Friday, September 30, 2016, 9:45 PM

Friday, September 30, 2016, 9:45 PM

Muskogee Police Chief Rex Eskridge has requested the Federal Bureau of Investigation to look into an August 7 incident where an elderly woman was pepper-sprayed by police and her son was tasered after police kicked in their front door following the son’s refusal to stop for police and flight into the house.

The department’s internal investigation found that the pepper spraying of 84-year-old Geneva Smith was justified, as was the breach of the house.

Three officers were placed on suspension without pay for aspects of the event unrelated to the pepper spraying, Eskridge said. Another officer was reprimanded.

The discipline was as follows:

One officer was suspended for inappropriate deployment of his taser

One officer was suspended for failing to appropriately decontaminate Smith and provide medical attention to her son, Arthur Blackmon, when it was requested

One officer was suspended for inappropriate comments

One supervisor was issued a written reprimand

“We have changed our policy to increase the level of resistance before our officers deploy a taser,” he said. “In the new policy, they must now be actively resisting, not passively resisting, and I think that’s a good change.”

To avoid the possibility of impropriety accusations, Eskridge requested the probe by the FBI, and the bureau agreed to look at the case and has already acquired videos and reports relating to the event.

“If they find anything actionable, we’ll hear about it,” he said. “But if they don’t, we probably won’t.”

Community activists had been calling for heads to roll at the police department after the event, which led to the NAACP crying racism in the hiring and training at the police department. The internal investigation found none of that, Eskridge said, but he will leave final judgments until the FBI has finished its investigation.

“We want to be a hundred percent transparent on this,” he said. “We want to make sure no one’s human rights were violated.”