A $50-million lawsuit has been filed against the Michigan State Trooper who Tasered a Detroit teen on an ATV shortly before the teen crashed his vehicle and died this past weekend.

Attorney Geoffrey Fieger filed the lawsuit Wednesday against a Michigan State Police trooper on behalf of the family of 15-year-old Damon Grimes.

Fieger called the incident "a drive-by shooting of a child on an ATV."

"Under no circumstance should any police officer ever shoot like a cowboy out of his vehicle, out the window," he said at a news conference, flanked by Damon's mother and father, Monique Grimes and John Hughes.

The federal lawsuit was filed in Detroit today and is assigned to U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain. The suit was filed against a "John Doe" defendant as Fieger has not yet confirmed the trooper's identity. The identity has since been confirmed by the Detroit Free Press as Mark Bessner.

"The death of Damon Grimes was tragic and our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends," his attorney Richard Convertino wrote in an emailed statement to the Detroit Free Press this evening. "On August 26th, Troopers attempted to stop Mr. Grimes who recklessly and dangerously drove an ATV as he actively resisted and evaded arrest. During the pursuit, Trooper Bessner was forced to make a split-second decision under circumstances on the scene and at the moment which was tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving. We are fully cooperating with the ongoing investigation and trust the investigators will assess the facts objectively in light of the totality of the circumstances.”

As the Free Press reported this afternoon, Bessner has been sued in the past for using excessive force. Since 2013, two different civil lawsuits, both involving Tasers, have been filed against the 43-year-old for excessive force. The first, which was filed in 2013 in U.S. District Court in Detroit and settled a year later, alleges that Bessner "repeatedly struck" and "gratuitously kneed" an unarmed plaintiff, who was never charged with a crime. The second case, filed in Wayne County Circuit Court in 2015, alleges that Bessner Tased the plaintiff on "multiple and continuous occasions with the specific intent of inflicting pain," including after the plaintiff was in handcuffs.

On Saturday evening, Grimes died after crashing his four-wheeled, all-terrain vehicle into a pickup truck after Bessner reached out the window of his patrol vehicle and shocked him with a taser in an effort to get the teen off the road.

It's a violation of Michigan State Police policy to deploy a Taser from a moving vehicle.

Grimes was weeks away from starting the ninth grade at Michigan Collegiate High School in Warren.

According to Fieger ATV riding was one of the teen's hobbies, something that he enjoyed doing with his father John.

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Tasers, which have been used by police officers since the late 1990s, have been a hot-button topic in recent years — especially with increased national concern about police brutality and use of force. Those in favor of Tasers often point to the fact that the device can be used to defuse a situation without an officer having to turn to a deadly force, like a gun.

Critics of the devices, however, contend that Tasers can also be deadly. In 2015, the Guardian's "The Counted" project found that there were 47 officer-involved deaths that occurred after the use of a Taser that year. Of those deaths, all but three of the victims were unarmed, and nearly 40% of the victims were black.

The Michigan Legislature passed a law in 2002 allowing police officers to use Tasers. In June 2003, the Oakland County Sheriff's Office began using them — one of the first agencies in the state.

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The adoption has had its up and downs in southeastern Michigan. While the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners watched a presentation on Tasers in 2003, it did not adopt them — because of pushback from community activists — until May.

In 2012, the Warren Police Department decided to nix tasers. In 2009, a 16-year-old boy died after Warren police zapped him with a Taser — 50,000 volts of electricity — while resisting arrest.

Contact Allie Gross: aegross@freepress.com