SWAT team needed for vet with a shoe horn
ROS and Eagle Keeper send us a link from the Chicago Tribune about the Park Forest, IL police department which felt that it needed riot shields, a taser and bean bag rounds to subdue a 95-year-old Army Air Corps veteran by the name of John Wrana who refused medical treatment in his nursing home room and held off staff with his cane and a shoe horn.
The old man, described by a family member as “wobbly” on his feet, had refused medical attention. The paramedics were called. They brought in the Park Forest police.
First they tased him, but that didn’t work. So they fired a shotgun, hitting him in the stomach with a bean-bag round. Wrana was struck with such force that he bled to death internally, according to the Cook County medical examiner.
The police claim that Wrana had armed himself with a 12-inch knife, but staff and family say that there was no such weapon in the man’s nursing home room. the police also claim that nursing home staff was threatened by Wrana’s demeanor, but nursing home staff report that they were well-clear of the room after the police arrived. In fact, according to the article, staff begged the police to let them back in the room to calm the older gentleman down;
[Wrana’s family attorney, Nicholas] Grapsas says he was told that police used a riot shield to come through the door before shooting bean-bag rounds at the old man as he sat in his chair.
Riot shields are used to push back mobs of angry young protesters in the streets, or against dangerous convicts in prison cells, not to subdue an old, old man in a chair.
“At some point, I’m told there were between five and seven police officers, they went back to the room with a riot shield in hand, entered the door and shot him with a shotgun that contained bean-bag rounds,” Grapsas said.
His stepdaughter said that Wrana left the service as a sergeant and a veteran of the Army Air Corp and served in the India-Burma campaign of World War II. I guess the Park Forest police had read the warnings from the Department of Homeland Security in regards to dangerous veterans being the greatest terrorist threat.
Category: Veterans Issues
I would say “time has come.”
He was a 95 year old vet for God’s sake! You mean a few officers couldn’t grab and arm each and his legs and get him back in bed? This is rampant over abuse of poorly trained policeman. They tase him. 95 years old, I say again! The bean bag round causes the guys death. if I were the family I would be suing to high heaven for every dime the city has! Then they come up with a 12″ knife story. Too many witnesses to make that stick. Those officers and the chief should be looking for jobs, tomorrow!
Even the staff was telling police we cab handle him if you let us do our job. Lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit!
Hope he wasn’t wearing a hoodie
How any of those guys could have thought a bean-bag round on a 95 yo guy was a good idea I have no clue
Seeing as how minimum safe range for a bean bag tound is 10 meters I seriously hope they all get hosed for this.if 7 swat officers cannot subdue a 95 yr old man maybe you need a new swat team.
This is why I will someday walk out into the woods with a .45 while I still can rather than go to a nursing home. We deserve to die with dignity at our own time, not be treated against our will. Check this:http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/diary_of_an_intensive_care_nurse_CBwftCaoNoMDGkJabyTo0K
I know there are some decent cops, but they are being outnumbered by the jackwagons these days. There have been many instances of deadly force in the last couple of weeks against unarmed people and something needs to be done to reel these thugs in. It starts at the top in all LEO departments.
I, myself, have experienced a Barney Fife wannabe in the past few months. No disrespect to Barney Fife, that’s why I called him a wannabe, because he wasn’t as smart as Barney. As mine turned out, as I knew it would, after meeting with a hearing officer; nothing on my record, no muss, no fuss, just an overzealous idiot with a gun and badge who suffers from miniature wiener disease (and about 40-50 more pounds than he should be carrying). The most calm and respectful LEOs I run across are mostly Vets.
WTF… Seriously, what in the hell were they thinking? I am betting on the Staff version of things that they begged to be allowed to calm him down, and why and who the hell called for police to begin with?
All for refusing medical treatment? As far as I know that is our right, and unless a court orders it you cannot be forced to have any treatment done
Lot of questions about what led up to this as well as why force was used.
The police kill a 95 year old vet armed with a cane and a shoehorn…Pathetic, simply pathetic. When does a taser and a bean bag round come into play with a 95 year old person!? NEVER.
