Taser trauma: an increasingly British phenomenon

source: IRR News
published: 16 July 2020

An IRR News researcher speaks to scholars and campaigners across the country about the disproportionate use of Tasers on over-policed BME communities, as the IOPC announces an inquiry into widespread police discrimination.

On 4 May in Haringey, the police tasered Jordan Walker-Brown, a then 23-year-old black man they were trying to detain as he jumped over a wall, leaving him paralysed from the waist down. Just two days later, a video circulated showing the police tasering another black man, Desmond Ziggy Mombeyarara, in front of his young son in Greater Manchester, who distressingly screams ‘Daddy’ whilst watching his father fall to the ground.

Then, on 9 June, rapper Wretch 32 shared bodycam footage of the police entering the Tottenham home of his father Millard Scott in search of a suspect on 21 April. The footage shows the police tasering Mr Scott at the top of the stairs, resulting in the 62-year-old falling head-first down the flight of stairs.

After the incident, the police said that the raid on Mr Scott’s home was ‘part of a long-running operation to tackle drugs supply linked to serious violence in the borough of Haringey’ – but the family maintain that the police did not search the house for drugs.

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