Ex-police chief jailed for tasing inmates

A former Mamou, La. police chief was sentenced last week to prison and another former state police chief pleaded guilty to civil rights violations after a probe into excessive force found that both used Tasers to discipline non-combative jail inmates, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Reuters News Service reported that former Mamou police chief Gregory Dupuis, 57, who filled that post from 1994 to 1997 and from 2004 to 2014, was sentenced Tuesday bu U.S.District Judge Richard T. Haik (Western District of Louisiana) to one year and one day in prison.

The sentence comes as a national debate continues about the use of excessive force, particularly against people of color, in the wake of a series of officer-involved killings of Black men and boys in cities like Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore, Md., Cleveland, Oh. and New York City.

Former Mamou police chief Robert McGee, 44, who stepped down from that post on Oct. 8, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to violating an individual’s civil rights. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years behind bars and a $250,000 fine at his sentencing, which has not yet been scheduled.

Reuters reported that both Dupuis and McGee admitted using Tasers to punish inmates at the Mamou jail who were being disruptive, “even if the inmates’ disruption was purely verbal, and on inmates who were calm and compliant when the officer deployed the TASER,” according to a DOJ press release.

With a population of 3,500, Mamou, La. is located about 85 miles (137 km) west of Baton Rouge.

According to the DOJ release, in 2010, Dupuis was called to the jail because of a verbally combative inmate. After the inmate complied with his order to get down from his bunk and put his hands on the far wall, Dupuis applied a taser to his back, causing him to collapse in pain, injuring his knee, the release said.

That same year, McGee and an inmate were having a conversation and, “although the inmate posed no threat to himself or the officers, McGee fired the TASER at the inmate,” causing him to collapse in pain.

“Law enforcement officers have a duty to ensure that detainees are treated fairly and humanely when taken into custody,” said U.S. Attorney Stephanie Finley. “Mr. Dupuis and Mr. McGee breached that trust and violated their oaths by using excessive force on incarcerated individuals.”

This article originally published in the October 19, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.