Former St. Albans Officer Acquitted of Assault in Taser Case 

A former St. Albans police corporal was acquitted of assault on Friday in a trial over his use of a stun gun to arrest a suspect who was standing on a city sidewalk.

A jury in Franklin County found Mark Schwartz, the department's Taser instructor at the time, not guilty following a day of testimony, including from Schwartz himself. Superior Court Judge Martin Maley presided over the trial.

The verdict came nearly four years after the 2019 incident, which Seven Days surfaced publicly in 2020 as one in a string of excessive force complaints made against officers of the St. Albans Police Department. The Vermont Attorney General's Office filed the misdemeanor criminal charge against Schwartz in 2021.

Schwartz, responding to a report of an unruly bar patron who had broken a glass door, pulled up to Vincent Ford as the man was walking along a downtown sidewalk. Ford walked away from Schwartz toward a bicycle when he saw the blue light of Schwartz's cruiser but stopped as the officer sprinted toward him and commanded him to get on the ground. Ford asked, "What'd I do?" just before Schwartz stunned him, sending him to the concrete. The encounter unfolded in a matter of seconds. 
The key question before the jury was whether the degree of force Schwartz used to arrest Ford exceeded what a reasonable law enforcement officer would have applied under similar circumstances.

The attorney general's office said Schwartz's conduct ran contrary to department and state policies governing the use of Tasers, which are considered less-than-lethal weapons but can lead to injury or death. Prosecutors Paul Barkus and Robert Lees noted that Ford was not fleeing or acting violently when he was struck with the incapacitating electric shock. They emphasized that Schwartz gave Ford mere seconds to comply with commands.

Ford "needed to be arrested" that night, Barkus said during his closing argument. "But he needed to be treated like everybody else, treated humanely, treated by law enforcement who follows the rules."

Schwartz's attorney, Robert Kaplan, cast the charges as politically motivated in the wake of nationwide protests in 2020 against police brutality. The officer did nothing wrong, Kaplan argued. His client was merely "trying to protect the very community that he's now sitting in front of."

"It's a sad day when being a police officer means that being second-guessed renders you a criminal defendant in a courtroom," Kaplan told jurors.

Schwartz testified that Ford's actions in the seconds before being Tased indicated that he did not intend to comply with orders.

"His intentions were to get on that bike and ride away, but I interrupted his decision-making process," Schwartz said under cross examination. "So now he has to decide what his next move is. So he says, 'What'd I do?' to buy himself a little bit of time."

The defense also presented expert testimony from Steven Ijames, a former assistant police chief in Springfield, Mo., who consults on police practices. Ijames said that Ford's stationary position constituted "active resistance" to the officer's commands.

The state did not present any expert witnesses to counter Ijames' position, nor did Ford testify. Vermont State Police Det. Sgt. Drew Cota, who reviewed evidence for the state, testified that Ford was no longer fleeing or resisting when Schwartz Tased him.

Schwartz was one of three former St. Albans police officers who were charged with assault for their conduct against suspects. Former sergeant Jason Lawton recently pleaded guilty to assaulting a handcuffed woman in a holding cell. Maley sentenced him in December to three months in prison.

An assault case against former corporal Joel Daugreilh, accused of pepper-spraying a handcuffed teen in the same holding cell, is still pending. In that case, Ijames provided the state with an opinion describing Daugreilh's actions as inappropriate.
In trial testimony on Friday, Schwartz compared policing in St. Albans to the "Wild West." The former officer, who resigned from the department in March 2020 amid an internal investigation, testified that he left law enforcement because it was exacting an "unbelievable toll" on his life and health.

"You change fundamentally as a person," he said. "There's no time to decompress. There's no time to, you know, explore your emotions and how you feel about these things."