Cop charged in death of veteran
You probably remember the story from last year of 95-year-old John Wrana who became belligerent when nursing home staff tried to treat his urinary tract infection, so they called in the local Park Forest, Illinois cops. When they arrived, the officers began treating him as threat because he had a knife, a cane and a long shoehorn (that they mistook for a machete) so they tried to tase him, but missed. So they decided to beanbag his ass, that caused internal bleeding and the World War II Burma Army Air Corpsman died soon after.
One cop has been charged in the incident according to the Chicago Tribune;
Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’s office said patrolman Craig Taylor, 43, was charged with one count of reckless conduct, a Class 4 felony. Taylor has been with the Park Forest Police Department since January, 2004.
Taylor is expected to appear before a judge later Wednesday at the Leighton Criminal Courts Building. The case is being handled by the special prosecutions unit.
I think all parties over-reacted to the whole thing, including Mr Wrana. But, just by admitting that they thought a shoehorn was a machete tells me that the police didn’t adequately evaluate the situation. Beanbagging a 95-year-old just seems like it was an excessive reaction. Tasing him was a bad idea, too. They could have just waited him out. 95-year-olds aren’t known for their stamina.
Category: Police
This is a sad story …
No winners here … just losers!
Minus Mr. Wrana … he was 95 years old for geeze sake …
A 95 year old with an Urinary Tract Infection. A UTI can bring out the Mr. Hyde in anyone, specially those that are elderly.
This is indeed a sad story all around, but all the cops involved wanted to do this the gung-ho way instead of the best way to deal with the problem before them.
As many times as we read about the police waiting out some suicidal nut job who “says” he has a gun, for hours…they then try to tase and the bean bag an 95 year old guy in a nursing home. I expect a 95 to over react to a lot of situations. He is 95 after all and maybe doesn’t take to things as well as he did when younger. In the small size of his room it was an over reaction on the part of the police I believe. There were a half dozen other options I can think of and I’m not a LEO.
I am a former beat cop and I most definitely do not like to second guess my brother and sister POs, but…
Two guys can EASILY overpower a 95 year old for cripe’s sake! I’m baffled by their actions.
I hope Orificer (no, that’s not a mispelling) Fife gets laughed out of the cop corps. Seriously. He couldn’t out-wait a 95 yo man?
That, and lose his house in a civil suit.
Maybe a WANTED poster could be done on him, suitable for downloading, printing, and plastering all over town. Even on his po-po car and windows.
They should get tased in their beanbags
And then have their bean bags chopped off by an actual machete.
LB,
Shoehorn would work too….
/like a rusty spoon.
Why a spoon cousin?
Said in a gravely voice:
Because it hurts more
Why not pepper spray? Why not tear gas? There were a million and one options here, and nary a one involved high-velocity projectiles being used to take down a 95-year old.
HS, I work in the health care field, and using pepper spray on someone this old can cause an instant heart attack, I deal with people on a daily basis in an ER. There are situations that arise that are much more dangerous that the threat that Mr. Wrana posed. Yet we deal with each and every one of them appropriately. There are time we have to bring in hospital security(all are certified LEO’s), but never once had we had to use force. This stinks to high heaven.
The more important question is why do anything at all to the man. They should not have been there at all, and they certainly should not have done anything to the man. Instead, they killed him.
Disgusting. It was when it happened. It remains disgusting today.
Absolutely – there is no punishment sufficient for these officers that would in any way be commensurate with what they did completely without provocation.
Mr. Wrana’s crime, the one for which he was executed? He refused a medical procedure which would very likely have killed him. So the police kill him instead?
No, not acceptable.
More heads than that need to roll over what happened to Mr. Wrana. I wonder if that Department is just using Craig Taylor as their sole fall guy?
Certainly sounds like he ain’t the only one in the “Ossifer Fife” category…
All the nursing home staff involved should be fired and never allowed near a patient again. Altered mental status, including belligerence, is common and even expected in an elderly patient with a UTI. They had no reason to call the cops, beyond their own incompetence.
