91177info2's video: 9 police have fun tasering unarmed Aboriginal man 13 times with learning difficulties

Australian police have admitted that a video of an unarmed man being Tasered 13 times showed an unacceptable misuse of stun guns. Amid questions about how often the devices were used in the country, Western Australia state police said the case was not typical of Taser use by the force. The state premier, Colin Barnett, demanded a review of Taser guidelines. The 2008 video was released yesterday, hours before the death today of a man in Sydney who was Tasered in the chest by police. Closed-circuit video footage of the Western Australia case was released when the state's crime commission introduced a report to state parliament that cited it as an example of police officers wrongfully using a stun gun. In the video, an unarmed, dark-skinned man who refused to undergo a strip search in a Perth detention facility is shown screaming after being zapped with a stun gun eight times while surrounded by nine police officers. He was stunned another five times off-camera. The commission's report said the previous actions of the man, who was not identified, indicated he was suffering from a mental illness or was affected by drugs. It did not say why the man was in custody. After an internal police inquiry, two senior constables were fined -- one A$1,200 (£730) and the other A$750 -- for using excessive force. The crime commission's report said Tasers were increasingly used to force alleged offenders to comply with orders. The report recommended that stun guns only be used when there was an imminent threat of serious injury. The report also said Aboriginal people were more likely to have a Taser used against them in Western Australia than non-Aboriginal people. It said interaction between Aboriginal people and police in the state was disproportionate compared to other groups, adding that there were complex reasons for this. Barnett said he watched the video and thought the nine officers could have restrained the man in a less extreme way. "It was excessive use of a Taser that could not be justified," he said. "I think anyone seeing that footage would find it totally unacceptable." The Western Australia acting police commissioner Chris Dawson agreed: "It was wrong, it's unacceptable, it was alarming when I looked at it and it'll be alarming when the public view it." Reuploaded from NewsOnABC's channel- http://www.youtube.com/user/NewsOnABC