Taser use cited in man's death; prosecutor considering charges against West Milwaukee cops

Adam Trammell, who suffered from schizophrenia, was naked in the shower when West Milwaukee police broke down the door to his apartment and Tased him repeatedly, according to his family and attorneys.

He later died.

The Taser use was a significant condition leading up to the May death of Trammell, 22, according to the medical examiner’s report. The Milwaukee County district attorney is reviewing possible criminal charges in connection with the officers’ actions, Police Chief Dennis L. Nasci confirmed.

Body camera footage captured the last moments of Trammell’s life, according to his parents and lawyers. They were allowed to watch the video in the district attorney’s office in December, seven months after his death.

In it, Trammell was in the shower, drinking water from a plastic jug, when the police burst through the bathroom door, according to his father, Larry Trammell.

“The only reason why people should get Tased is that they’re doing something. He wasn’t,” Larry Trammell said in an interview. “I just seen him drinking water. He’s off balance, Tased, hit, then they Tase him again. They kept saying, ‘Don’t move.’ Tase. Tase. Tase.”

“It was horrible. My son was screaming. He was tortured. Crucified.”

Attorney Robin Shellow, who along with attorney Mark Thomsen is representing the Trammell family, says Trammell was Tased 15 times.

The autopsy report lists more than two dozen cuts and bruises, including a black eye. Trammell also had a broken rib.

In the section for other significant conditions, the report includes this: "Struggle with physical, electrical and chemical restraint.”

The medical examiner categorized the manner of death as “undetermined,” meaning there was not enough information to classify it as accident, homicide or natural.

Two of the West Milwaukee officers involved remain on full duty as the investigation continues, Nasci said. The third has relocated and taken a job with a different department.

In larger departments, such as Milwaukee, it is standard procedure to place officers on desk duty during such inquiries.

Nasci said he could not discuss Trammell’s death due to the pending investigation. His department and the West Allis Police Department, which was called for backup, cited the same reason in denying the Journal Sentinel's public information requests for the video and police reports.

“When there is a death of an individual, I understand that people want answers,” Nasci told the Journal Sentinel. “But until I know absolutely what the district attorney’s office is going to do, I won’t be releasing any information.”

Unresponsive in the ambulance

Adam Trammell had been placed in the apartment building in the 5400 block of W. Greenfield Ave. by a caseworker from Project Access, a social service agency for people with mental illness, according to his parents.

On the morning of May 25, a neighbor called police because Trammell, who had knocked on her door, was “acting strangely” and “running around naked,” according to the medical examiner’s report.

He had not threatened anyone or brandished a weapon.

At some point after the West Milwaukee police first Tased Trammell, they called West Allis for backup.

When paramedics arrived, Trammell was handcuffed and struggling on the ground. They gave him two sedatives, ketamine and midazolam, in an attempt to calm him down, the medical examiner’s report says.

By the time they got him into the ambulance, Trammell had stopped breathing and had no pulse. He was pronounced dead within minutes of arriving at the hospital.

'A believer all the way'

About two years before his death, Trammell survived a similar incident, his parents said.

He was living in Milwaukee at the time and police were called because he was outside naked. He ran from officers who chased him, Tased him and took him to the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex.

“I kept asking, ‘Were you on drugs? What made you do that?’ ” his father recalled. “He finally tells me that God created us naked and he was showing God that he was a believer all the way.”

Larry Trammell, who once worked as a minister, tried to explain that Adam and Eve soon covered themselves. But his son protested that they only did so after they succumbed to temptation in the Garden of Eden.

When his parents worried, Adam reminded them that God was protecting him.

The last time his parents talked to him, they were all on the phone together, listening to a recorded Bible study. Kathy Trammell still carries her son’s Bible, its pages marked and crinkled, its covers missing.

She said his proudest achievement was graduating from high school — something not all his five older siblings were able to do. He struggled in school because of his mental illness and was sometimes bullied because his mother was white and his father was black.

Kathy Trammell said she tried to teach her children to value their uniqueness.

