A criminal justice expert says Avoyelles Parish law officers who wrestled a Marksville man off a tractor while serving an arrest warrant last year used too much force, needlessly escalating a confrontation that ended with the man’s death. A second expert said he doesn’t agree the officers used excessive force, but said they may have acted negligently by failing to administer aid once Armando Frank was unconscious.
A video recording of the arrest, obtained by The Advocate, shows officers growing frustrated with Armando Frank, 44, after he refuses to step down from a tractor near a Walmart store.
“His level of resistance starts out as passive. It doesn’t go to active and aggressive until he’s physically assaulted by these deputies,” Gregory Gilbertson, director of the criminal justice program at Centralia College in Centralia, Washington, told The Advocate.
Oct. 20, 2017 two sheriff’s deputies, Brandon Spillman and Alexander Daniel, along with Marksville Police officer Kenneth Parnell, tried to force Frank from his tractor. Spillman, Daniel and Parnell are named defendants in a civil rights lawsuit. There were other law enforcement personnel on the scene, according to the Sheriff’s Office, reports The Advocate.
According to The Advocate, a forensic pathologist hired by the parish said in a report that manual strangulation was the primary cause of Frank’s death. The video shows Spillman mount the tractor behind Frank and apply a choke hold while another officer tries to pull him down. At one point Frank is doubled-over. Officers carried Frank to a patrol car after his body went limp.
One officer comments, “He’s dead weighting” (a term used by officers for when suspects intentionally make their bodies go stiff) and another responds, “Where the head goes, the body must follow,” as they drag his limp body to the police vehicle.
Gilbertson said Frank’s questions as to what he was being arrested for, and who signed the warrant, were reasonable, reports The Advocate.
According to The Advocate, the report by pathologist Christopher Tape labels the death a homicide for “medicolegal purposes.” Tape wrote that officers compromised Frank’s breathing for more than six minutes by placing him in choke holds and pressing him from behind. The report, which relies on an autopsy and body camera video, also notes that officers did not attempt to resuscitate Frank.
Spillman’s neck hold on Frank was interrupted when another officer tased Frank. At that point in the video Frank could be heard breathing heavily. The struggle continued once Frank was off the tractor, with Frank coughing as he was pressed onto the tractor from behind.
Less than half a minute later, Frank “can be heard to be coughing and gasping,” Tape wrote, and law enforcement continued pressing him against the tractor for another 78 seconds. During this time, Frank said “let me up” three times “in an increasingly deep and strained voice,” Tape wrote, adding that this was Frank’s “last verbal communication.” Reports The Advocate.
See the video below:
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