ダウンロード "CAUGHT ON CCTV | Man Arrested For ‘Sagging Pants’ Left To Die"

CCTV Shows Man Arrested For ‘Sagging Pants’ Left To Die Baton Rouge, LA - The final moments of Ervin Leon Edwards’ life were spent facedown on the floor of the West Baton Rouge Parish Jail. Dragged into an isolation cell and surrounded by about half a dozen law enforcement officers, Edwards sometimes struggled with them. At other times, he appears to be lying still, according to recently obtained video footage of the incident. At one point, while Edwards apparently resisted attempts by officers to restrain him, a Port Allen police officer shocked Edwards with a stun gun. Not long afterward, the inmate quit moving, the footage shows. The officers then slowly backed away from him and exited the cell. Except for a few peeks through a window of the cell’s door, about 10 minutes go by on the video before deputies and officers returned to the cell to check on him. Edwards, lying still on his stomach, doesn’t appear to move at all during that time frame. For corrections and use of force experts who reviewed the video footage, that 10-minute gap without checking on Edwards looks like a critical error. “The fact that the subject appeared unresponsive, perhaps unconscious on the floor as the officers withdrew from the cell, should have resulted in an immediate request for medical intervention and a quick determination of whether there was a pulse or breathing,” said Greg Meyer, who retired several years ago as a captain with the Los Angeles Police Department and is recognized nationally as a use of force expert. “If not, CPR should have been started immediately.” Col. Richie Johnson, a West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office spokesman, said an internal review of the events that occurred before and after Edwards’ death did not reveal any criminal wrongdoing by any of the officers involved in the incident. The Sheriff’s Office has since turned over the findings of its investigation to the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., Johnson said, and he declined to comment further about the incident because of pending litigation. A message left Friday with the Department of Justice communications office was not returned. Representatives of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Louisiana’s Middle District said they could not comment about whether they were involved in the investigation, nor could they comment about whether such an investigation existed. Edwards, a 38-year-old Jennings native, died on Nov. 26, 2013, on the floor of the jail cell. His cause of death was classified as “undetermined” by death investigators, officially a result of “acute cocaine and phencyclidine (PCP) intoxication in association with restraint by law enforcement,” according to his autopsy report. Because the video footage from the isolation unit is somewhat grainy and was captured from a camera high in the corner of the cell, it’s difficult to tell exactly what happened in the few minutes prior to Edwards’ death. But the 10 minutes after his struggle with officers are deserving of scrutiny, Meyer said. “When someone appears unconscious, you need to get medical attention,” he said. While critical of the slow medical response, the retired captain also said Edwards’ death likely was the result of “excited delirium,” referring to a controversial diagnosis for in-custody deaths resulting from a combination of drug intoxication, restraint efforts by law enforcement personnel and other factors, such as an inmate’s overall health. “This incident has all the appearances of a typical arrest-related death that happens hundreds of times each year around the country,” Meyer said, “and this subject may well have passed away regardless of police and medical intervention.” West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Mike Cazes has said he asked death investigators in Jefferson Parish to conduct Edwards’ autopsy because the West Baton Rouge Parish coroner also serves as the jail’s doctor, which the sheriff saw as a possible conflict of interest. “I wanted to make sure it looked like nothing was being covered up and everything was being handled properly,” Cazes said. Some use of force and corrections experts questioned whether Edwards should’ve been flagged by the officers prior to his arrival at the jail as someone who might be more affected by a shock or other restraint methods because of his physical and mental state. He was described in the death report as morbidly obese and his family said he suffered from high blood pressure, partial deafness and a mental disability. “The drugs didn’t kill him,” said Viney Edwards, Ervin Edwards mother. “The police killed him.” According to a wrongful death lawsuit filed in federal court in February 2014 on behalf of Edwards’ only son, Ervin Edwards was with his girlfriend at a gas station near Port Allen on Nov. 26, 2013, when the couple got into a “minor argument.” By the time West Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputies responded, the argument was over, the lawsuit says.