So instead of using proper situational awareness and a response equal to the threat, these jokers just barged in, tased the old vet and then bean bagged him. Since this is Chicago we’re talking about, nothing will probably happen to the officers involved. I hope they rot in hell for what they did to that old man.
Maybe that wack-job IL state senator(?) was right. Chicago and environs really DO need the NGs to come in and police the area. The folks hired to do the job certainly don’t do a good job of it.
My prayers go out to the family and to the old AAC warrior, may he have clear skies and a following wind on his final flight home, RIP brother…RTB, Mission Complete.
Staff called for paramedics, cops tagged along. The same thing happened in DC when I called for an ambulance during a heart attack, the paramedics showed up along with a police cruiser and a ladder truck.
@6, as a cop, i agree whole heartedly with you. about 2 years ago, im not sure the exact date, my little brother who has never so much as had a speeding ticket, is riding his 250cc bike back to his apartment. his apartment is attached to a church and was a gift from the church when he got married. some off duty cop in plain clothes saw my little brother and thought that his 250cc bike matched the description of someone seen speeding 5 miles away on a harley. he came up to my brother’s door after he was inside the apartment, and asked if the bike was his. when he said yes, the officer grabbed my brother, slammed him to the ground, charged into the house with out a warrant, and began tearing the place up. my brother’s wife was just getting out of the shower when they charged into her bedroom. she is cambodian and had only been in the states for a few months at this time. where she is from if the cops are charging through your house, your husband is already dead and you are soon to be next. needless to say, she is freaked out. the cop claimed that he suspected my brother if having drugs in his back pack and that was what he was looking for, but he never even identified himself when he grabbed my brother. i think the moron had a death wish, because he left my brother where he shoved him when he charged into the house there was no one watching his back. some uniformed cops showed up rather quickly, and they behaved even worse. had this been me, or my older brother, that would have been a dead cop. lucky for him, my little brother is the only one in our family with out military experience and at least 1 combat tour under our belts. my brother has a suit against the city or stillwater now, but thankfully no one died in that incident. i heart goes out to the family of this man, rest in… Read more »
This is a travesty of police work. Ninety five years old, tasered, then shotgunned with a beanbag.
My God, when this type of force becomes proper to use on an ancient vet with a mental episode, what has this country become?
Oh, yeah. If there isn’t one already (and I think there is) a massive lawsuit against the Park Forest PD, there will be, in spades.
Count on it. The departments in the burbs and the CPD keep hiring people who shouldn’t be allowed to do anything more important than empty trash bins and sweep floors. A CPD cop shot a friendly dog right in front of the owner back in December. It was a puppy, and it wasn’t a pit bull.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=chicago+cop+shoots+dog&mid=924E8DD218C85765F73F924E8DD218C85765F73F&view=detail&FORM=VIRE8
What if that had been a small child in a Halloween costume?
This is SO out of control, it’s a good reason to stay out of centers of cities now.
Let’s assume for the moment that he DID have a knife in his possession – so what? Would not change a single thing here. He was sitting in his chair in his room. How is that threatening anyone?
Were he running up and down the halls threatening people, perhaps that would be different, but this? No way. THEY had to enter his personal space to contrive a “threat?”
There are so many things wrong with this that it defies description.
This is a tough one. On the one hand, an old man who should have one day died peacefully was killed violently. On the other hand, the account is written with heavy bias against the police, fed, in part, by the decedent’s family lawyer. A nursing home resident in possession of a butcher’s knife? It’s possible but highly unlikely. It is just as likely that a uniform “found” the blade after the violence was ended. I will await the State Police investigation outcome. And if it turns out that the knife was a plant, I hope a few careers are ended. What I categorically reject is the notion that the victim’s age necessarily means he was incapable of inflicting harm. Experience tells me otherwise.
@10: Yeah, that type of thing is happening more and more these days. I believe that is one of the reasons that cops are getting shot; they cause bad blood with the citizens with their antics and then, when they try it on someone who isn’t playing their game, they end up in an escalated situation that didn’t have to go sideways like that, if they had just acted almost human.
