Instead, officers devised a plan to take BearHeels back to a bus station. After BearHeels barged out of the back of a cruiser, his hands cuffed behind his back, officers tried to corral him. Payne pulled the trigger on a Taser 12 times during that encounter.

“It breaks my heart right now because that was my baby,” Chalepah said.

Frank LaMere, a Native American activist from South Sioux City, Nebraska, said he plans to go to the Mayor’s Office on Tuesday and wants to talk to Schmaderer about officers’ callous behavior.

LaMere expressed outrage at flippant comments Forehead was accused of making after he was told of BearHeels’ behavior that night. “Oh you’ve got a (expletive) retard,” Forehead said, according to an officer who spoke to him. Forehead denied using the term.

“There was nobody on earth that night that needed help more than Zachary BearHeels,” LaMere said. “He was in need of help, and we did not give it to him.

“We should be shamed.”

Payne’s defense team noted that regret doesn’t equal guilt in excessive-force cases. Under U.S. Supreme Court rulings, police use of force must be “objectively reasonable” — based on the split-second decisions the officer had to make, not based on hindsight.