I'm sorry, but that story still sounds fishy to me.
As a one-time member of law enforcement (and as an aside, my naval security forces reserve unit is activating me so I'll sort of be back in law enforcement for most of 2011), it's my experience that when you have somebody dead-to-rights, the only recourse they have left is to claim that you had it in for them in some way. If you are of a different ethnicity/race, then you're clearly racist, and if you're the same ethnicity, you're on a power trip or something. I've lost track of how many times I've issued somebody a parking citation and they'll come up to me (typically after writing up half a dozen
other cars similarly illegally parked) and claim that I'm writing them up because I'm a racist (because it was clearly a
black person's car).
Crooked cops exist. I won't argue the point, but I've honestly never encountered one (I have been accused of
being one, though). Still, even if there
was some sort of criminal wrongdoing on the part of the cops, the story still sounds suspect.
Did anybody pick up on how
everybody was out to get him? First it was the cops, then it was the county sheriff guys,
then it was the doctors in Wyoming,
then it was the medical people in Utah... There's this huge conspiracy to screw this one guy. The doctors in Utah note that it was really strange that he was intubated in Wyoming (clearly as an attempt to keep him from communicating), and then
they intubate the guy (so this guy manages to get into the only two hospitals in the country that aren't concerned in the least about medical malpractice lawsuits, apparently). If he was put on a ventilator (for legitimate reasons) then he was probably in respiratory distress. You don't typically get that from an a**-beating. Also, he supposedly was beaten
and tased, and that he
lost consciousness as a result. That happens all the time on TV, but not so much in real life (you get hit with 50Kv, you only
wish you could be unconscious for the event). So either the cops tased him, and
then beat the ever living sh** out of the guy while he was unconscious and probably dying from cardiac arrest from the taser, or something (in the business, we call this sort of thing "attempted homicide under color of authority"). Otherwise, they beat him senseless, and
then elected to tase the guy for good measure.
Moreover, you don't generally go into full-blown cardiac arrest from a taser (the only really plausible way that he would have legitimately needed to be put on ventilation), unless you either have a serious heart condition or are into some serious drug abuse. Statistically, most of the people who do actually go into cardiac arrest after getting tased, are serious drug addicts. I would
bet you that the guy does methamphetamine or cocaine or something similar, and when the cops showed up, he got combative with them, they took him down and tased him to gain compliance, and he went into cardiac arrest. His story is
possible, but that one sounds far more
plausible.
I'm sorry, but I call bullsh**.