On November 7, 2002, at ten minutes before three in the afternoon, Stephen
Edwards was leaving the Bayview Thriftway with his wife Cindy Edwards. As
they walked into the parking lot, a man dressed in dark clothes accosted
Stephen, and a struggle began between the two men. By ten minutes after
three, Stephen was blue in the face, and was soon being rushed to the
hospital in an ambulance. He was declared dead at the hospital less than an
hour later.
The accounts later published in the Daily Olympian would claim that Stephen
was an overweight, out of control, armed shoplifter who
was subdued by Olympia Police Officers to protect themselves and the public
from his firearm. Those same accounts would claim that he died of 'natural'
causes from a heart arrhythmia, or abnormal heartbeat, brought about by his
struggle. The use of four 26 watt jolts of 50,000 volts each would be
"unlikely" to have anything to
do with the heart attack, according to the TASER manufacturer's hired
spokespersons.
The Thurston County Sheriff's Office and Coroner both signed documents
clearing Olympia Police of any wrongdoing and laid the case at the door of
the Olympia City Attorney, recommending that
Stephen's widow Cindy be prosecuted for third degree theft.
Steven Edwards might have had a gun, but this has not been proven.
According to an investigative summary completed by the Thurston County
Sheriff's Office, the gun was clean of usable fingerprints. Accounts in
police reports and the Olympian indicated it was stolen from Indiana in
1997. It was a rusty .38 caliber Smith and Wesson
five-shot revolver, S/N 61333 or 81333, with a Hogue Monogrip.(Olympia
Police accounts differ from the Thurston County Investigative Summary by
the leading digit.) Stephen Edwards had a license to carry a concealed
pistol in Washington State in
his wallet at the time of his death.
A similar gun taken from the Edwards residence the night of November 7th
was kept for weeks, yet was not mentioned in the Sheriff's investigative
summary. It was the property of Stephen's daughter. No warrant or property
receipt was given for the firearm when it was taken from the home, without
permission, by Thurston County Sheriff's Detective David Haller and his
partner, Detective Clark. Haller was the man who signed the case file for
review by Prosecutors. He is a Property Crimes unit detective, who usually
investigates shoplifts and burglaries. The second gun was later returned.
The man who originally accosted Stephen was identified in police reports as
the store security guard for Bayview Thriftway. He did
not wear a uniform, and he does not hold a license to be employed as a
security guard. At the time of the incident he had a pair of handcuffs on
his person. He is much shorter and is a thinner build than Stephen was. He
might have also been equipped with a firearm. He lives in Yelm.
NOTE:
(RCW 18.170.020 exempts security guards who work for only one employer and
are not an employee of a security company, so this man is either in
violation of the law or he is an employee of
Stormans Inc. (Owner of Bayiew)).
In his interviews with police on the night of the incident, the guard
claimed that he noticed a gun in the waistband of Stephen's pants after
they had already begun struggling in the parking lot,
and after he had already told another store employee to call 911.
The 911 call came into CAPCOM, the emergency dispatch center, at 2:51 pm.
The caller told the dispatch operator that a fight was ongoing in the
parking lot, and that a woman had had some groceries stolen from her. She
also said the store security officer had some handcuffs on the subject and
that they needed the police to take over the arrest.
(The 911 caller was wrong about the woman being a theft victim; the woman
was Cindy Edwards. She had returned to the store, as instructed by the
security guard, and was trying to offer the clerk
her bags for examination. She was under the impression that he had accused
her of theft.)
Olympia Police Officer Jeffrey Jordan arrived first at the scene. He
arrived before 2:55 and radioed CAPCOM that he "(had) one at gunpoint" at
2:56. By this time he had fired his TASER at
Stephen's back and used the trigger another three times (four in all) in
less than one minute. Olympia Police Officer Paul Bakala arrived just
after the fourth jolt and helped Jordan by standing on Stephen's right hand
and punching him in the face. Bakala was cut on his knuckle when other
officers arrived at the scene.
(In the four minutes between the 911 call and the arrival of the officers,
no one saw or heard Stephen mention he was going to arm himself or use the
gun he supposedly had carried into the store in his pants. Several times,
he tried to reach his vehicle in the parking lot; the guard was worried he
would obtain a weapon from the vehicle. Why would he need to do this if he
already had one?)