“I told them they have the best of both cultures,” she said.

Larry Trammell said he never had issues with the police and always taught his children to respect law enforcement.

“I told them if you’ve got problems, you call the police. You can’t handle things in your own manner,” he said. “I taught them, you’ve got to be careful when you go out in the world.”

The father paused.

“But he wasn’t even out in the world. He was in his own home.”

Risks of Taser use

Nasci, the police chief, did not respond to an email requesting his department’s standard operating procedures for Taser use.

Tasers have been used by thousands of law enforcement agencies since the early 2000s.

Tasers are designed to produce a low-level shock that temporarily immobilizes someone, making it easier to apply handcuffs. When an officer pulls the trigger, two wires with probes on the ends are released and become embedded in the person’s body. Each trigger pull results in a 5-second burst of electricity. Holding down the trigger results in a continuous flow of electricity.

A training guide disseminated by the state’s Law Enforcement Standards Board states that electronic control devices should be used primarily if someone is actively resisting, which “involves a subject who is physically counteracting an officer’s control efforts — under circumstances in which the behavior itself, the environment in which the behavior occurs, or officer/subject factors create a risk of bodily harm.”

The guide urges officers to consider whether someone is likely to fall before deploying a Taser. Water does not affect the devices or cause the risk of electrocution, according to the guide.

Once heralded as “nonlethal,” Tasers are now marketed as “less-lethal” — less likely to result in death than guns.

The company that produces Tasers, now called Axon Enterprise, told Reuters last year that only 24 people had died from its devices.

But Reuters uncovered "1,005 incidents in the United States in which people died after police stunned them with Tasers." The news organization noted that "it's impossible to know precisely what role the Taser played in many of the deaths."

Reuters obtained autopsy findings for 712 of the 1,005 deaths it documented. In 153 of the cases, "Taser was cited as a cause or contributing factor in the death, typically as one of several elements triggering the fatality," according to the news organization.

Deaths are rare when Tasers are used properly, according to the company.

In training materials, which can be found on its website, the company presents “smart use considerations.”

Among the recommendations is to give someone “a reasonable opportunity to comply before force is used or repeated,” and to “be able to justify every … trigger pull or 5 seconds of discharge under the specific circumstances presented.”

Death by excited delirium

The medical examiner listed the cause of Trammell’s death as excited delirium, a controversial condition often cited when police use force.

Symptoms of excited delirium include aggressive or bizarre behavior, paranoia and high body temperature. Although pathologists cite the syndrome as a cause of death and emergency room doctors have procedures to treat it, excited delirium is not recognized by the American Medical Association or the American Psychological Association.

Excited delirium syndrome can be caused by drug use, untreated psychiatric problems or extreme stress, according to Deborah Mash, a neurology professor at the University of Miami who has studied it for more than 20 years.

Taser use can be a contributing factor, as can genetics, she told the Journal Sentinel in a 2014 interview following the death of Tony Bean. Bean's death, like Trammell's, was ruled as excited delirium after a confrontation with police.

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Mash's lab has developed a postmortem test for a defective brain chemical that she believes puts people at greater risk.

"We train law enforcement to recognize this as a medical emergency,” she said. “The plan is to get EMS there and to get them to the emergency room. Not every excited delirium patient who gets to the emergency room is going to be saved, but many are now. There's a critical window of time where an emergency room intervention will be successful."

But Werner Spitz, a pathologist and co-author of "Medicolegal Investigation of Death," known as the "medical examiners' bible," has called excited delirium “kind of an unproven theory."

'Something is wrong with our police'

Trammell and his father had plans to someday build a church on their family’s land in Arkansas.

The thought of doing it alone pains Larry Trammell, although he is certain Adam is now with God.

His parents want justice, and they want to prevent others from suffering at the hands of police the way Adam did.

“Something is wrong with our police,” his father said. “They’re using those Tasers instead of using their minds and trying to communicate.

“This should not have happened.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the findings by Reuters.