"The penalty for resisting arrest should not be death."

RICHMOND, Virginia - January 11, 2009 - An autopsy will decide whether a Virginia teenager was officially electrocuted by police in his own home on Thursday night.

17-year-old Derrick Jones of Martinsville was pronounced dead at a local hospital following an encounter with a police officer that ended in a Taser blast and immediate attempts to revive him by the officer, and later paramedics.

Jones, 15-year-old Justin Gregory and three others spent the day roughhousing in Jones' duplex apartment, according to Gregory. Alcohol was involved, and altercations between Jones, at one point lying down in the middle of the street, and Gregory, resulted in neighbors calling the police.

Officer R. L. Wray found signs of forced entry and blood on a wall, said by Gregory to be caused by the teens over the course of the day, and leaned into the living room of the apartment with his Taser drawn. Jones, who had been drinking, was said to have "moved rapidly" towards the officer while making unspecified "not too kind" comments.

Jones was immediately unresponsive after being Tasered halfway into the living room, according to Gregory, who disagreed with the officer's account and said that regardless of the situation, "too much force" was used on the 130-pound teen, who stood at 5'7". He told his mother that Jones "just melted" on the floor. "It was the last time they saw him move."

The officer was "well within the guidelines" of department procedure in using the device on Jones, according to Police Chief Mike Rogers. The department's "Use of Force" policy states that the Taser is only to be used when less drastic methods would facilitate the subject's escape or expose others to physical injury.

"You have people who are often in custody, and when they are in custody and it's being used repeatedly on them, it's hard to describe it as anything else but torture," Amnesty International USA's executive director Larry Cox told CBS' Early Show in November 2007.

"The penalty for resisting arrest should not be death," Cox said.

Virginia State Police are investigating the incident.

Ed. Note: When is enough, enough?!  It is time to kill the murderers.  The police are murderers with a badge. If you refuse to fight them, then you are condoning their criminal acts and acting like cowards by contributing to the destruction of the Republic.

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Police Chief Mike Rogers 276-403-5300