St. Albans police officers received a call that a man had broken the glass door of a downtown bar and left on a bicycle. Cpl. Mark Schwartz drove down Main Street to find him. He spotted a man on the sidewalk, stopped his cruiser and flicked on its blue lights. The man turned away and strode to a nearby bike.
As Schwartz exited the car, he yelled, "Hey, get over here!" at the man, later identified as Vincent Ford. "Stop! Get on the ground! Get on the ground!" Schwartz continued as he pulled out his Taser and pointed it at the 22-year-old man.
Ford stopped moving. Standing with a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth and one hand holding the bike, he asked Schwartz, "What'd I do? What'd I do?" "Get down! Taser! Taser!" Schwartz exclaimed as he aimed and fired the weapon at Ford, striking him with its probes.
Ford's body stiffened, and he toppled onto the bike, which broke his fall. Two other officers rushed in and helped handcuff him. The time elapsed between Schwartz stepping from his cruiser and firing his Taser was a mere five seconds.
The incident is the latest violent interaction to surface involving a member of the public and a St. Albans police officer. Last August, Seven Days reported that a shift supervisor, sergeant Jason Lawton, slugged a handcuffed woman in the face. The department didn't investigate until the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont requested video of the haymaker. Lawton was ultimately fired and has been criminally charged.
That prompted Chief Gary Taylor to reform the department's internal review process.
Ford filed a handwritten complaint about his arrest later in August. He argued that he had been Tased "without justification."
The department used Taylor's new internal review process to consider Ford's complaint and "exonerated" Schwartz in a three-sentence decision. Based on a review of the dashcam video, Lt. Jason Wetherby wrote last September, the Taser was used "in adherence with proper and appropriate police procedures."
Jay Diaz, a staff attorney at the ACLU, disagrees. He and other civil rights advocates say the agency's response, coupled with other recent cases of alleged police abuse, shows that St. Albans has a systemic problem of using excessive force.
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