Arapahoe County – A 34-year- old inmate at the county jail died Thursday after deputies used a Taser to restrain him.
Sheriff Grayson Robinson has asked the 18th Judicial District Critical Incident Response Team, which usually investigates police shootings, to investigate, rather than using his own personnel.
“I elected to deploy their assets to ensure as fair and thorough an investigation as possible,” Robinson said.
The Sheriff’s Office identified the man as Raul M. Gallegos-Reyes of Aurora.
The incident occurred the second day of the inmate’s incarceration at the Arapahoe County Detention Facility. Gallegos-Reyes was under $2,000 bail on domestic violence and auto theft charges.
Robinson said the inmate began banging on his cell door and screaming about 4:15 a.m. Thursday, when deputies tried to subdue him.
The number of deputies in the cell reached five as the man fought back, biting two officers hard enough to break the skin. At that point, the deputies decided to use a Taser, Robinson said.
Afterward, Gallegos-Reyes was restrained in a chair for about 10 minutes when he lost consciousness, Robinson said. Deputies performed CPR, then rushed him to Parker Adventist Hospital, where he died.
The death is the second involving a Taser this month in the metro area.
Ryan Michael Wilson, 22, died Aug. 4 after he was hit with a Taser by a Lafayette police officer. Wilson had been approached by police regarding marijuana growing in a field. Wilson then ran from them, officers said.
A Taser can discharge 50,000 volts of electricity for five seconds.
Gallegos-Reyes is the sixth inmate to die in police custody in Colorado in 2006, according to the state Department of Public Safety. Three were ruled suicides and two were called justifiable homicides, according to the agency. Robinson said he knew of no other time that an inmate in the 1,400-bed lockup has died after he was stung with a Taser.
Six people in Colorado and 212 nationwide have died after a Taser’s use since 2002, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Mark Silverstein, legal director for the ACLU in Denver, has urged law enforcement to reconsider their use of Tasers for years, citing cases where the devices have resulted in deaths.
“One reason why police officers like these things is they don’t have to be as hands-on, to engage someone in a struggle,” he said.
A spokesman for Taser International could not be reached Thursday.
The company’s website states that its devices were used 9,833 times in the first quarter of this year, with six incidents of severe injury, including cardiac arrest.
Don Leach, administrator of the jail in Lexington, Ky., spoke against using Tasers at a national jail administrators conference in Longmont in January. He said Thursday that the decision to use the devices should be limited to higher-ranking officers, and only when other alternatives to subdue an inmate have failed, including simply ignoring someone making noise.
A national expert on incarceration issues, Leach said he had visited the Arapahoe County jail many times and considers it one of the best.
“My criticism of the use of Tasers in jails is that they’re most often used on the individuals at the greatest risk: people with health problems, people with mental health problems, drug users, people with excited delirium who have worked themselves into a frenzy, and then when you use a Taser, that’s when we’re most likely to end up with a death in custody.”
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-820-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
