AL.com - 2 Tennessee police officers Tase cleaning woman they mistook for burglar
Two Tennessee police officers Tased a middle school cleaning woman they mistook for a burglar early this month.
Now, some of criticizing the officers' use of force.
The Chattanooga Times-Free Press reported the two Collegedale police officers responded to Ooltewah Middle School on the night of Jan. 11 and noticed one of the doors to the building open.
The officers entered the school with their guns drawn to look for intruders. They didn't know if a cleaning staff was working that night, but they did find some cleaning supplies outside a restroom.
While checking a room that has two entrances, a woman walked into the same from the opposite entrance. She wasn't carrying anything.
The officers asked the woman to identify herself, but she appeared to not understand English.
According to the officers' report, she refused to stop and show them her identification. She replied "no" to every question they asked both in English and Spanish.
The woman then left the room and began to walk quickly down a hallway. When one of the officers yelled the Spanish word for stop, the officers claim she began to run away.
The officers proceeded to chase her through the school's cafeteria, down a flight of stairs and outside into the parking lot.
That's when one of the officers ordered her to stop or she would be shot with a stun gun, according to the officers' report.
One of the officers' then deployed his Taser, causing the woman to fall to the ground.
The officers later learned the woman was an employee of the cleaning company ABM, which regularly works in the school. The woman was wearing a T-shirt with the company's logo.
After giving several false names to the officers, Juana Raymundo, 36, originally from Guatemala, was charged with evading arrest.
According to the Times-Free Press, Collegedale Police Department's use-of-force policy allows officers to use non-deadly force, like a Taser, in order to make an arrest for a felony or misdemeanor.
Not good!
