opps!!!! cops lost videotape of jailers tazering an inmate!!!! Original Article Mar 3, 7:51 PM EST Prisoner in coma after jailers use Taser; tape of incident lost CLEVELAND, Tenn. (AP) -- The Bradley County sheriff has asked for a federal investigation because an inmate fell into a coma after he was shocked with a Taser by jailers who then couldn't retrieve the jail video of the incident. Sheriff Dan Gilley said in a statement that he asked the Justice Department to investigate after questions arose about the Feb. 24 arrest of Christopher Levert McCargo, 42, on a public intoxication charge. Arrest reports show McCargo told Cleveland police he had been drinking and smoking crack cocaine and marijuana. The Taser manufacturer has warned that use of its weapons should be kept to a minimum on people who may have a drug-induced condition known as excited delirium. John Wolfe, a Chattanooga attorney acting as a spokesman for McCargo's family, said Friday that the man is in serious condition at Cleveland Community Hospital. "He is still comatose," Wolfe said. He said family members "have questions with respect to a video of Chris when he was in the jail and how that video was treated." Bradley County Chief Deputy Bill Griffith said other video overlapped the sequence that would have shown what happened when officers used the M26 Taser on McCargo by holding it to his body. Griffith said Friday that McCargo "became combative" at the jail while officers were attempting to book him about 30 minutes after his 5 p.m. arrest. He said McCargo was shocked "enough to get his attention, to get him seated." Griffith said the Taser probes had been removed so its shock was "greatly minimized." The probes are used when the Taser is fired at a distance but a surface shock can be applied without them. The chief deputy said McCargo was seen walking around and eating a sandwich up to 3 1/2 hours after he was shocked. Officers monitoring him on the jail video called emergency medical workers when they later saw him slump and go into a seizure. Griffith said the video recorder cycle restarted between the time the Taser was used and the seizure started. Officers retrieved tape of him eating the sandwich and going into the seizure but couldn't get the earlier footage, he said. The sheriff's statement said an internal investigation found that the officers followed department policy. The statement also said there "have been no documented cases of stun devices causing death or serious injury, however, the ingestion of cocaine can certainly bring on all kinds of medical problems and I believe this will be the conclusion of the inquiry into this incident." A June 2005 bulletin sent to law enforcement customers by Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Taser International, Inc., advised officers to take steps to reduce the amount of time a Taser is used on a subject showing signs of excited delirium. It advised officers that they need to begin physically restraining a suspect at the same time he is being shocked to shorten the suspect's exposure and avoid overexertion or impaired breathing that could lead to death. Griffith said he was unsure if Bradley County officers received that warning. "It seems to me that is something they should have known," Wolfe said. Nashville authorities have established a new Taser policy in response to the September death of a 21-year-old man shocked 19 times by officers trying to arrest him when he was acting strangely outside a nightclub. He told police he had been using drugs, and an autopsy showed he died of excited delirium. The Nashville policy directs that suspects thought to have excited delirium will be restrained by officers until paramedics can administer a shot of tranquilizer. Nashville police got their warning from Taser about excited delirium before that death.