After instructing a disoriented and intoxicated man to vacate a Main Street parking lot, Cortez police officers followed the subject and then tased him five times.
In a three-page report, K-9 officer Frank Kobel stated that he was dispatched to City Market on the 500 block of East Main Street for an intoxicated man who might be underage. Arriving one minute later at 1:08 p.m. on Nov. 8, Kobel found officer Boyd Neagle speaking with the suspect.
Store employees advised police that the suspect had possibly been drinking inside the store and attempted to steal a woman’s purse. Police were unable to confirm any crime had been committed, and subsequently instructed the suspect to vacate the premises.
Kobel noted in his report that the man was disoriented about his direction of travel as he stumbled away from the scene. Still in the parking lot, Kobel said the suspect dropped a bottle of “Horney Goat Weed” pills, spilling the herbal medication onto the asphalt.
“(The suspect) stood over the pills and urinated his pants,” Kobel wrote in the report. “The urine ran down his leg and onto the pills.”
After the man picked up a handful of the medication and started chewing the pills, Kobel stated that he again advised the suspect to leave the scene.
According to police, the man walked east, stopping to ask a street vendor selling apples for a cigarette before continuing toward the Dolores State Bank.
Kobel said that he and Neagle followed the suspect in their vehicles, contacting the man behind the bank.
“I asked him if I could give him a ride anywhere,” Kobel wrote. “I told him I was concerned about his safety.”
The man refused, and again Kobel stated that the suspect was disoriented before arguing with police about his direction of travel.
“He started approaching me with a blank stare,” Kobel said in his report, noting that he instructed the man to step away.
Kobel said the man then attempted to grab him, so he struck the man in the chest with a double palm heel strike as Neagle observed from inside his patrol vehicle.
“He was growling and making statements I could not understand,” said Kobel, describing the man’s demeanor.
According to Kobel, the man chest-bumped Neagle, who subsequently took the man to the ground. Kobel said the man resisted arrested, and it appeared that the suspect was “grabbing” at Neagle’s duty belt.
Unable to determine if the suspect had a weapon, Kobel said he advised the man that he would be tased prior to standing and electrocuting him in the chest. Kobel said the suspect continued to resist, and he deployed his Taser two more times.
As the man continued to resist, Kobel wrote, he then placed the Taser onto the man’s thigh and fired again. The suspect continued to resist, according to Kobel, so he discharged the Taser a fifth time before Neagle handcuffed the man.
The man was subsequently provided medical treatment on the scene and at the hospital before booked at the Montezuma County jail on a single count of obstruction/resisting arrest.
Kobel noted in his report that both he and Neagle videotaped the incident.
tbaker@the-journal.com
