Twilight Zone: Tasers and Sutphin

This blog has been following taser-related deaths over the past year. Here is an oddity that we offer for your consideration.

Sutphin is not a common name. Ancestry.com tells us that Sutphin is the Americanized spelling of Dutch van Zutphen, a habitational name for someone from Zutphen in the province of Gelderland.

Anyhow, Sutphin has come up three times in recent taser-related stories:

1. 19-year old Frank Cleo Sutphin was killed by taser guns in San Bernadino, CA.


2. Marsha Sutphin was one of five Lee County deputies investigated for firing taser guns while prison inmates were in the area. Two of the deputies have been fired for lying during the investigation.


3. 43-year old Darryl Bain was killed by taser guns in Coram, NY. The memorial service for Bain was held at David Williams Funeral Home, 108-20 Sutphin Blvd. in Jamaica, Queens.

I don't know the full significance of this Sutphin-Taser trilogy. I'm open to hearing your interpretation. What say u?

Taser Death: Frank Cleo Sutphin (San Bernardino, CA)

It happened again. Another taser-related killing by a police officer. This time the deed was done in San Bernardino, CA. Police say that a 19-year-old Frank Cleo Sutphin died after officers used a Taser to subdue him at a board-and-care facility. The death occurred on Saturday, October 17.

The police officers arrived at the facility to investigate a fight involving three people. Officers separated the trio but "one of the subjects became combative and a Taser was deployed to control him."

Sutphin was having trouble breathing, and police called paramedics. Sutphin was pronounced dead at a hospital about an hour later.

Tasers are called non-lethal, however, this is the 43rd taser-related death in America over the first 43 weeks of the year. Doesn't that seem too often an occurrence to be acceptable? Have you signed our online petition asking for congressional hearings into taser torture?