Michael Wood on his final straw with the Prime Minister, it’s D-day for Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown and Prince Harry leaves nothing off limits in his second day in court in the latest New Zealand Herald headlines. Video / NZ Herald
A Tauranga police officer who tasered an unarmed, mentally-ill man three times in the court cells, including as he lay face down on the concrete, has stopped working for New Zealand Police - four years after the incident.
Senior Constable Lindsay “Red” Smith was found not guilty by a jury last year of three counts of assault with a weapon, but a subsequent Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) report found the tasering was unjustified and that Smith had used excessive force to “induce compliance”.
The complainant, Andrew, who did not want his full name used, was a former IT worker who had fallen under the Mental Health Act 17 years ago following a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder.
He spoke out against the not guilty verdict, saying he believed it was “unfair” and “unjust”, and that Smith’s lawyer played heavily on his mental illness as justification for the tasering.
He had been taken into custody over a bail issue in February 2019, after an altercation with a security guard at a nearby mall.
Smith was on cell duty the day of the tasering, the Monday following Andrew’s arrest.
“I was unhappy being in the cell. I was in there with a sex offender and a gang member and I’ve never been in prison before,” Andrew told the Herald.
The pair had already had one run-in when Andrew, frustrated at being in custody, tried to follow another prisoner out of the cell. They wrestled briefly before Smith forced Andrew back into the cell and shut the door.
A short while later, after officers attempted to verbally convince Andrew to come out of the cell to be transferred, Smith walked through the cell door, immediately pointing a taser at him. Andrew became argumentative and stood up, walking towards Smith, with Smith pushing him away at arm’s length.
“He shoots me three times, gives me three buzzes with the electrical thing,” Andrew said. “I couldn’t believe that he was buzzing it.”
The IPCA report, which does not identify any of the parties by name, described the video of the incident, noting Smith tasered Andrew while other staff were trying to restrain him.
The second shot came as Andrew was sitting on the floor, picking a probe out of his chest, and the third shot happened as Andrew, lying on the ground, appeared to be trying to comply with Smith’s order to put his hands behind his back.
“CCTV footage shows Mr X [Andrew] being lifted to his feet and escorted out by two Corrections officers. Officer A [Smith] grins at Officer B, who is standing by the cell door. Officer A holds both arms out to the side and wriggles his body in what looks like a short dance,” the report said.
Lindsay 'Red' Smith.
Smith told the IPCA Andrew’s mental illness and heightened state made him unpredictable, abnormally strong, “lightning fast,” and less responsive to pain.
He said he was worried for his and his colleagues’ safety. He said he felt the other staff were incapable of restraining Andrew without hurting themselves, pepper spray would not be of use in Andrew’s heightened state, and that he did not have time to draw his baton.
Smith said he fired the second shot as he believed Andrew was about to attack him.
“I had a very clear thought in my mind that he was going to stab me in the eye with the probe,” he said.
The third shot was because he was still holding the probe and had a “look” in his eye, Smith claimed.
While the younger police officer present said Andrew was hostile but non-assaultive, interviews with Smith and the Corrections officers painted Andrew as an aggressive detainee who posed a significant threat to them.
“Problematically, this impression appears to us to be completely inconsistent with what we see in the combined CCTV and Taser footage,” the report said.
“The obvious conclusion is that Officer A cannot have perceived that Mr X posed a threat on any of the occasions when he fired the Taser. His account of the threat he faced is increasingly implausible with each successive discharge.
“However, having met and spoken to Officer A, we do not think he is intentionally trying to mislead us about what happened. More likely he has constructed this story to fit the events after the fact, and he now believes this version to be true.”
The report said the taser footage was “disturbing to watch” and that the use of force was “gratuitous and unacceptable”.
Smith was once nominated for the Bay of Plenty Times Person of the Year award for his involvement in the community, and was earlier praised for his project Trips with Red and Z, where he took groups of older men out for field trips. He is also known for mentoring families with meth-addicted members.
