This stuff only happens because of qualified immunity and taxpayers covering lawsuits. If they could be sued and had to carry liability insurance like everyone else...
Watch now: Gooding County deputy suspended after tasering elderly man during road-rage investigation
Mychel Matthews Jun 1, 2021
https://magicvalley.com/news/local/...8083df1-4df1-53f8-a945-ae020b9793ce.htmlWENDELL — An elderly man was shot with a stun gun and thrown to the ground by a Gooding County deputy Thursday afternoon after a truck driver accused the man of road rage, his family says.
Video taken by a family member shows a deputy handcuffing 78-year-old John Hall as he lay facedown in gravel with only his bloody hat cushioning his face.
The deputy has been suspended, Sheriff Shaun Gough told the Times-News on Tuesday. An outside law enforcement agency is investigating the incident.
“This whole thing is being looked at very closely,” Gough said.
Minutes before the encounter, the truck driver reported an act of road rage and told a SIRCOMM dispatcher that he thought he saw a gun in the vehicle.
“He called it in as a road rage,” the sheriff said. “He said (the driver) tried to run him off the road.
“It all went downhill from there.”
John Hall’s grandson Anthony Hall, who took video of the deputies trying to subdue his grandfather, said the truck driver was tailgating his grandfather and his grandfather simply tapped his brakes to get the truck to back off.
The truck driver followed the vehicle home and parked his rig down the road before calling 911, Anthony Hall said. His father, James Hall, was a passenger in the car at the time of the incident.
Deputies quickly responded at the Hall’s Wendell home, where they confronted the two men. Both were shot with Tasers and cuffed while Hall family members, who were preparing to go on a camping trip, demanded to know what was happening.
“You’re going to jail,” a deputy told the men as they struggled against the restraints. “You’re under arrest.”
John Hall’s wife, Verla, can be heard in a video begging the deputies to let her husband go. Her husband has medical issues, she said.
Emergency medical personnel examined John Hall and his son before they were released. Neither man was arrested.
Verla Hall was arrested by Idaho State Police for interfering with the deputies and bonded out later that evening, Gough said.
