The police tased a black man for an expired tag into a coma. Let's go to body cam one. Here it is. [00:00:16] Get out of the car. Get out of the car! Get out of the car now! Get out of the car! Get in the car! Get out right here! Get out of the car! Get. Down! Get down! [00:00:43] I will explain to you the background. Put up the picture of full mass. According to a lawsuit, California cop decided to pull his gun and tased the black man over expired tags. [00:01:01] While the white female on the scene who actually owned the vehicle and was thus in violation of a crime, was left unbothered. [00:01:18] Deonte Faison, a 35 year old black father. He has two children, was trying to enjoy a picnic at the park in Oakland with a friend when he was [00:01:34] confronted by police over expired tags on the car they arrived in. The car belonged to his friend, who happens to be a white woman, but East Bay Regional Parks Police officer Jonathan Nia focused his [00:01:53] attention on Deonte despite having never seen him driving the car into the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional shoreline on on April 5th, according to a federal lawsuit filed earlier this month. [00:02:12] There's more believing he was being unfairly targeted. Deonte Faison provided police with an alias. But when cops were unable to find that name of their system, they threatened to bring a fingerprint technician to the scene in order to properly identify [00:02:29] and check him for warrants. Now, once again, let me remind you he is not the owner of the vehicle. Police did not see him drive the vehicle and now they are bringing a fingerprint technician. [00:02:44] According to the scenario. So meanwhile, the white female who actually owned the car was never questioned. A question of do you own the vehicle, ma'am? [00:03:01] Never happened. And her name? The car did. Did you own the car and never had a name? Run for warrants and was never threatened with having fingerprints taken. [00:03:16] After 20 minutes of being detained and questioned, more cops arrived. Mr. Faison panicked, especially after the officer pulled out a gun and threatened to shoot him. So he ran toward a body of water, prompting the officer to chase after him [00:03:37] and Taser him in the back. Mr. Faison fell down, but was unable to get back up and immerse himself knee deep in the water, but the officer continued to tase him, causing him to collapse face first in the water, which is actually a violation [00:03:55] of department policies, a violation of any department policy. According to the lawsuit, the cops then spent the next 40 minutes watching Mr. Faison struggle to remain afloat in a frigid, cold, 50 degree water, doing nothing to save him. [00:04:11] Quote. He's not going to make it. A cop can be heard saying on the body camera. According to the lawsuit, after 40 minutes of struggling to remain afloat, 40 minutes struggling to remain afloat, Mr. Faison sank underwater [00:04:26] only for his unconscious body to resurface and begin floating near the opposite bank of the estuary. It was only then that police decided to pull his body out of the water, [00:04:43] and then they called for paramedics. The lawsuit states they also left his unconscious body on the shore for 15 minutes Without ever attempting to revive him with CPR [00:04:59] as they waited for paramedics to arrive. They did not inform paramedics that he had, That they had tasered him repeatedly, which the lawsuit states. Prevented the paramedics from providing the necessary medical treatment. [00:05:17] Six months later, Mr. Faison is still in a coma and still hospitalized. Multiple violations from the department. One, they are trained to never deploy the Taser [00:05:33] around a body of water for a suspect. Here's why. The Taser is considered to be a non-lethal device. If you're utilizing a Taser, that means you have determined that the suspect you are targeting is not worthy of lethal confrontation. [00:05:50] That's the reason you have the Taser. But if you tase that suspect that you have determined to not require a lethal interaction, you thus elevated to lethal. [00:06:07] If you deploy that Taser when the suspect is around water. That is why every police department in this country is trained to never do that. They violated the policy. He struggles for his life for 40 minutes. No one attempts to save him. [00:06:24] His body, unconscious, floats to the opposite side. They then pull him ashore and they decide not to provide any any type of aid or remedy. [00:06:40] And then on top of that, if you believed all of this was possibly just some negligence, why would they not inform the paramedics of his actual condition. According to the family, Fazang's oldest son, who's also named Dante, [00:07:01] turned 18 over the summer, graduated from high school, but his father was unable to attend the ceremony. Quote. It's just derailed our lives, all of our lives. The younger Faizon said through tears at a press conference, quote, [00:07:17] I can't go to the park. I can't play basketball. It's very hard on all of us. End quote. According to the lawsuit, which lists the East Bay Regional Park District and the Alameda County Sheriff's Office as defendants, [00:07:32] it is common knowledge that electricity and water are dangerous, a dangerous combination indeed. Officers are trained. They should avoid using a taser when a person's position creates an increased risk of injury, or when the person is located in water, mud or marsh. [00:07:50] This is part of the policy. It's part of their training. They avoided criminal penalty here. The officer should definitely have a criminal penalty. Right now there's civil litigation. The civil litigation hopefully will provide an opportunity [00:08:08] for cops to be put under oath. Sworn testimony as to what happened. One instance of possible negligence. Multiple. Now you have a conspiracy. [00:08:25] It's very sad. Jackson. The man should have gone to his son's graduation. It's an expired tag of a car he did not even own, and the officer never even saw him drive the vehicle. But here we are. We'll see you. [00:08:41] One of the most common themes, if not the most common theme, that you see in situations like this are police officers just flat out panicking. I mean, I mean, like, he he didn't have any control over his emotional state. And even at that, even if your emotions run high, you're supposed to be [00:08:58] in a position to control that so that you can properly assess the situation. So first and foremost, there's that. It's that these police officers are literally and legitimately afraid of black people and that that really can't be argued. It can't be denied. We've seen how they handle situations even when people are like, have knives, [00:09:16] you know, what's the guy's name? Who got the Burger King? After he shot up that church and they gave him. Are you hungry? You know, maybe he's hungry. You know that they have the capacity to be thoughtful in situations like that, but also, you know, 40 minutes in a body of water. [00:09:33] Like who? Who does that? Why wouldn't you bring him out of the water like that? That kind of seems like you would. Oh, oops. He accidentally passed away. Who would have thought? Who would have thought? And one of the first things you learn, even in grade school is that electricity is conducted by things like water and metal. [00:09:49] Like everybody knows this. They just flat out didn't care. And they have the authority to get away with things like that. But the biggest thing that stuck out to me about this is 40 minutes. Like, what are you doing? Like you, you want this man to die. That's what you want. [00:10:04] Because if it was your friend or your mother or cousin in a bot just just floating in a body of water, oh, we'll just leave him there like that. This is absolutely ridiculous. There's nothing else to say. And they want to be heroes, you know, and they want people to respect them in the community as problem solvers, as heroes. [00:10:21] Everybody would have agreed it's the right thing to do to save a human being who you are targeting because of a damn expired tag. That wasn't even his, by the way. But instead of doing that, you allow this man to float inside of a body of water, [00:10:37] not provide life saving care, and not even inform the paramedics who arrived. So he's in this coma until today. We will bring you updates on this case as it moves forward.