Michael Wray
News.com.au
February 19, 2008
Police are investigating claims an officer tasered a handcuffed man three times in the Cleveland watchhouse last year to “shut him up”.
Three other complaints about police using the 50,000-volt stun guns inappropriately had been referred to the service’s internal investigation unit, police said.
Last August, police arrested concreter Nathan Brown, 23, near the Alexandra Hills Hotel and locked him in a cell at the Cleveland watchhouse.
Mr Brown pleaded guilty to assault, assaulting police and being a public nuisance. However, he has claimed in a signed statement believed to have been given to investigators that he was tasered three times while handcuffed in the watchhouse.
His sister Rebecca, 18, who was locked up that night after attempting to make an official complaint that police arresting her brother punched him, also gave an eyewitness statement.
Mr Brown admitted he lost control when police locked his sister up so he began “using aggressive language”, telling officers to release her because she had done nothing wrong.
“A policeman unlocked my cell to what I thought was going to be frisked-processed while still handcuffed and during this process I was hit with a Taser gun three times in a row by an older policeman,” he said, according to the statement.
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