Discipline not likely for cops who tased man 18 times, chief says
Neighbor called police, worrying that resident could harm himself
A mentally ill man who died after being tased by West Milwaukee police in May was “clearly in crisis” and the officers acted appropriately, Police Chief Dennis L. Nasci said Friday.
“I do not see any discipline coming down for what they did,” Nasci said, adding the internal affairs investigation into the actions of officers Michael Rohleder and Anthony Munoz had not yet been closed.
The officers were called to check on the welfare of Adam Trammell and broke down the door before confronting him as he showered. The first Taser stun caused him to fall backward into the bathtub. Both officers remain on full duty.
The proper training was in place before Trammell’s death and will not be changed, Nasci said. The department may make policy changes, but those are being discussed due to a new model policy by the International Chiefs of Police, not the officers’ interactions with Trammell.
Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm declined to charge the officers in connection
with Trammell’s death. The medical examiner ruled the manner “undetermined,” which means it was not classified as homicide, natural, suicide or accident.
Nasci’s statements came after the Journal Sentinel posted body camera footage of the officers’ interaction with Adam Trammell, 22.
On the video, Trammell can be heard screaming in agony.
Trammell suffered a black eye, a broken rib and more than two dozen cuts and bruises, according to the medical examiner’s report.
He spent some of his last conscious moments vomiting profusely, according to investigative reports.
A neighbor had called police because Trammell, who had knocked on her door, was naked in the hallway, talking about the devil and his brother. She feared he was experiencing a psychotic break.
Trammell had not threatened anyone or brandished a weapon. When police arrived, a neighbor told them she feared he might harm himself. Trammell’s downstairs neighbor told them water was leaking through the ceiling from his apartment.
Rather than waiting for 25 minutes for someone to arrive with a key, police broke down the door and walked through the apartment to the bathroom, where they found Trammell taking a shower, drinking from a jug of water.
When they pulled aside the shower curtain, Trammell stood still and stared blankly at them, the body camera footage shows.
Although Trammell, who suffered from schizophrenia, did not exhibit obvious signs of distress on the video, “everything leading up to that was the picture of excited delirium,” Nasci said.
The medical examiner ruled excited delirium as the cause of Trammell’s death. The report cited the Taser use — as well as the use of sedatives by paramedics — as contributing factors.
Excited delirium is a controversial condition often cited when police use force.
Symptoms include aggressive or bizarre behavior, paranoia and high body temperature. Although pathologists cite the syndrome as a cause of death and emergency room doctors have procedures to treat it, excited delirium is not recognized by the American Medical Association or the American Psychological Association.
Excited delirium syndrome can be caused by drug use, untreated psychiatric problems or extreme stress, according to Deborah Mash, a neurology professor at the University of Miami who has studied it for more than 20 years.
Taser use can be a contributing factor, as can genetics, she told the Journal Sentinel in a 2014 interview following the death of Tony Bean. Bean’s death, like Trammell’s, was ruled as excited delirium after a confrontation with police.
Mash’s lab has developed a postmortem test for a defective brain chemical that she believes puts people at greater risk.
“We train law enforcement to recognize this as a medical emergency,” she said. “The plan is to get EMS there and to get them to the emergency room. Not every excited delirium patient who gets to the emergency room is going to be saved, but many are now. There’s a critical window of time where an emergency room intervention will be successful.”
But Werner Spitz, a pathologist and co-author of “Medicolegal Investigation of Death,” known as the “medical examiners’ bible,” has called excited delirium “kind of an unproven theory.”
Trammell exhibited classic symptoms, according to Nasci.
“Everything that we dealt with: Him stripping down naked, making no sense, verbalization, grunting, staring through you,” Nasci said. “(In the shower), the guy is trying to cool himself off. That’s one of the key elements: the body temperature going up.”
Excited delirium and how to approach pesople who are living with schizophrenia both are part of Crisis Intervention Training, which teaches officers how to best deal with people in mental health crisis, according to Chrisanna Manders, associate director of NAMI Wisconsin.
One of the key tactics officers learn is de-escalation, which means using strategies such as calm conversation to get the situation safely under control.
“We want to prevent the person in crisis from causing harm to him or herself, to others or to the police officers and avoid the use of physical force,” Manders said.