Concerning what SPARKS commented on. It always tickles me when a perp ties up a squad of coppers for hours, then when they finally storm the house, it is empty. Makes the coppers look stupid and without balls. BZ
The Nursing Home Staff screwed this one up. Nursing home patients can be a bit off sometimes, get nasty, rude, mean, and even physical.
Train your staff to deal with it. The Police should be called as an absolute last resort, and should be fully briefed on the situation.
Any force used at all on a 95 year old is going to have negative affects on them. You are better off waiting for them to take a nap.
If I remember the original reports correctly, the nursing home did not call the police. They called an ambulance for routine transport for an off site medical procedure which Mr. Wrana did not want. Either the ambulance called the police or it was one of those automatic dispatch things based upon what the ambulance crew reported.
The first reports were that the ambulance crew and nursing home staff all tried to get the police to stop their antics. The police escalated this situation and ordered everyone to get out of their way in spite of nursing home staff having procedures in place to deal with a situation such as this, and it did not include a police response.
That certainly sounds a lot more reasonable, and I retract my earlier comment. So the cops screwed this up all by themselves, eh? Why the hell didn’t they listen to the medical folks, who are the SMEs on old folks?
Yea, that’s what I remember as well, old dog. The current linked article says the cop fired five beanbag rounds from his shotgun at 6-8 feet away (15 foot minimum distance per SOP). There are plenty of jackass style youtube videos showing how powerful these rounds are, at much greater than 15 foot, and on much less than 95 year old individuals. BTW, after 5 rounds the old man was still standing, so they knocked him down with a riot shield and then cuffed him.
breaking news. report of active shooter at Fort Hood Texas. Just heard it on the radio.
GDContrator Yes Fox news is covering a shooter at Ft. Hood.
I have the feeling that more than one person is going to lose a house over this foul up. Lots of big checks will be written by the time this is over. And with justification.
This totally stinks. I hope someone took a video with heir cell phone or has some sort of recording of this whole fiasco.
I always believed that the cops took the situation and blew it way out of proportion simply because they have all these new toys they want to try out.
It looks like Mr. Wrana is continuing to fight for all that is good and right even in his death.
Godspeed to him and I hope that a bunch of cops lose their jobs, houses, cars and a bunch more stuff.
Including their Specops attitude…
The cops these days all play Specops but not that many of them understand what it is really all about and the right way to do it. They all seem to want to be power hungry morons…
“The cops these days all play Specops but not that many of them understand what it is really all about and the right way to do it. They all seem to want to be power hungry morons…” Really? Stereotype much?
What would be your reaction if someone posted the same thing about all active duty soldiers, or all veterans, comparing them to Spc Ivan Lopez?
That said, I agree with most of the other posters, the cops who decided to involve themselves in this screwed up, royally. They should pay, as should their department. Sadly, the department will probably claim governmental immunity.
Nurses are trained to handle such situations and could have put him to sleep in 30 seconds or so…..
My daughter has worked at a nursing home for a few years. Rarely, in her situation, do nurses get involved at all. (yes, your parents are cared for by a minimum wage paid high school graduate, and you pay 10K a year for it) also, she gets beat up by old people, but it’s just part of the job. You don’t call the police.. you, like jonn said, wait it out, lock the door, whatever it takes. I’m sure he was violent, maybe even nasty- there’s an old guy that calls dd a whore everytime she tries to shower him. EVERYTIME. people are stupid.
just read owb’s comments, that sounds way more reasonable.
btw, I miss the numbered comments. that’s all.
This kind of thing is why I left law enforcement after a few years.
REALLY!! WTF? What kind of critical reasoning made this cop think it was OK to use a Taser or bean-bag round on an elderly man?
Who thinks to themselves, ‘oh I’ll just shoot this old man point blank with a bean bag from a shotgun?’
FFS what the hell is happening? Where the hell are they finding these guys and who the hell is training and supervising them? They should throw the book at everyone from the chief down.
ABSOLUTELY!! This was a training failure, common sense failure, basic human kindness failure. Jesus H. Christ. 95 year old man, and this is the best the cops have got?? It gets harder and harder for me to justify teaching my children to respect law enforcement officers.
I read stories like this and it scares the shit out of me that one of my girls may run into a poorly trained, unreasonable cowboy out there who through lack of common sense hurts one of them he has sworn to protect. I hope that heads roll like a motherfucker on this one!!
