A Palo Alto police officer fired a Taser at a man during a confrontation at Stanford Shopping Center on July 19, leaving him with a fractured vertebra and a forehead laceration after he fell face-first onto the pavement. The city's independent police auditor has now opened an investigation into the deployment, and body-worn camera footage of the encounter was released weeks later under a state disclosure law.
According to Palo Alto Online, officers were called to the mall after security guards were unable to remove a man who had been sleeping on a bench and refused to leave once police arrived. Police were called to the shopping center during the afternoon of July 19, after mall security had already tried and failed to wake and remove the man from the bench.
Per the Palo Alto Online account, the man approached the responding officer and then lunged at him with both fists outstretched. The officer warned him a Taser would be used, and when the man stepped forward again, the officer deployed the weapon. The probes struck his upper chest and head, and he fell face down onto the ground, according to the same report.
How a Taser Strike Led to a Broken Vertebra
How a Taser Strike Led to a Broken Vertebra The physical mechanics behind the injuries are not established here. The man suffered a facial laceration and fractured vertebra after landing face down.
Axon, the manufacturer of the Taser 7 devices used by Palo Alto police, instructs officers to target a suspect's lower center mass or legs and explicitly warns against intentionally aiming at sensitive areas including the head, neck, face, or chest due to the elevated risk of severe injury, per the company's own operating guidelines. The department's own policy manual similarly instructs officers to aim toward the lower center mass and upper legs when possible, and advises avoiding Taser use against underage, elderly, or pregnant suspects, as well as in situations where a suspect's position could cause additional injury, according to Palo Alto Online's reporting.
Palo Alto Police Chief James Reifschneider said the incident is under departmental review and noted that situation dynamics and subject movement may affect where a Taser probe ultimately lands, per the same report. A second officer handcuffed the man after he was tased, and he was transported to a local hospital before later being discharged.
Charges Filed as Case Moves to the District Attorney
The Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office has charged the man with trespassing, resisting arrest, and possession of drug paraphernalia, Palo Alto Online reports. Police said the case was transferred to prosecutors and that releasing the man from custody in the interim was not an unusual procedure. The department has withheld his identity.
Body-worn camera footage of the confrontation was released August 14, nearly a month after the incident. Under California's Assembly Bill 748, enacted in 2018, law enforcement agencies are required to release body-camera video of critical incidents — including uses of force resulting in great bodily injury — within 45 days unless disclosure would substantially jeopardize an ongoing investigation, according to a summary from Bbklaw. Any evaluation of whether the officer's force was justified would also be measured against California Penal Code Section 835a, which requires peace officers to use physical force only when objectively reasonable under the totality of circumstances, per FindLaw.
A Rare Deployment for a Department Under Scrutiny
The Stanford Shopping Center incident marks a striking break from recent department practice. Palo Alto Police Department tracking shows officers went roughly five years, from 2021 until July, without a single Taser deployment in the field, according to information published by the City of Palo Alto. The city's contract with the OIR Group as its Independent Police Auditor dates back to 2006, and the arrangement was expanded in June 2021.
OIR Group findings are presented to the city council on a semiannual basis, and the group will now conduct an investigation into the July incident, according to Palo Alto Online. The last Taser deployment the auditor reviewed came during a 2021 mental health call involving a person diagnosed with schizophrenia, in which an officer deployed a Taser and a supervisor separately used a pepperball munition. That review found only one Taser probe struck the person's body, characterized the deployment as ineffective for full neuromuscular incapacitation, and suggested officers may have gone too far by deploying both weapons, per the same report; the suspect was hospitalized and later placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold.
OIR Group oversight has previously reshaped department policy. An independent audit in 2014 found that Palo Alto police revised their Taser policy to ban deployments against fleeing bicyclists after auditors reviewed a 2012 incident involving a 16-year-old boy, according to Police1. The department's current Taser policy, updated in 2021, states that mere flight from a pursuing officer without other known circumstances or factors is not good cause for Taser use.
The auditor's plate is already full. An audit raised compliance concerns after finding multiple instances where Palo Alto officers failed to properly activate their body-worn cameras, as reported by NBC Bay Area. San José Spotlight reported that the city's primary auditor had a conflict of interest.
