Mark Bessner
Michigan State Police Trooper Mark Bessner, charged in the Taser death of teen Damon Grimes, who was riding an ATV in Detroit, was involved in 40 "use of force" incidents in less than four years, the Detroit Free Press reports. One of those incidents happened just three days before Grimes died last Aug. 26.
Bessner also had been disciplined previously for Taser misuse. He's charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter in last summer's death.
Grimes crashed and flipped his four-wheel ATV after Bessner fired a Taser during a chase on Detroit's east side. It'sthe most severe in a string of disturbing episodes involving the trooper, who resigned amid a criminal investigation into his conduct, report Ann Zaniewski, Elisha Anderson and of the Detroit Free Press.
“It doesn’t sound like he should be a police officer. . . . Those are totally inappropriate behaviors," Geoff Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina who has researched police pursuits for more than 30 years, tells the Freep.