Officer Jordan first used his TASER before he had reason to believe that
Stephen was armed. He used it to try to gain compliance to an order for
Stephen to stand still, by firing the weapon into
Stephen's back. He claimed that it had no effect due to Stephen's jacket,
but that the other three jolts were each effective.
Six seconds after his first use of the TASER, Jordan pulled the trigger a
second time. He said later that the security guard had told him by this
time that Stephen was armed. Jordan claimed that Stephen was reaching for
his waistband. This is something most men do unconsciously when they pull
up their pants after a struggle on the ground. Stephen had just stood up
from where the security guard was trying to handcuff him.
During his second use of the TASER, Jordan reported hearing the metallic
sound of something dropping to the pavement. Jordan assumed at the time
that it was the gun falling out of Stephen's clothes or hand that made the
sound. But the security guard was already looking at the gun underneath a
vehicle by the time the officers
arrived, and was trying to handcuff Stephen to prevent him from reaching
his vehicle to get another one. The sound was more likely a can falling out
of Stephen's clothes.
Officer Jordan reported that his third and fourth jolts were applied to
keep Stephen from rising from the ground; he kept trying to get up after
each jolt subsided. The delay between the second and third jolt was 26
seconds. So was the delay between the third and the fourth.
When Officers Jordan and Bakala finally subdued Stephen and handcuffed him,
they placed him on his stomach and left him there on the damp November
pavement, face down, at 2:57pm. They began to focus on securing the gun,
which Bakala had picked up and placed on a vehicle, according to police
reports and eyewitnesses. Stephen
stayed on the ground until he died. The radio log shows he was reported not
breathing at 3:09pm. When officers turned him over, he was blue.
The security guard and Officer Jordan both heard Stephen say he could not
breathe. The security guard heard him say it twice. No one made sure he was
okay until Olympia Police Sergeant Hutchings
arrived and asked to speak with the prisoner.
The Investigation Which Wasn't
Thurston County detectives 'investigated' the incident by seeking to arrest
Stephen's widow and prove her complicit in his shoplifting at Bayview. They
took a weapon from her home and did not follow the proper Fourth Amendment
principles in doing so. They did not report the absence of the security
guard's license to be a guard. They did not mention Olympia Police Officer
Jeffrey Jordan's involvement in the shooting of Kent DeBoer in his parent's
home on January 11 of
the same year (2002). Nothing in their investigative summary took account
of the lack of reasonable suspicion to believe Stephen was
armed prior to the first use of the TASER. The investigation does not seek
to clear the Olympia PD half as much as it seeks to tar the names of
Stephen and his widow, Cindy. It does not even seem to seriously consider
the elements of a wrongful use of force by the police officers or the
security guard.
The Investigation Which Is
Thurston County Sheriff's Department records clerks have been unable to
supply this author with anything more than a peek at the investigative
summary, witholding copies of the doucment on the theory that it contains
"preconviction data" on the widow.
The Olympia Police Department has given me documents and reports of every
witness and officer involved, EXCEPT the eyewitnesses primary
to the incident; Jordan, Bakala, the security guard, the TASER log
printout, photographs taken before the body was moved, etc. Some of these
documents it has claimed it does not have.
The Coroner has given me a copy of the autopsy performed by former Pierce
County Chief Medical Examiner Emmanuel Lacsina. But the Coroner's summary
mis-states that Stephen's blood sugar was at a high level (500mg/dl). The
Washington State Crime Lab reported that figure for his urine, not his blood.
Lacsina was fired in 1996 during a sexual abuse scandal in his office. He
regularly performs autopsies around the Puget Sound for various smaller
counties.
For meaningful citizen review of this case, we need the same access to the
witnesses and the interview results as the investigators.
So far we do not have that access.
Some witnesses are unwilling to speak with us, due to instructions that
they not cooperate with us.
Despite these drawbacks, we have spoken to five eyewitnesses to the events
and have plans for further interviews. We have collected every scrap of
information we have been granted and some which has been leaked to us. We
will continue. We will make this story as public and political as we need
to, to pevent another such phoney investigation to be sold to us again.
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=233924