Well, if convicted of the felony, he’s facing probation to max 3 yrs. I’m thinking they plea it down, but I hope at least the felony will stand. At least keep his booger hooks out of triggers anyway.
The cops never should have been called for this to begin with, but since they were they came and added to the insanity of the situation.
Where I work we have a large number of patients who either through dementia or mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, substance abuse (detoxing), can all become violent and uncooperative.
Very rarely does the staff go to the level of physically restraining a patient, and when it is done it is done using methods that are meant to provide the patient with as much protection from physical harm as possible. The focus is more on talking them down than forcing compliance through force. Though believe me, I have seen where force has had to be used on an extremely violent patient as well.
So a 95 year old man with a knife,and a cane is a threat… how they dealt with the threat is another issue. I am certain all involved have second guessed themselves as well since then. or at least I would hope that they have.
Bottom line, I blame the health care facility the most.
Blame them for what exactly? Not physically taking on heavily armed police duded up for a riot? They were attempting, some reported to be in tears, to get the police to let them handle the situation, but were ordered by the heavily armed police to stay out of the man’s room.
There was no knife involved. The man was sitting in his chair, trying to get his shoes on using a long handled shoe horn.
He did at least get to talk with his stepdaughter on the telephone to tell her good-bye, thanks to the ER personnel.
The article states that he had a knife and was using his cane as a weapon also.
The Staff over reacted to him and called the cops who over reacted, instead of waiting the man out.
So yes I blame the staff for over reacting and escelating the situation. had they simply kept him isolated and talked to him, he eventually would have run out of steam.
Again, the article quite clearly states that he had a knife in addition to the “shoe horn” mistaken for a machete.
You probably need to read the rest of the articles written on the topic. A police officer reported that they thought he had a knife. He did not. There was no knife. Even if he did, so what? He was in his own little apartment, minding his own business, and they were breeching his home. But there still was no knife, even in his kitchen space.
The nursing home did NOT call the police. That call was either from the ambulance crew or from an automatic dispatch situation based on what one of the ambulance crew reported. Even they tried to get the police to stop.
The only member of the nursing home staff who could possibly be faulted is the one who unlocked the door to let the first officers into the facility, but even that is a stretch. A normal member of staff would let them in, assuming they were there to help, not to kill someone.
Survived the jungles of Asia, check….
Fought in one of the most difficult theaters of operation, check….
Outlasted his Japanese enemies to the end of the war, check…
Only to be killed by cops in Forest Park Illinois 60 years later…there is no law against refusing treatment at any age. I’ve seen many elderly patients come into the hospital and tell the staff they weren’t going to give blood for testing or to allow any xrays or anything, they were just there to wait out their last few days…
Sometimes I hear we are quick to bash LEOs and we weren’t there so we don’t know, blah blah blah…that’s probably true sometimes but in this case I would like to think that a group of trained police officers could show an honorable WW2 vet the same courtesy they would show a meth head and wait a little bit before storming the castle and taking lives…apparently the DA agrees and one officer is losing his career and perhaps his freedom, at the end of the day he has to live with killing a 95 year old veteran who served the nation with honor because the veteran was having some difficulty dealing with the treatment program for an infection in his urinary tract.
So we can’t sentence child molesters to death, but Officer Taylor chose to sentence Mr. Wrana to death. I hope Officer Taylor is prepared to the pay the Karmic debt he has incurred, I suspect the bill will be very difficult to manage when it comes due.
Very true, and well said, VOV! But I still suspect that Craig Taylor is also being set up as the sole scapegoat so his PD’s higher-ups can play CYA games to keep their jobs and pensions safe, I think more heads than Taylor’s need to roll!
The saddest irony of all this is that the town which killed this man was created following WWII as a community for veterans entering the workforce. He moved there only because veterans were being recruited to come there.
Thanks for finally writing about >Cop charged in death of veteran : This ain’t Hell, but you can see it from here
<Liked it!
The trial is finally under way.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-kass-wrana-family-statement-met-20150115-column.html
There are other articles and reports, but Mr. Kass has been tracking this since the beginning.