COLUMBIA FALLS – The actions of a 77-year-old Korean War veteran with advanced dementia brought on by Alzheimer’s justified police using a stun gun on him, an attorney for the Columbia Falls Police Department argued in court documents filed Tuesday.
Stanley Downen died last year, 3 ½ weeks after wandering away from the Montana Veterans’ Home in Columbia Falls and being tased by police.
Downen fell face-first and struck his head on the pavement after the stun gun was used on June 1, 2012. When medical personnel arrived they found him lying in the street face-down and handcuffed.
He died on June 24.
In the police department’s response to a lawsuit filed by Downen’s granddaughter, attorney William L. Crowley said Downen refused to drop rocks he had picked up during the confrontation when ordered to by police, and was tased when he drew back his arm as if to throw them.
“Mr. Downen’s use of profanity and his action to throw rocks was effective consent to or provocation for the conduct used against him,” Crowley wrote in the department’s response to the lawsuit.
Tamara Downen of Columbia Falls is suing the police department, the veterans’ home and the Montana Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the home, for wrongful death. She accuses the various parties of negligence, assault, battery, malpractice and civil rights violations.
Downen had only been a resident at the veterans’ home for a day when the incident occurred.
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His granddaughter’s lawsuit says the home is at fault for letting Downen wander away in the first place, and failed to interact with him “in a way that did not exacerbate his dementia.”
Involving the local police department further escalated Downen’s dementia-related behavioral problems, the lawsuit says.
In responding to such a call, it goes on, “the Columbia Falls Police Department officers had a duty to avoid causing Stanley harm.”
“The defendant’s officers used a taser to subdue a 77-year-old Alzheimer’s patient with advanced dementia, who had not injured anyone,” the lawsuit states. “Stanley posed little or no threat to the defendant’s officers, or any other bystanders, considering his weak mental and physical conditions.”
Downen, it says, was simply confused, disoriented and agitated by his new surroundings.
The lawsuit also accuses staff at the home of lying to Downen’s family, telling them that he had been hospitalized after tripping and falling while running.
“It was not until two days later that Stanley’s family discovered Stanley had been tased by police,” the lawsuit says.
“Mr. Downen’s own negligent acts or omissions caused the damage or injuries to himself and his heirs,” Crowley wrote in Tuesday’s filing. Nothing the officers did during the incident “was motivated by an evil intent, involved callous or reckless indifference to the federal rights of Mr. Downen and his heirs, or involved actual malice or fraud.”
It asks for a dismissal of the claims made against the Columbia Falls Police Department, and for the city to be reimbursed for its costs in defending the department.
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