Police are looking into whether perhaps Tasing a naked man holding an 8-foot-long flourescent bulb so that he plummets of a high precipice to his death is a little…. hmmm…. excessive. 35-year old Iman Morales stood on a 10-foot high roller gate in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, shouting at and poking cops who stood on a fire escape nearby. Dozens of people stood around to gawk and take pictures as, eventually, cops saw it fit to Tase Morales, causing him to lose his balance and fall onto the sidewalk below:

The lieutenant who gave the order was placed on modified assignment, the statement said, while the officer who fired the device was given administrative duties.

The statement said that the officers at the scene had called by radio for an inflatable bag as the events unfolded, but it had not yet arrived when the man, Inman Morales, 35, was struck with the device and fell.

“None of the E.S.U. officers on the scene were positioned to break his fall, nor did they devise a plan in advance to do so,” the statement said, referring to the Emergency Service Unit.

Quick thinking there, Brosephs. Morales’ mother had called police to say that her son was emotionally disturbed. Apparently, he had a chemical imbalance and was believed to have had reacted badly to a medication. When police arrived, he fled out the window of his third-floor apartment, trying unsuccessfully to enter an apartment on the 4th floor. When he could not, he stayed on the roll-down gate, jumping up and down. When Morales began poking an officer who was attempting to climb the second-story fire escape with an 8-foot long flourescent light, an officer standing on the sidewalk used his Taser, whereupon Morales lost his balance and fell as witnesses — including his mother — looked on:

“He wasn’t hurting anybody. They could have just grabbed him and bring him down but they Tasered him instead and he fell to his death and it was real wrong,” McDonald said.

Added a witness named “Kyle:” “The man was isolated for minute … and then he just fell to the floor. They had about eight cops that could’ve break the fall. They just moved back.”

Witnesses said police did nothing to break Morales’ fall, and his mother was standing just a few yards away.

“The mother was screaming, ‘He’s gonna fall!’ And they said, ‘Step back.’ They wouldn’t allow the mother to talk to him,” witness Charlene Gayle-Gordon said.

And because we’re all a bunch of sadistic assholes, video footage of the proceedings are available:

A video taken by a witness and posted on the Web site of The New York Post on Wednesday shows Mr. Morales naked on the ledge, waving a long light bulb over the heads of officers as onlookers screamed, in an eerie soundtrack to what soon followed.

“It was a dead man’s fall,” said a witness, Charlene Gordon, the property manager for the four-story brown-brick building.

No, hey, it’s ok. Don’t try and get a ladder or convince cops to wait for that mattress to be delivered. Just take a YouTube video.

Taser Use in Man’s Death Broke Rules, Police Say
NYPD Taser Death Sparks Outrage In Bed-Stuy [WCBSTV]