What appears to most as a simple case of public drunkenness has put the Humphreys Sherrif’s department in the spotlight in yet another case of police abuse. Here are some of the reported facts of the case:

Darren T. Ring sustained cracked ribs and a punctured lung after he was stripped naked by deputies, beaten and shocked repeatedly with a Taser gun

The incident occurred after Humphreys County sheriff’s deputies responded to a report of gunshots in Waverly. Ring was not arrested for firing the shots but was drunk when deputies arrived, reports show. In a grand jury indictment, Ring was charged with resisting arrest, three counts of assaulting an officer and a parole violation.

The surveillance video shows deputies repeatedly telling Ring to stop resisting arrest while he is lying facedown in the snow with at least two deputies on top of him. Deputy James McCord wrote in his incident report that Ring kicked him in the testicles, poked him in the eye and tried to grab a fellow deputy’s firearm.

“He (Ring) was extremely violent towards all the deputies trying to restrain him,” the incident report states. “He was continuously kicking and spitting on the deputies.”

On the video a half-naked Ring is held down and intermittently kicked and struck with a baton for approximately 10 minutes.

Later, a Waverly Police Department officer responds to the scene as well. At that point, an incapcitated Ring is shocked repeatedly with a Taser while deputies instruct him to roll over on his stomach. In the video Ring says he can’t roll over. His attorney, Public Defender Jake Lockert, said his client was unable to move because of repeated Taser shots.

As taser is not supposed to be used as a compliance tool. It is supposed to be a weapon of last resort, much like firing your weapon, except it isn’t supposed to kill you like a gun.

Ring is requesting that he be released from prison after being held for five months in prison in lieu of bond. Ring’s lawyer states that he had committed no crime and that, even if he had, he has been severely punished for those alleged crimes. The officers involved in the incident have not been punished or suspended.

At the point in the video where the police officer is repeatedly yelling for Ring to roll on his stomach, he has, by my count been tasered at least four times. A taser will incapacitate you at that point that you are physically unable to comply. The result is that the police taser him again for not doing as he was told. It also appears that Ring is naked, while there is no apparent reason for stripping a man once he is cuffed, laying on the ground, and two officers are sitting on him.

Again, the officer yells for Ring to roll over on his stomach while another officer kicks Ring in the face. Yet another officer repeatedly hits Ring with a baton. There is no way that, when Ring is tased several times a minute, kicked in the head numerous times, and beaten repeatedly with a baton that Ring could reasonably follow any direction. Keep in mind that he was also drunk, so compliance is unlikely.

This incident goes beyond police abuse. They are torturing Ring for no reason. It is absolutely disgusting what these officers did and then lie on a police report that Ring was the violent one. The police here are nothing but thugs. Not only should they lose their jobs, they should be prosecuted for such behavior.