Recording video grows in use

Associated Press

HARRISBURG, PA.

The existence of cameras attached to stun guns was news to a Pennsylvania prosecutor who said Wednesday that a recording made by an officer’s own stun gun was the strongest evidence used to charge her this week with homicide for a man’s shooting death in February.

“I did not know until this case occurred” that some stun guns include cameras, Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico said. “Many of us in law enforcement did not know.”

Footage from police vehicle dashboard cameras has long been broadcast on television and posted online, and there has been much debate about the use of body cameras for police since the fatal shooting last year of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

Taser International Inc., which has sold some 800,000 stun guns, nearly all to police and military agencies, said the cameras also are a popular feature on their devices, with current models able to record in high definition and color. The company has produced about 80,000 stun guns with cameras.

Ed Primeau, a video forensics expert in Rochester Hills, Mich., said footage from cameras mounted on stun guns is increasingly finding its way into criminal and civil cases.

“When you see where that gun is pointed, it’s a video accounting of the credibility as to why that police officer fired,” Primeau said. When viewed with body camera and dash camera footage, he said, the images captured by a stun gun can be powerful evidence.

“We’re able to view the events as they occurred without interpretation,” Primeau said. “If I can walk into a courtroom with video from all of these sources, then we can recreate the events that occurred in the courtroom and let the jury make a decision.”

In the Pennsylvania case, police on Tuesday charged Hummelstown police Officer Lisa Mearkle with criminal homicide, alleging she shot an unarmed man, David Kassick, as he lay face down after an attempted traffic stop and vehicle pursuit.

Her lawyer, Brian Perry, said Mearkle purposely kept her Taser pointed at the man to document what occurred, not thinking it would be used against her. She shocked him four times before shooting him when he did not comply with her commands to show his hands, police said.

Marsico has declined to release the video, though it might be shown next month at Mearkle’s preliminary hearing.