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BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
The Palo Alto Police Department has released a video of an officer using a taser on a man at the Stanford Shopping Center, bringing him to the ground and fracturing a vertebrae in his neck.
The video from July 19 shows the man sitting on a bench and arguing with an officer and a security guard after they woke him up and told him to leave the mall.
The man got up, walked toward the officer and threw his hand out.
The officer told the man to back up and asked if he wanted to go to jail.
“You’re going to get tased, dude. You’re going to get tased” the officer said. “Do it,” the man said as he walked faster toward the officer in front of the New Balance store.
The officer shot his taser into the man’s chest, and the man’s body tensed up and fell to the ground. He laid face down yelling on the ground, with his forehead bleeding, for about three minutes until a second officer arrived to handcuff him.
Paramedics took the man to the hospital. Prosecutors charged him with resisting arrest, trespassing and possessing drug paraphernalia.
At the hospital, the man apologized for his actions, City Manager Ed Shikada said in an Aug. 14 email to council.
The use of force will be reviewed by the city’s police auditor, Shikada said.
The police department posted the video online on Aug. 14 without any public notice or announcement.
Assembly Bill 748 took effect in July 2019 to require police departments to release audio and video recordings within 45 days when officers use force that results in “great bodily injury,” including a broken bone.
Palo Alto police last released body-worn camera footage from July 3, 2025, when officers pulled a man off a stolen bicycle and broke his wrist.
Before that, police officers broke the tip off a man’s finger with a rubber bullet on Dec. 23, 2023. The man reportedly strangled his wife and head-butted his son, and then refused to come outside of their home.
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