Lawsuit: Tasers used 'punitively and sadistically'
The parents of a man who died in 2013 shortly after Worth County deputies Tased him multiple times has filed a lawsuit for "punitively and sadistically" using excessive force.
Officers who responded to a domestic dispute in September of 2013 fired two Tasers a total of at least 15 times while attempting to subdue Michael Zubrod, 39, of Northwood, public records show.
The scene initially encountered by deputies was highly violent. Zubrod, who had a history of mental illness, had meth in his system at the time of the incident. Officers responded during the attack where Zubrod was striking his girlfriend Rhonda Schukei multiple times in the head with a hammer.
Schukei survived the serious injuries after spending weeks in hospitals.
Law enforcement officials have said the use of tasers on Zubrod was necessary to take control of the scene and was in lieu of more deadly force, meaning a gun.
But questions have persisted for nearly two years about whether officers acted excessively, fueled partly by inconsistent or incomplete accounts of the event and law enforcement's long fight to keep even standard public records confidential.
A lawsuit filed Wednesday by Larry and Cheri Zubrod says that at least nine of the tases struck Zubrod while he was on his back and showed "obvious signs of disorientation" during a period of less than three minutes.
Michael Zubrod, who had cried out for a doctor during the incident, was additionally tased "for a second round of continuous bursts of electricity" after his hands had been restrained and posed no realistic risk of harm, the lawsuit says.
Michael Zubrod stopped breathing at the scene and was pronounced dead shortly after he was transported to a Mason City hospital.
The Iowa State Medical Examiner's office ruled his death a homicide.
The lawsuit names deputy Shayne Hoch for Tasing Zubrod and deputies Isaac Short and John Smith for failing to stop the "abusive and life-taking behavior." Worth County and Sheriff Jay Langenbau, who was not at the scene, is also named as a defendant in the case.
Larry and Cheri Zubrod declined to comment Thursday.
Worth County Attorney Jeffery Greve and Langenbau also declined to comment Thursday.
OFFICERS CLEARED; RECORDS CONCEALED
Greve ultimately cleared the deputies of wrongdoing following an investigation from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. Greve said his conclusion was based entirely on conversations he had with a chief deputy and a DCI investigator. He said that he had not reviewed a single record or conducted interviews with the deputies before making his conclusion.
Local law enforcement agencies – including Langenbau and Greve – said after the incident that they had retained no copies of public records in the case, giving all documents to the DCI.
The DCI, in turn, refused for seven months following the conclusion of its investigation to release reports, video, audio and other records. The DCI claimed that the documents – most were the types of records widely released in other cases – had been incorporated into an investigative file and were therefor sheltered from public release by an exemption in Iowa's open records law.
The DCI made the records available a year ago after The Des Moines Register filed a lawsuit alleging the state had illegally withheld records from the public.
The Register sought to review the official records after multiple accounts provided to the public from the DCI substantially differed, including the number of times the electrical weapon had been deployed.
OTHER CASES; NO STANDARD TRAINING
Michael Zubrod's death is one of more than a dozen cases highlighted as part of a 2013 and 2014 Register series about the excessive use of Tasers in Iowa.
The paper's investigation identified eight lawsuits filed against Iowa law enforcement agencies whose officers allegedly used unnecessary or excessive force in their use of Tasers in the past six years, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements.
Video in some of the other cases show Iowa officers tasing: a man in Burlington County who was already on his knees with his hands behind his head; a mentally-ill woman in Chariton who was already handcuffed and lying face down in the back of a patrol car; a Muscatine County Jail inmate with mental illness who refused to change jumpsuits.
There currently are no state or federal Taser training requirements, leaving departments across the state with a hodgepodge of training and policy standards, the Register found. And the training provided by Taser International – the main manufactures of the electrical weapons – said their instructors show law enforcers how to use the devices but do not instruct on what is an appropriate use of force.
Cheri Zubrod in November of 2013 told The Register that standard statewide Taser training for law enforcement and more finely-tuned methods for dealing with people with mental disorders are critically needed.
"They didn't mean to kill him on purpose. I know they didn't," Cheri Zubrod said in 2013. "But I don't think he would be dead if they wouldn't have done that."