Officer disciplined for using Taser on suspect

Orlando cop’s use of stun gun on teen violated police policy

An Orlando police officer was disciplined for using a Taser on a suspect who was fleeing on a bicycle, causing the 19-year-old to fall and skid on the ground.

The use of force by Officer Peter Meier violated OPD’s policy on response to resistance, which prohibits officers from using the stun gun on a person riding a bicycle “except in cases of aggressive resistance.” An Internal Affairs investigation completed in October, which the Sentinel obtained this week in response to a public records request, shows Meier was given a written censure.

The incident happened May 5 near a 7-Eleven gas station on west Oak Ridge Road near Millenia.

Meier told internal investigators he was driving on Oak Ridge when he saw the bicyclist pop a wheelie as he rode through the intersection of Millenia Boulevard.

Meier flashed on his patrol car lights and called to the rider over his vehicle’s public address system, telling him to stop, but the teen and two others who were with him “disregarded his lawful commands,” investigator Lashon Goins wrote in a summary of the investigation.

In a field report, Meier wrote that he tried pulling in front of Linares about three-to-five times to stop him.

“Every time I got out of my patrol vehicle and pulled in front… to stop him, [he] and the two males would ride their bicycle[s] around my patrol vehicle and at times into traffic on West Oak Ridge Road,” Meier wrote.

Meier called for backup, and at one point, as the offending bike rider pedaled toward the entrance of the Club at Millenia Apartments, Meier got out of his vehicle and ran toward him.

Video from another officer’s body camera shows the teen bike around two police vehicles as officers chase him into the apartment complex.

Meier then runs up on him and shocks him, causing him to fall off his bike.

The fall caused scrapes to his arms and punctures to his abdomen where the probes struck him. He also complained of pain in his left shoulder, which he said he recently had surgery on.

In his report, Meier wrote that the suspect started slowing down on his bike and stood on the pedals as the officers approached, which the officer thought indicated he “was about to get off his bike and flee further into the apartment complex on foot.”

He said he stunned the teen because he thought his “flight on foot was imminent to escape or fight.”

The young man later told police he was pedaling away from the officers because Meier had threatened to use the Taser on him.

“I thought he was going to Tase me right there, so I just took off,” he said.

Sgt. Luis Suero in a use of force review after the incident approved of Meier’s Taser use. But a review of body camera video prompted Lt. Andre Tankovich to start an investigation, after he saw what he “believed to be a violation of the use of force policy,” he told investigators in an interview.

The bicyclist “appeared to be in continuous motion on the bicycle when Officer Meier deployed his Taser… [and] cause[d] the subject to fall on the ground,” he said.

The suspect was arrested on a charge of resisting an officer without violence. A judge later withheld a conviction on a lesser traffic infraction of failing to obey a officer.

Another man biking with him was also shocked with a Taser by Officer Ahmad AbuSoud as officers surrounded him down the road.

An OPD spokesman did not immediately respond to a question about whether that use of force is being investigated.