>>...We don’t see what happened leading up to him being in cuffs. We have no sense if the guy had been violent prior to that....<<
Makes no difference. If two or more presumably able-bodied LEO’s can’t manage one, hand-cuffed, naked drunk — then those LEO’s aren’t cut out for the job. If they don’t find another line of work, they are going to either *seriously* hurt someone unnecessarily or get hurt themselves. These guys don’t appear to have the temperament for the job.
I keep saying it, but it bears repeating: We need more Andy Griffiths and fewer Barney Fifes.
Maybe you could try watching the video I linked in 102.
I just did.
The conflict starts at about 20:47:00 - three cops have shown up and after about five minutes, one cop asks the guy to takes his hands out of his pockets after the two others have complied without a problem. He takes them out and then puts them right back in after being asked four times to stop - MAJOR no-no. On the fourth time, about 20:47:45, three cops drag him to the ground. I imagine that is what triggered him getting stripped.
It's not easy to see exactly what is going on or hear the details from that point, but you can tell he is putting up a major wrestling match. After about five minutes, one of the cops get up and walk away. The other two stay in place, you still hear a lot of grunting and groaning and bleeps.
>About 20:55:11, they seem to start punching the guy at times, not continuously.
About 20:56:15, looks like they start hitting him with sticks - once again, it's hard to see exactly what is going on, and the strikes are occasional, not continuous.
About 21:00:25, the third cop walks back into the picture with what appears to be a towel pressed to his head, looks like he was stopping bleeding on his forehead from the way he was holding the towel, but, once again, it's hard to tell.
All this time the onlookers are watching - a couple of times they go over to the scrum and them walk back, don't hear the cops telling them to get away. One goes over by the car a couple of times, I think he might have brought the one cop a towel.
Two more cops show up at the point where the other video starts at 21:01:11. At that point, you have one cop with a possible injury and two other cops who have been wresting with a lunatic drunk/druggie guy for 14 minutes. If you don't think that is exhausting, well, just check how long college wrestling matches last. Less than half that time - by atheletes who train for it.
And this guy is a drunken nut who is probably on heavy drugs as well if he has a history of walking into someone else's house and calling to say werewolves are chasing cars. He is not going to be subdeued without drastic action.
So in the context of one possibly injured cop and two likely exhausted cops, I can see why they tazed him initially when the other two cops showed up. And given that he had refused to obey the most fundamental of commands to start - show hands - and then fought them for 14 minutes while still refusing to follow basic commands such as rolling over, I don't see where there was an alternative to tazing him at least once. I think the subsequent force by the cops after the first tazing was a function of him having failed to follow commands to that point - even when able to move - which meant the cops didn't know if he was still being stubborn or could not move. Throw in exhaustion and anger on the part of the cops and it was a mess. We'll leave it for the TBI to sort this out, they have neutral eyewitnees who watched the entire incident firsthand to see how much was justified and how much was just raw anger on the part of the cops, and probably could testify as to details that you just can't see on most of the video leading up the tazing.
But seriously, this guy wasn't just standing around doing nothing. Like I said, show me the whole video.