@14: 95 years old in a nursing home? How medieval could he get? A SWAT team for that? Not thinking so.
WTF over!
Assuming the staff accounts are correct, IMO what should happen here is seven idiots should lose their shields – and at least a couple (the team lead and the beanbag shooter) should be facing a trial for at negligent homicide if not manslaughter (shooting a beanbag round into someone’s body from less than 1/2 the minimum safe distance without justification would seem to qualify as depraved indifference). All seven should indeed see their LE certifications permanently cancelled so that they never work LE again.
What will IMO likely happen is an insurance settlement (payoff) and the matter swept under the rug with no real change. It’s the Chicago way.
The CPD in the story answers a lot of questions. I hope this old vet got a smooth ride to heaven an rests in peace. Why did they not let the staff and paramedics handle him. @8 You are right on and @10 you are right. If a man pushes his way in my door, unannounced as a police officer, he is taking his life in his hands. Your brother got off easy and I say that because they could have gone way too far on him.
As I often point out to libs I know when they talk about gun control: “So the government says that I, as a law-abiding citizen with no criminal record, no history of violence, and no sign of mental instability have to be disarmed in the name of public safety…but they’ll GIVE those idiots guns!”
I know a lot of great cops. I also know way too many who shouldn’t be trusted with a fucking squirt gun. Incidentally, they usually also seem to be the same cops that support the anti-gun, anti-Constitution Obama prognazi party line.
And I’m not trying to paint all LEOs with that brush. Most of them go out and do God’s work on a daily basis across the country for what amount’s to a financial “attaboy.” It just seems the bad cops are starting to outnumber the good here lately.
Someone else here said it well. The best LEOs I have ever known or dealt with are the vets.
That’s why I don’t trust most cops these days. They use excessive force, don’t think before they act and actively lie because their “training kicked in” or some other passive-voice shirking of responsibility excuse and that’s cool… where some soldier would get Leavenworth and the Big Chicken Dinner (BCD blue discharge) for it.
As part of my look-see into this matter, I checked out the reporter, John Kass. I expected to learn that he is a lib with a disdain for uniforms. I learned otherwise. He is not a lib and actually worked for a living in the real world for years before starting his writing career. The needle is moving for me.
Just another day for America’s police forces. Remember the one in Houston last year when they killed the wheelchair bound double amputee who was “armed” with a…..ballpoint pen?
The guy was 95. The cops could’ve waited an hour and the old guy probably would have fallen asleep.
@95 Exactly. Ill-trained cops lacking any common sense using the same TTPs they’d use on a 20-year old miscreant. I hope the family sues the pants off them and the city.
Radley Balko has written a book on the “militarization of the police” which is getting a lot of ink now and this is a prime example of why-over the past 30 years or so something has gone seriously wrong with police procedures and that situation needs to be rectified.
I mean seriously-the man was 95 years old!!! Just wait for him to go to sleep and disarm him, no need to use tasers and bean bag rounds-that’s beyond absurd.
Shoehorn = 12 inch knife? IMO it’s the US verus them attitude. A little CS spray and no worries. Old warrior rest in peace .Prayers for the family. PS need better Psych test and piss test for Roids.
Was it a full or semi-auto shoehorn ? Did he have multiple shoehorns and was barricaded in with a 22 year old hot candystriper ?
Srsly. Who trains these people???!!!
What the F@&$!! This is unbelievable!
When you are a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Maybe it was one of those scary, black shoehorns?
Maybe it was a military-style Assault Shoehorn? Big City Cops run around these days like they’re the Waffen SS in Nazi Germany! Let one barge into my home like that, and he’ll get hauled out in a bodybag!!
Bad training and worse leadership get these results every time.
@36: Yeah, the thing that pops into my mind is the South Park episode, where Jimbo says that to be legal, you have to state that the animal was running right at you. I think the cops have adopted that mindset for their excuse to plug someone who is either unarmed or armed with a shoe horn.
The team, quick witted and highly trained, immediately noticed his toast had been nibbled into the shape of a { gasp } pistol. At that point they felt threatened so opened fire.
