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The family of 56-year-old Emily Delafield said it would take the Green Cove Springs Police Department to court, according to a WJXT-TV report. 

In April 2006, officers with the police department said they were called to a disturbance at a home in the 400 block of Harrison Street just before 5 p.m. 

In a 911 call made to the Green Cove Springs, Delafield can be heard telling a dispatcher that she believed she was in danger: 

Dispatcher: And what’s the problem? 

Delafield: My sister is waiting on my property. 

Dispatcher: Your what? 

Delafield: My sister (inaudible) is on my property trying to harm me. 

Officers said they arrived to find Delafield in a wheelchair, armed with two knives and a hammer. Police said the woman was swinging the weapons at family members and police. 

Within an hour of her call to 911, Delafield, a wheelchair-bound woman documented to have mental illness, was dead. 

Family attorney Rick Alexander said Delafield’s death could have been prevented and that there are four things that jump out at him about the case. 

“One, she’s in a wheelchair. Two, she’s schizophrenic. Three, they’re using a Taser on a person that’s in a wheelchair, and then four is that they tasered her 10 times for a period of like two minutes,” Alexander said. 

According to a police report, one of the officers used her Taser gun nine times for a total of 160 seconds and the other officer discharged his Taser gun once for a total of no more than five seconds. 

A medical examiner found Delafield died from hypertensive heart disease and cited the Taser gun shock as a contributing factor, the report said. On her death certificate, the medical examiner ruled Delafield’s death a homicide. 

The family said it plans to sue the Green Coves Springs Police Department now that it has all the reports regarding their loved one’s death. 

“We’re going to try to compensate the estate and the family and try to get justice,” Alexander said. 

He said he believes the evidence weighs heavily in favor of Delafield’s family and that justice will be served. 

“I think that this evidence is going to show, along with some of the evidence we’ve collected outside of here, that there is no reason Emily Delafield should have died that day,” Alexander said. 

He said he plans to file a notice to sue sometime before the end of the year.

It sounds like a classic scene from The Dukes of Hazzard:

A dozen deputies, lights flashing and sirens blaring, driving in circles for 15 miles as they chase a suspect in a stolen sports car at speeds reaching 117 mph.

One sheriff’s cruiser skids out on a patch of sand, colliding with an oncoming vehicle. Another blows a tire and pulls out of the chase. Two deputies, blinded by the dust kicked up by the stolen car on a lime rock road, crash cruisers through a T-stop intersection. One drives through a fence, the other hits a dirt berm and goes airborne.

Except, this script is real. And Sheriff Richard Nugent is not amused.

The sheriff suspended without pay a sergeant and 12 deputies involved in the 6 p.m. Thursday pursuit through Spring Hill and Royal Highlands. He said the risks “way outweighed” the possibility for arrest, especially because the incident only involved a stolen car and the deputies involved knew the culprit. The deputies violated multiple elements of the agency’s pursuit policy and endangered many area residents, he said.

Each deputy has read and signed the pursuit policy. The latest memo went to all deputies a week before this incident.

“We are not going to tolerate it,” Nugent said during an interview in his office Tuesday. “We are not going to allow our folks to jeopardize the safety of civilians out there.”

He called it a “breakdown in supervision” and placed the bulk of the blame on Sgt. Frank Loreto, who oversaw the chase and got a five-day suspension.

Loreto wrote in a newly released report that he didn’t believe the deputies violated any pursuit policies. He permitted the chase to continue despite knowing about the high speeds and moderate traffic on the roads.

Four deputies were suspended for multiple days, while the eight remaining deputies who provided backup assistance were each given a one-day suspension.

“They got caught up in the moment,” he said. “When the adrenaline gets pumping you tend to forget, you get tunnel-vision ….”

The incident involved busy roads including Mariner Boulevard and Sunshine Grove Road and ended in the Royal Highlands area where the driver, Roy Reffuse of Dade City, crashed his red sports car.

Reffuse, who admitted he was high on methamphetamine, hitched a ride with a neighbor but was caught at a checkpoint established near the scene, reports said.

The three deputies who wrecked their patrol cars could face additional sanctions from an internal review board that will convene in early January. All have previous accidents in patrol cruisers, internal Sheriff’s Office records show:

- Deputy George Loydgren, 44, who initiated the chase after seeing the stolen Mazda 6 and later crashed and went airborne, was involved in two preventable accidents, one in December 2005 and one in August 2007.

-Deputy Christopher Croft, 33, who crashed through a fence at the intersection, was involved in a non-preventable accident in November 2005.

-Deputy Derik Deso, 28, who hit an oncoming Lexus SUV, was involved in an August 2002 traffic crash.

Nugent said he personally reviewed the data on the chase and met with the entire group Tuesday to express “how disappointed I am in their actions.” The agency intends to pay to repair the damaged Lexus and to replace the broken fence.

“The way I explained it to our guys is: Is it worth your life or the life of one of your family members to catch some guy who stole a car?” he said. “And everyone of them shook their head no.”

Nugent asserted that the chase was atypical for the agency. “The majority of pursuits are terminated immediately,” he said. “This is so far out of the norm. That’s why it took some extreme measures.”

The sheriff said he is not recommending further agency wide training on pursuits because “we have done almost everything humanly possible as it relates to pursuits and controlling them.”

He said there are few, if any, circumstances to continue chases, such as murder, bank robberies or other violent crimes. “You can’t say never on pursuits,” he said, “but you have to be able to justify it.”

A 20-year-old Mountie was shot and killed in the line of duty in Kimmirut, a small community in Nunavut.At a news conference in Iqaluit on Tuesday, Supt. Martin Cheliak said Const. Douglas Scott was killed Monday night while responding to a report of a possible impaired driver. 

An individual has been taken into custody in relation to Scott’s death, but no charges have been laid.

Scott had only been with the RCMP for about six months.

“He was only 20 years old but already had demonstrated his commitment to the RCMP, to Canada and to the community he willingly served,” Cheliak said.

Scott is originally from Brockville, Ont.

Here is a timeline of events, according to Cheliak:

 
• 10:56 p.m.: The RCMP receive a call about a possible impaired driver.
• 11:02 p.m.: Scott contacts dispatch to say he is responding to the call. A short time later, calls to Scott go unanswered.
• 11:31 p.m.: A second member of the detachment is advised by local residents that the suspect had crashed into a house. Upon arrival at the scene, it is confirmed that Scott has been shot.
• 11:56 p.m.: It is confirmed that the suspect has entered his own residence;
• 4:10 a.m.: The suspect surrenders to police and is taken into custody without incident. Suspect is later transferred to Iqaluit, where he remains in custody.

 

Kimmirut is formerly known as Lake Harbour. According to the community’s website, it has a population of about 425 people, 91 per cent of whom are Inuit.

The site describes Kimmirut as a community known for its “warm, friendly people and traditional indigenous Inuit culture and way of life.”

Juanita Taylor, of the Aboriginal People’s Television Network, said it is a “dry” community, meaning alcohol is banned.

Scott’s death comes within a month of the slaying of Const. Christopher Worden in Hay River, N.W.T. Worden, 30, was shot on Oct. 6 after responding to an early morning call for police assistance.

Emrah Bulatci, 23, has been arrested in relation to Worden’s death. He was taken into custody after a seven-hour standoff at a low-income housing unit in the west end of Edmonton

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