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ONGOING COVERAGE: POLICE CHIEF SEARCH

Lingering aftershocks

Man says 2004 Tasering left damage below the surface

Tasers, like this one worn by an Eastern Washington University officer, are carried by Spokane law enforcement. (Dan Pelle The Spokesman-Review ) Also today Police oversight on trial Lingering aftershocks of 2004 Tasering Boise a model for civilian police oversight How complaints get to the Citizens' Review Commission

Karen Dorn Steele
Staff writer
June 25, 2006

When Otto Zehm died in spring after being Tasered and bound by Spokane police, Spirit Creager's pain and fear flashed back.

The 34-year-old painter of custom homes hasn't spoken publicly about being stunned repeatedly by a Spokane County sheriff's deputy on a summer night in front of his girlfriend and their two children nearly two years ago.

But Creager agreed to talk about his experience after the death of Zehm, a 36-year-old mentally disabled man who worked as a janitor. The two men did not know each other.

"These cops are out of control," Creager said. "They have no idea what they are doing to people. They ruined our lives."

The single father who grew up on Spokane's South Hill said he was too afraid to complain directly to law enforcement officials about his treatment in August 2004 during a traffic stop – a necessary first step for a review of his case by the Spokane County Sheriff's Office, which has its own internal system to review citizen complaints.

His counselors later told him in a diagnosis that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that left him unable to sleep, work or function normally for months.

"I've never been so scared in my life," Creager said. "I couldn't even walk into the courthouse. I almost left the country twice. Now, in the last few months, I've been able to deal with it."

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When he tried to report the incident to Spokane's Citizens' Review Commission at City Hall in 2004, Creager said he got no response. He didn't know it reviews occasional complaints only about Spokane Police Department officers, not sheriff's deputies.

Creager went to the wrong place and should have filled out a complaint form with the Sheriff's Office, said spokesman Sgt. Dave Reagan.

"If he's unwilling to talk to us, we can't explain our side or hear his side. A complainant that refuses to come forward does himself no justice," Reagan said.

Kathy Whiteaker said her son, named Spirit Emmanuel from the Bible and one of six siblings, has always been a gentle person. The preschool teacher said his traumatic experience has convinced her that law enforcement agencies shouldn't be allowed to investigate themselves.

"We've never had any bad experience with the police, but we've seen this whole other world since this happened," she said.

Creager's encounter occurred after he and his girlfriend, Mattie Whitney, a recent Eastern Washington University graduate, had worked late on the night of Aug. 30, 2004, remodeling his 1906 Victorian house on West Broadway.

They were headed to Colbert to spend the night with her father because the electricity was turned off in the Spokane house. Their plan was to sell it and use some of the money for Whitney to get her master's degree in biology.

Their children, Joshua and Ashley, 11 and 8 at the time, were asleep in their 1974 yellow Dodge pickup along with their dog, Thai, when a Spokane County sheriff's patrol car stopped them on Dartford Road north of the city around 11 p.m.

At that point, accounts of the incident differ markedly.

In his report, sheriff's Deputy Chad Ruff said he told Creager he had a burned-out tail light and a suspended license and ordered him out of the truck. Ruff said Creager looked like he'd been drinking, became angry and tried to hit him. Ruff said he delivered three jolts from his stun gun after Creager resisted being handcuffed.

The young couple, however, said that from the start, Ruff was strangely aggressive for a traffic stop.

"He kept jerking his head. Something wasn't right," Whitney said.

While Ruff approached Creager behind the truck, Whitney said, a second officer, Deputy Todd Saunders, ordered her out of the car at gunpoint.

"He told me to drop to the ground, and he kicked away my cell. I was face down in the gravel with a gun pointed at me," she said.

After Ruff pulled out his Taser, "it was chaos," Whitney said.

"I saw a flash of bright light. They knocked Spirit down. Ruff had his boot on Spirit's neck and head. He continued to stun him more. I wanted to get the kids away from there, but there was no way – I could have gotten shot," she said.

The stun gun caused a pain "worse than I have ever imagined," Creager said in a written account of his ordeal, which he provided to the American Civil Liberties Union in Seattle. "I wanted to roll under the truck so my son wouldn't have to see this. … When it stopped, I lay facedown, and I couldn't breathe. My mouth was full of gravel." Several of his teeth were broken during the 50,000-volt jolts.

Whitney finally grabbed her cell phone and called her mother, who arrived at the scene.

"Chad Ruff was apologetic. He said, 'I'm sorry this got out of hand,' " Whitney said.

In his incident report, Ruff doesn't mention an apology. He said Creager went through "extreme mood changes" at the scene.

Several hours later at the Spokane County Jail, Creager told Sgt. Tom Thompson of the patrol division that he "kinda snapped" during the incident, according to Thompson's report. Creager said the officers' reports "twisted" his words.