Lawsuit, and 1 count of negligent homicide filed against each officer present.
It’s past time to ban shoe horns and walking sticks.
He may have been trained by Giduck to throw shoehorns.
it’s a shame he had to go out that way. RIP
Im honestly NOT about to go through 41 responses BUT i will say.. was the officers response to the incident wrong.. YES.. could it have been handled better .. YES…the riot shield alone if he refused to respond to vocal commands would have been enough…. you can * and i have* use it as a battering ram while protecting yourself.
@42 It sounds like you’re OK using a riot shield as a battering ram on a 95-year old who required a walker to get around. Been around any 90-year olds lately? “Frail” is the word that comes to mind to describe the ones I’ve been around. Good God. How about isolating him and someone with “common sense” and “compassion” talking to him until he runs out of steam? And you wonder why increasing numbers of people distrust the police.
I am writing this through tears! As a caretaker of my parents (who both had dementia – they passed at 84 and 86 – and, Dad, a WWII vet, had serious anger issues made worse by the dementia) I lost count of the number of times I had to “wrestle” my father to keep him from harming me, my Mother, or himself (which was usually what ended up happening), I can attest to the fact that even IF this man had a 12″ knife, he WOULD NOT be able to harm UNIFORMED AND ARMED SWAT members AND he would have eventually tired and drifted off to sleep. And don’t even get me started on the fact that this is AMERICA where we supposedly have the right to deny unnecessary, or life-prolonging at any cost, medical care if we so desire! They should tattoo this vet’s face on these MURDERS’ hands so that, while these “cops” rot in prison (where they belong) they will be forced to “see” this poor 95 year old man’s face every time they use their hands. This man fought for our freedom yet ended up being MURDERED exercising his right to die peacefully!
My sincerest sympathy and prayers go out to the family and people who had to witness this atrocity! God bless the vet and may He give the man the peace he should have been afforded while in his twilight of life.
At least the ME ruled his death a homicide.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2385926/War-veteran-John-Wrana-95-dies-police-shoot-Taser-bean-bag-rounds.html
Perhaps a few arrests will follow?
OWB: maybe, maybe not. It still could be deemed a “justifiable homicide” by the DA.
IMO it damn well shouldn’t be ruled “justifiable”, and yes: arrests appear warranted. But as I see it that’s yet to be determined.
Smaj: while using a shield as a “battering ram” might have hurt the old guy, it’s unlikely he’d have been killed outright. As we saw, shooting him at close range with a beanbag round did kill him.
I agree that even knocking him on his ass with a shield was probably unnecessary. But I’m willing to give the cops that much leeway when they’re facing even an old guy with a large knife. (Assuming, of course, that he actually had a large knife.)
Shooting him at close range, on the other hand – even with a beanbag round – seems to me beyond what was necessary or lawful.
Hondo, since eyewitnesses frequently prove to be unreliable with their facts, especially when they are cops who’ve done something wrong and they know it, it’s entirely possible to mistake an old man’s cane for a 12″ butcher knife in someone’s overheated imagination.
After all, the Chicago are is notorious for cops who are out of control, but take up to 30 minutes to arrive when someone is in actual trouble. I’ve seen rookie cops with a couple of older, more experienced officers, and I would do everything possible to steer clear of the rookies. They are nucking futz. And it isn’t something new.
Hondo: Given, of course. But, had the ME ruled something other than homicide (suicide by cop?), any sort of finding against the officers or others would be more difficult. Wrongful death, of course, comes immediately to mind.
Something other than the obvious elements of this incident has been niggling at the brain since it was first reported. Kept feeling that I was supposed to know something about Park Forest IL, and sure enough, have finally found it. And it’s pretty ironic.
Park Forest IL was developed as a community to provide housing for World War II veterans! It was the first such development/community in the nation. Just one more twist in this ridiculous story about a man who was not native to the area moving there because of what they offered his group of veterans being killed by that same community.
http://www.villageofparkforest.com/index.php?submenu=AboutUs&src=gendocs&link=AboutUs
Yeah, we studied this community in sociology class.