St. Petersburg police officer fired after improperly using taser

St. Petersburg police officer fired after improperly using taser

The 64-year-old, who was in a wheelchair, did not offer any physical resistance in a manner warranting an arrest, police said in a statement.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A St. Petersburg police officer lost his job after he was accused of improperly using his taser during an arrest last summer.

A review convened by department police chief Anthony Holloway found that Officer Matthew Cavander violated department policies and procedures, according to a press release.

Holloway is expected to speak more about the case and the officer’s firing during a news conference at 10 a.m. Thursday.

Police say Cavinder, who has been with the St. Petersburg Police Department since March 2020, responded on June 20, 2021 to a call about an unauthorized beggar at a gas station on 22nd Ave. P. 4890 answered. He found a 64-year-old Timothy Grant who was wanted on pending warrants for failing to appear at a court hearing.

According to police, Cavinder was seen on body camera video using his taser multiple times without the device’s prongs as he attempted to arrest Grant, who was in a wheelchair. The department said in the press release Grant did not physically fight back in a manner that warranted being tasered.

The officers’ supervisor reviewed the use of force and body camera video and forwarded it to an internal investigation, St Petersburg police said.

Next, a report will be sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission to determine if Cavinder will retain his state certification, the release said.

The post St. Petersburg police officer fired after improperly using taser first appeared on Daily Florida Press.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Committee week in Florida’s Capitol: Welcome to the festival of ignorance

Image
Legislators came to town for the autumn ritual of political harlotry they call “committee week.” Tallahassee’s collective IQ dropped by a good 60 points. That’s bad, but what they propose doing to Florida is worse. Seems Sen. Joe Gruters, R-$ara$ota, who also is chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, was intimately involved with a plot to quash the Democratic vote. Remember that “ voting reform ” bill the governor signed on “Fox and Friends” last May? The one that restricts access to ballot drop-boxes, limits vote-by-mail applications, forbids giving people standing in long lines a bottle of water, and lets partisan poll watchers police canvassing boards? Even though Florida ran an immaculate election in 2020, Republicans goose-stepped in time with the Madman of Mar-a-Lago and claimed with straight faces they merely wanted to prevent election “fraud” — which is about as common as polar bears in Miami. (What fraud there was, was courtesy of the GOP .) Joe Gruters
Read more

Democratic governors press U.S. Senate to act on voting rights legislation

Image
WASHINGTON — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and 16 other Democratic governors are urging the U.S. Senate to pass two bills that aim to protect voting rights. Both measures need 60 votes to advance under Senate rules but have been stalled by Republican opposition in the evenly divided Senate. “Without decisive action by the federal government this year to protect voters’ access to the ballot and ensure the integrity and transparency of our elections, the voices of Americans across the country, especially Americans of color, will be suppressed,” the governors wrote in a Monday  letter  to U.S. Senate leadership. Governors who signed the letter include Jared Polis of Colorado, Tim Walz of Minnesota, Steve Sisolak of Nevada, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Kate Brown of Oregon, Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania and Tony Evers of Wisconsin, among others. One bill, known as the  John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2
Read more

U.S. House GOP would make it easier for feds to give public lands away to states

Image
U.S. House Republicans included in the new rules for the chamber they passed this month a provision meant to make it easier for Congress to give away public lands. The provision is a fairly technical piece of the 55-page  rules package . It affects internal House accounting and requires that anytime Congress were to give any federal lands to a state, municipality or tribe, it would not be counted as a loss to the federal budget. House Republicans had an identical rule when they controlled the chamber from 2017 to 2019. Advocates and critics agree the measure would be helpful to any effort by the House to transfer federal lands to states. But they disagree about the wisdom of such giveaways. Republicans and conservative groups see states as preferable stewards of most public lands. Those closest to the land are in a better position to make decisions on how to manage them than those in Washington bureaucracies, they say. Environmental groups and Democrats see federal divest
Read more