Police release information on officers who tased Raleigh man who died in police custody
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Death of Darryl “Tyree” Williams
Ongoing coverage from The News & Observer on the tasing and death of 32-year-old Darryl Williams in Raleigh police custody on Jan. 17, 2023.
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The Raleigh Police Department released information on the six officers placed on leave last month after a 32-year-old man was tased with stun guns and died in police custody.
Personnel records show that the first of two officers who tased Darryl “Tyree” Williams has been on the police force for over three years and the second officer for less than six months.
Officers struggled to detain and arrest Williams for allegedly possessing drugs outside a sweepstakes parlor in southeast Raleigh, according to a police report issued after the incident.
The officers approached him around 1:55 a.m. Jan. 17 while conducting “proactive patrols” of businesses in the 800 block of Rock Quarry Road.
Police say Williams resisted arrest and pulled away from officers’ grasps before Officer C.D. Robinson first tased him.
Robinson, 25, has been a police officer since 2019, personnel records requested by The News & Observer show.
Williams fell after being tased the first time, managed to get back up and ran before falling over and struggling with officers.
In 50 seconds, Williams was tased twice more: Officer J.T. Thomas tased him in the side of his body, and Robinson then tased him again, in the back, according to the report.
Thomas, 22, has been a police officer for about five months as of February. He was promoted from being a pre-hire recruit last September, according to his personnel file.
Williams told the officers “I have heart problems” before he was tased the third time, according to the report released by Police Chief Estella Patterson.
The Police Department has asked a judge, as state law requires, for permission to release the officers’ body camera footage, police spokesperson Lt. Jason Borneo told The N&O. He did not know how long that might take.
Four other officers arrived at the scene to assist in detaining Williams.
All six officers are currently on paid administrative leave as the death is investigated by police and the State Bureau of Investigation, which is standard procedure.
Officers arrested Williams around 2 a.m., but he quickly became unresponsive and stopped breathing. Officers performed CPR until an ambulance arrived, the report stated.
He was pronounced dead at 3:01 a.m. at a local hospital.
The SBI will send the findings of its investigation to Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman, who will determine whether the officers acted lawfully during the encounter.
How often Raleigh police use tasers
Police deployed tasers on 24 people in 2021, according to the Raleigh Police Department’s 2021 Professional Standards Report.
Police tased 21 people in 2020 and 46 people in 2019.
Tasers emit 50,000 volts of electricity to temporarily paralyze a person.
More than 500 people have died in the United States after being tased by police, according to Fatal Encounters, a national watchdog organization.
The N&O has requested more information from police about taser training policy and what percentage of officers have them, as well as the nature of proactive patrolling methods.
Williams is not the first person in Raleigh to die after being tased, reported ABC11, The N&O’s news partner.
In 2013, police tased Thomas Sadler, 45, several times. He stopped breathing while handcuffed afterward, according to a police report. Sadler was naked and yelling outdoors in an apparent mental health crisis when police were called, INDY Week reported then.
Activists call out ‘Jim Crow’ policing
Civil rights organization Emancipate NC claims Williams, who was Black, was racially profiled when officers approached him at his car and found a white powder on him that looked like cocaine and an open container of alcohol.
Emancipate NC, which previously called for criminal charges against Raleigh officers in two fatal shootings by police last year, organized a Jan. 24 news conference with Darryl Williams’ mother, Sonya Williams, who did not speak but wept during the event.
Emancipate NC leaders Dawn Blagrove and Kerwin Pittman criticized the police department’s report and the use of “proactive patrols.”
“This report is designed to malign the victim, to malign the murder victim,” said Blagrove. “It doesn’t natter what they found in his car. What matters is that on that night, he was bothering no one. He was minding his own business.”
Police stated in their report of Williams’ death that they recovered two firearms and “suspected controlled substances” during a search of Williams’ vehicle. Williams was unarmed during his altercation with police.
Durham Beyond Policing is also calling for accountability in Williams’ death. The group held a news conference this week calling for the expansion of HEART, which stands for Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Teams. It’s a city-funded initiative that launched last summer and sends an unarmed team of trained responders to some 911 calls.
Activists in Durham called for the expansion of the HEART team after the January death of Tyre Nichols, a Black man fatally beaten by police in Memphis, Tennessee.
Each speaker at the news conference in downtown Durham mentioned the death of Williams in police custody, The N&O reported.
Staff writer Virginia Bridges contributed to the reporting in this story.
This story was originally published February 2, 2023 at 3:04 PM.
