On November 7, 2002, at ten 'till three in the afternoon, Stephen Edwards, a 59 year old man from Shelton, did not know he was about to die in police handcuffs.

Stephen and his wife Cindy had just left the Bayview Thriftway in downtown Olympia. As they walked into the parking lot, a man dressed in dark clothes accosted Stephen, and a struggle began between the two men. By ten minutes after three, Stephen was blue in the face, and was soon being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. He was declared dead at the hospital less than an hour later.

News accounts later published in the Olympian would claim that Stephen was an overweight, out of control, armed shoplifter who was subdued by Olympia Police Officers to protect themselves and the public from his handgun. Those same accounts would claim that he died of 'natural' causes from a heart arrhythmia, or abnormal heartbeat, brought about by his struggle. The use of four jolts of 50,000 volts each would be "unlikely" to have anything to do with the heart attack, according to the TASER manufacturer's hired spokespersons.

The Thurston County Sheriff's Office and Coroner both signed documents clearing Olympia Police of any wrongdoing and laid the case at the door of the Olympia City Attorney, recommending that Stephen's widow Cindy be prosecuted for third degree theft. The police officers who had arrested Stephen were put back on active patrols, and life - for everyone but Stephen's family - returned to normal.

The Investigation Which Wasn't

Because Stephen died while in Olympia Police custody, an outside agency was called in to investigate the incident. That outside agency was the Thurston County Sheriff's Department (TCSO).

The TCSO assigned Detective David Haller, a veteran investigator in the property crime section, to lead the investigation. Detective Haller did what he usually did at the scene of a shoplift; he sought to prove that the suspect had stolen property, and in this case he also sought to prove that the suspect's wife had fled the scene afterward by calling a friend for a ride.

The TCSO also interviewed the officers involved. Olympia Police Officer Jeffrey D Jordan, who was the first responder to the scene, had used his TASER four times in just 60 seconds, according to TCSO reports. Jordan had first used his TASER when Stephen was walking away from him, in an effort to get Stephen to stop. Officer Jordan did not yet know that a gun might be involved, because no one had told him by then. News stories in the Olympian would later miss this detail, claiming that the officer had used the weapon defensively after a furtive movement by the suspected shoplifter.

The second responding officer, Paul R Bakala, assisted in the arrest by standing on Stephen's hand and punching him in the face as Stephen kneeled on his hands and knees on the ground. This was the blow which finally succeeded in gaining control over Stephen. Paul and Jeffrey used two pairs of handcuffs, linked end to end, to restrain Stephen Edwards face down on the damp November pavement. Less than fifteen minutes later, that was where Stephen died. He was never moved to a car; he was never questioned about his side of the story. No one found his wife to tell her what had happened. (She waited at the store for him, asked the officers at the scene for information, and eventually had to call a friend to pick her up. She was arrested at her home by TCSO Detectives Haller and Clark later that night, although they did not book her.)

The man who accosted Stephen, Bayview plainclothes security guard Dion McNeeley of Yelm, later told TCSO investigators that he heard Stephen complain twice that he could not breathe properly, after he had been handcuffed. Officer Jordan recalled that he also heard Stephen mention this, once. Neither man turned Stephen over or lifted him into a vehicle.

Former Pierce County Medical Examiner, Emmanuel Lacsina, later concluded that Stephen had no signs of 'positional asphyxiation,' a condition in which handcuffed persons are suffocated by their own weight after being improperly restrained. Lacsina had done the autopsy for Thurston County Coroner Judy Arnold's office. His conclusions also noted that the health of the overwieght man was poor, causing a 'probable cardiac arrhythmia,' leading to death.

The pathologist wrote in his report that uncited "literature on the safety of the TASER" indicated that a 50,000 volt, 26 watt jolt could not have caused Stephen's death, although no mention was made of how many jolts were administered or at what times they had been delivered. TCSO reports concluded that all four jolts were given in just one minute. The TASER keeps an electronic log of its trigger times and dates for later analysis.

The TASER's user manual clearly states that it is a deadly weapon and should not be used except in self defense.

The Independent Investigation

Olympia Copwatch began investigating this incident by requesting every report available for Olympia case number 2002-09614, TCSO case number 02-45433-11, and Coroner's case number 02-1417-11. We were given much documentation, but what was missing was more telling than what was present.

We were not given the incident reports or interview transcripts of the two first responder officers, Jordan and Bakala. We were not given transcripts of the interviews with the plain clothes security guard. We were not given the witness statements of the persons closest to Mr and Mrs Edwards as the incident began. We were told this was because the records were "preconviction data on Mrs Edwards" and were exempt from disclosure for that reason.

At least we now understood the bizarre practice of charging a widow with contributing to shoplifting.

That 'reason' for nondisclosure does not explain the absence of the radio logs or TASER log in the first releases, nor does it explain why Thurston County Sheriff's Office has released no documents at all in the case. While TCSO did let us view, twice, the summary investigative report written by Detective Haller, they did not let us have a photocopy of that document. Fortunately someone at the department decided to leak an unredacted version to us, and we were able to get the names of the witnesses and participants.

This investigative summary is the same document which Prosecutor Phillip Harju reviewed in making his determination that no wrongdoing was found on the part of the Olympia Police Officers. Yet it is also the source for many of the damaging facts we have so far uncovered. It is also where we found that the use of the TASER in the Olympia Police Department is considered appropriate BEFORE the use of OC Spray. Detective Haller wrote in his summary that Officer Jordan's use of the TASER fit Olympia Use of Force Guidelines section 4, a section including arm locks and hair grabs as possible actions. Level 5 is pepper (OC) spray by itself.

A review of local departments has found that Olympia has so far used TASERs almost 15 times more than all other departments combined, in just one year of deployment. Tumwater, which had them for two years at the time of our query, had used them just four times. Lacey officials could not recall any uses, but had only deployed them for a few months at the time of our query. The Evergreen State College has never used them on patrol, only in training. So far we have counted 24 uses of TASERS in Olympia, in little over a year of deployment.

The handgun supposedly found on Mr Edwards and reported stolen in the Olympian turns out to have two different serial numbers, depending on which police report you read. Who knows which is which and whose it was?