By Susan Sward
San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO - A medical student’s account of being thrown to the ground by officers in North Beach and zapped repeatedly with a stun gun was bolstered Thursday by two witnesses who said they watched as the man writhed and cried out when the electric charges hit him.
The witnesses’ comments followed an article in The Chronicle that described the zapping incident Dec. 17 and three other cases in which citizens allege that Officer Jesse Serna, 41, used excessive force and in some instances made racially charged remarks denigrating them.
The man being zapped “was saying ‘I’m down, I’m down’ as they Tasered him,’' said Elisabeth Chaplin, 26, one of the witnesses who gave her account Thursday.
In response to the newspaper’s account of the zapping incident and the other cases involving Serna, Police Chief Heather Fong has said she has directed an internal investigation into the cases.
Chaplin, a graduate of UC Santa Barbara who was visiting that night from her home in Southern California, said she and four friends had never met the man before they found themselves walking next to him on Broadway.
“He wasn’t doing anything,” she said. “There were four or five grown officers standing over him, and he’s not a big guy. He was lying face down with his hands behind his back before they started Tasering him.’'
The description of the stun gun incident by Chaplin and one of her friends, Amy Alton, 26, reflects comments made by voices heard on a video of the incident that was recorded by a bystander and given to Mehrdad Alemozaffar, 26, the man zapped by the device. The voices comment on how Alemozaffar’s zapping lasted a long time.
Alton, an East Bay resident who knew Chaplin at UC Santa Barbara, said: “I was crying as I watched. We were outraged. We could see him writhing. He had been a little antagonistic verbally toward the officers, but never in any physical sense at all. After he shouted ‘I’m down, stop!’ they Tasered him again.’'
Responding to The Chronicle’s account of cases involving Serna, several police commissioners said the incidents underscore the need for rapid adoption of an early intervention system, which the department says it wants running by the end of the year.
In the meantime, the department has said it has a backup system to alert it to problem officers whose performance indicates they may need intervention.
The need for an intervention system has been stressed since 2003 when both a city controller’s report and the American Civil Liberties Union called for a computerized system to track officers’ performance to catch problem behavior early on.
Sixteen months ago, in articles on the police department’s use of force, The Chronicle identified Serna as having reported using force far more often than any other officer in the department.
In the 1996-2004 period studied by the newspaper, Serna reported using force 57 times and injuring 31 people. Nine times in that period, Serna’s name appeared on the department’s own watch list identifying its most frequent users of force.
In the stun gun incident, Alemozaffar, a UCLA medical student who was visiting the city, said his problems began as he was waiting for a ride, when Serna and other officers arrived to clear the street about 2 a.m.
Alemozaffar, who says he will begin a medical residency at Harvard University in the fall, said he was dropped to the ground by officers after he told Serna he was going to make a complaint about him after Serna taunted him, telling him he was acting like a girl.
Alemozaffar said after he was handcuffed and lying face down on the street, he was hit by the stun gun 12 times. The sheriff’s deputy using the device that night, J. Reymundo, said in his report that he fired twice to help officers subdue Alemozaffar.
Asked about Alemozaffar’s assertion he was hit a dozen times, Sheriff Mike Hennessey said Wednesday: “I can assure you no sheriff’s deputy would use a stun gun on a handcuffed prisoner or they would be fired.’'
The accounts of the two witnesses differed from the deputy’s version.
Chaplin said: “The Tasering was repeated -- it was more than two. I could definitely believe it was 12.’' Alton estimated that Alemozaffar might have been zapped six to eight times.
On Thursday Hennessey’s spokeswoman, Eileen Hirst, said no one has complained to the office about the stun gun incident. But she added: “If these witnesses would like to contact us, we would be very interested in talking to them about what they saw that night.’'
Neither Mayor Gavin Newsom nor Theresa Sparks, the new president of the Police Commission, returned The Chronicle’s calls for comment on its account of Serna’s four recent cases.
But four police commissioners -- Joe Veronese, Yvonne Lee, Petra DeJesus and David Campos -- all said they hope that the new early intervention system tracking officer conduct will assure that problem officer conduct is spotted and acted on quickly.
In the wake of the zapping, both Chaplin and Alton say they were left shaken.
Alton said she feels badly because she has friends who are officers and she doesn’t want this incident “to taint my view of all officers in general. I felt sad and disappointed that these officers who were supposed to protect us engaged in behavior that was totally out of line.’'
Copyright 2007 San Francisco Chronicle
All Rights Reserved