Photos taken at the jail on Aug. 31, part of a Use of Force report that documented the incident, show Creager with bloody knees, a scrape on his right shoulder and red marks from the stun gun barbs on his back. He has painter shorts on and no shirt.

The worst emotional damage was that the incident happened in front of Creager's young son, who was in the truck canopy with the dog, said Richard Whiteaker, Creager's stepfather. The retired computer expert who worked for IBM and Spokane Industries adopted Creager as a young boy.

"Spirit felt extremely humiliated," Richard Whiteaker said. "Joshua is doing well, but he has no faith in the police force. Those two kids probably won't be going to the police for help."

Creager, who had no criminal record, spent three days in jail.

At the time of the incident, Richard Whiteaker said, he wanted to go to the press, but Creager's lawyer discouraged it as he negotiated a plea bargain over charges of driving under the influence, obstructing an officer and resisting arrest.

It was a mistake to remain quiet in a "good old boy" town, Richard Whiteaker said.

Creager's Breathalyzer test registered his blood-alcohol level at 0.058 – under the 0.08 legal limit. Creager said he'd shared a six-pack and pizza with his four-person remodeling crew hours earlier and would never have driven impaired with his kids. Ruff said in his report, however, he thought Creager was acting impaired.

On Oct. 15, 2004, the DUI and resisting arrest charges were dropped on a motion of the Spokane County prosecutor. Creager pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstructing an officer. He still owes court fines that he can't afford, and those fines have led to several license suspensions.

In their reports, Ruff's supervisors said his use of the Taser was "reasonable under the circumstances." But they also said Ruff, who had worked for the department since January 2001, should have made better use of verbal commands and hadn't told Creager he was under arrest.

This lapse had been "previously discussed in earlier use-of-force incidents with Deputy Ruff," according to Rick Van Leuven, the shift commander.

Failure to advise a suspect he's under arrest causes "complications" for a resisting arrest charge, according to a report by Thompson.

At the time, Creager was building his career, making about $50,000 a year. He'd worked with a Seattle architectural firm on a $1.3 million Hayden Lake cabin featured on a 2003 New York Times Home Magazine cover. He'd also worked on the Davenport Hotel and on several large homes in Spokane and North Idaho, sometimes assisting his father, custom-home builder Doric Creager.

But after the incident, Spirit Creager was unable to work for months. Noises at job sites triggered memories of the sound of the Taser puncturing his skin and delivering its muscle-clenching shock. His touch was also impaired.

"From September to November 2004, my arm was numb to the elbow. My fingers felt like they were charred. At night, I'd sit up screaming, and I'd be having the same physical pain as when I was being Tasered," Creager said.

"It happened for months," Whitney said. "He had nightmares about the cops coming into the house."

"He was a productive member of society before this happened. He's now on state assistance for medical problems," stepfather Richard Whiteaker said.

Creager is also convinced the stun gun further harmed a weak heart valve he'd had since childhood. In February 2005, experts at Sacred Heart Medical Center thought he might need a heart transplant. He's now been stabilized with medication, said his cardiologist, David Wysham.

"Tasering is potentially injurious," Wysham said. "He may have been Tasered inappropriately. But unfortunately, Spirit has a malformed heart valve. I hate the idea he got Tasered, but I don't think it caused his heart problems."

It's possible that Tasers aren't being used in Spokane the way they were intended, said Breean Beggs, executive director of the Center for Justice, a public-interest law firm studying their local use.

"They were originally intended only to be substitutions for guns," Beggs said. "That doesn't seem to be the policy here – they are being used for compliance against people and animals. It's human nature to use these weapons if you possess them – that's where training comes in,"

Every incident involving force is reviewed, Reagan said. The Sheriff's Office also has a citizens' advisory board to discuss a variety of issues, including Tasers, he added.

Creager's attempts to file a complaint went nowhere. The Seattle ACLU mistakenly referred him to Spokane's Civilian Review Board at City Hall. The city's Web site refers complainants to the Washington State Human Rights Commission – which has no jurisdiction over police complaints. Nobody told him about the separate Sheriff's Office complaint process.

Because Creager didn't go directly to the sheriff, "his only recourse would be to file a claim against the county or go to the press," Reagan said. "If he was too fearful to approach us, he could phone down here, and the forms could be mailed to him."

Following the death of Zehm in March, Creager's mother has been poring over recent articles on Tasers, including a February 2005 U.S. Army report that concluded they can cause ventricular fibrillation, a chaotic heart rhythm that can kill. The Army has rejected the weapon for troop training because of the potential hazards.

Spokane needs an unbiased, independent commission where experiences like her son's can be reviewed, Kathy Whiteaker said.

"Our son has been damaged on all fronts," she said. "It happened to him and to Mr. Zehm. It will continue until someone says, 'Stop.' "