from her husband regarding the couple’s daughter.Upset, Beeland stepped outside, leaving her transaction midway and her credit card with the Best Buy cashier. The cashier thought Beeland’s behavior was odd and she flagged down a police officer who was already in the store investigating another credit card fraud case.
The casher told officer Claudia Wright that Beeland handed her a credit card and she wondered whether the card was stolen because the customer had gone outside without finishing the transaction.
Wright encountered Beeland just outside the store and told her to come back inside because there was a question regarding a credit card.
According to the officer’s report, Beeland became agitated and began yelling and cussing at her.
At least one witness who saw both Beeland and Wright however, denied that Beeland screamed or cussed at Wright.
The police officer, Claudia Wright, has said that Beeland used the word “fuck” and was refusing to cooperate. But the same newspaper gives this account from one eye-witness:
Best Buy shopper Darwin Ingram said he watched the drama unfold. Ingram said he was no more than “five to six feet” from Beeland and the officer inside the store.“I just froze in place,” he said recently. “She (Beeland) was frustrated and excited because she hadn’t done anything. She was just stepping back with her palms up. The police called it resisting, but I just saw it as exercising her rights.”
Ingram said Beeland was not yelling, and he never heard her cuss.
On December 21st, 2007, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that “[Beeland] was arrested on two misdemeanors, disorderly conduct and resisting a police officer without violence,” and that “Daytona Beach police used a Taser 10 times in November, but Beeland was the only person stunned who wasn’t acting violently or fleeing.”
Officer Wright has been supported by the police department throughout the incident. Again from the Daytona Beach News-Journal:
Police Chief Mike Chitwood, who makes it a habit publicly to brand as “scumbags” individuals in confrontations with police, not only defended the use of the gun, but defended using violence on Beeland as a matter of course: “I was never raised on Tasers,” he said. “I used nightsticks and slapjacks.” (SECTION A; Pg. 4A, December 27th, 2007)
(Thanks to Eric!)
“No charges will be filed against woman Tasered in confrontation at Best Buy” [Daytona Beach News-Journal Online]
“Woman Tasered by officer at store won’t be prosecuted” [Daytona Beach News-Journal Online]
RELATED
Video footage of Beeland being tasered
“Shopper Tasered After Using Someone Else’s Credit Card At Best Buy”
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@statnut:
What, he couldn’t hold on for the 30 seconds it would take to finish the transaction?
Were you the one who had to go pick up the body?
Seriously, folks. If someone is dying, they aren’t going to call you (I hope), they’re going to call 911. If someone is dead, you can’t do anything about it.
In the words of Hagbard Celine, “Never Whistle While You’re Pissing.” Finish the job at hand before you start doing something else. Don’t drive with the cellphone, don’t talk on the cellphone in the store. Don’t talk on the cellphone in line. Don’t talk on the cellphone at the drive-thru.
Holy hell, imagine how horrible it would be if your phone’s battery died and you didn’t find out that someone had an accident until you got home. You wouldn’t be able to rush in and perform lifesaving surgery on them in time, or write them that prescription for whatever medicine they needed. Of course, you couldn’t do that anyway, so WHY DO YOU ANSWER THE PHONE WHEN YOU’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING ELSE?!
It is just rude. I’ve taken to simply walking away and ignoring any further comments or requests from anyone who answers a cellphone while I’m speaking to them (unless the call is directly related to the conversation at hand, which covers a percentage of time so incredibly fractional that it isn’t even worth tallying).
@n8ivetxn:
Yeah, apparently you don’t understand what happens when someone uses a knife. It is not a “non-lethal” weapon like a baton/night-stick/tazer. In the USA if you are attacked, you are more likely to die from a knife attack than a gun attack. It takes a lot of beating on a person to stop them reliably never mind kill them with a baton. With a knife, it takes one quick slash and/or stab to kill someone. Outside of “Die-Hard” type movies, a knife wound is at least as likely to be as fatal as a bullet wound.
I do not feel this officer was in the right in this case. I will repeat that, I dont think she should have been tazered during this situation. However, in the completely different scenario of someone coming at an officer with a knife, I firmly believe they are entitled to draw and prepare to shoot their firearm when their assailant comes within 21 ft with an edged weapon in hand. A baton is simply not up to the task.
If you feel that distance is extreme, try rushing your friends from 21 feet away when they have to draw, aim, and fire. Twenty-one feet is the legally accepted boundary. And remember, when someone is trying to stab you, the only hits that are likely to stop them are CNS or pelvis shots. So shooting randomly into the abdomen is unlikely to prevent someone from stabbing you, even if your shots will eventually kill them. After a shot to the heart, they will still have ~15 seconds of voluntary muscle movement.
In most taser stories I side with the cops, like with that stupid “don’t tase me bro” kid.
But in this case the police officer was clearly … unmistakably wrong.
Also the police chief is the definition of a “scum bag”.
.
Officer needs a dock in pay.
Chief needs his ass fired.
Woman deserves compensation.
@dorkins:
Er…no, the police force does not fund itself through tickets. They are paid from our tax dollars.
Florida: The United States’ Crazy Uncle.
@vdragonmpc:
I beg to differ. Starting salary for officers in my town (a local suburb of a not very large city) is 65,000-75,000. Thats not counting overtime. The average cop in my town, having been with the force for 2-3 years, with overtime will easily break the 85-90,000 a year barrier.
That is not underpaid. Granted, I know not all places pay this well.. and I know a lot of places pay MUCH better.
You tie that in with benefits (pension, retirement after 25 years.. etc) and being a cop is an attractive profession.
They make nearly a third more than what I do as an I.T. specialist. If they really rack on the overtime, they could earn double ($100-110,000).
Again, not all pay the same.. so the moral of this story: generalizing for the most part = BAD.
It’s called the Force Continuum, and the officer broke it. Tasers and other less-than-lethal devices are usually the last step before deadly force. If there was no violence in the “resistance” (which everyone involved seems to agree on), then the officer unlawfully escalated the confrontation when she deployed her taser.
This is why god invented lawyers
Funny, I now that I think about it I realize how similar being tasered is to shopping at Best Buy. They should just taser everyone that walks in the store to spare the trouble of administering their poor customer service, rules that they make up as they see fit, incorrect sale signs that they refuse to honor, accusing customers of thievery, etc. I hate Best Buy.
WTF. Cops need to stop using Tasers at the drop of hat. Seriously.
@capstinence: That police chief sounds like a real scumbag. Someone ought to Taser him for resisting reality.
@zippyglue: TRUE, oh so true.