Two former Marion police officers were sentenced to a combined 30 months in federal prison Monday after pleading guilty to use of excessive force in an April 2013 incident that involved the use of a Taser on a mentally handicapped woman at least eight times.

Eric Walters received 12 months and one day, and Franklin Brown received 18 months. Both men will serve three years of probation.

United States District Court Judge Bryan Harwell ruled over the sentencing. He said cases such as this compromise the integrity of law enforcement and cause the community to lose respect for good officers.

“This puts a spotlight on the bad cops as opposed to the good ones who put their life on the line every day,” Harwell said during Brown’s sentencing. “Unnecessarily Tasing someone is wrong, just wrong. … There’s no legitimate law enforcement conduct behind that.”

Walters and Franklin each pleaded guilty last October to one count of deprivation of rights under color of law for using unreasonable force, according to a release by the United States Department of Justice. The release says Walters and Brown were charged for their role in repeatedly using a Taser on a victim when she posed no threat to either officer.

According to case documents, during an arrest attempt, Walters used the Taser, which caused the victim to fall to the ground and injure her head. Once on the ground, Walters continued to use the Taser on her multiple times.

Documents state that Brown arrived at the scene a short time later and used the Taser on the victim even though restrained in handcuffs, sitting on the curb and surrounded by other officers.

Walters and Brown admitted in court there was no legitimate law enforcement purpose for repeatedly using the Taser on the victim. According to the release, they said she posed no threat to themselves or other officers on the scene.

The maximum penalties for their charges are up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

Stay with the Morning News as we continue to develop the story.

Hagerstown cops have released the name of a man who died early Friday after a Hagerstown cop shot him with a Taser gun Thursday night in the 400 block of North Prospect Street.

Darrell Lawrence Brown, 31, of Upper Marlboro, Md., was pronounced dead at 12:11 a.m. Friday at Meritus Medical Center east of Hagerstown, according to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office.

Police said Friday morning during a news conference that officers were unable to identify Brown immediately after the incident because he was not carrying identification.

Hagerstown Police Chief Mark Holtzman said officers had to notify Brown’s family before releasing his name.

Darrell Lawrence Brown was tased to death at this location

“It’s being classified by our department as an in-custody death,” Holtzman said.

Holtzman was joined at the news conference by Washington County Sheriff Douglas Mullendore, whose department has been asked by Hagerstown police to investigate Brown’s death.

“I just want to point out that our goal in this whole thing is to do an independent investigation that is accurate and thorough and complete,” Mullendore said.

He said the results of the investigation would be turned over to the Washington County State’s Attorney’s Office.

Investigators were in Baltimore Friday to attend the autopsy at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the sheriff said.

“It will be at least several weeks, if not a month, before we receive the actual results of the autopsy and the toxicology regarding this individual,” Mullendore said. “So again, that information will not be released until we receive it.”

Holtzman said police were reviewing recorded footage from “street-crime cameras” in the area and intended to share that information with investigators.

He said he was uncertain whether Brown died in the ambulance or in the emergency room at Meritus Medical Center.

Washington County Emergency Services dispatchers received calls from two people shortly after 10:30 p.m., police said. One of the callers said a black man wearing jeans and a shirt entered her house, then left and was seen staggering outside.

The initial investigation showed the man, later identified as Brown, entered a home at 402 N. Prospect St., according to Holtzman.

Police shot Brown with a Taser in front of the home when he acted aggressively and failed to obey the commands of officers.

“That’s where the arrest was made,” he said.

Officers placed Brown in handcuffs and put him in an ambulance, Holtzman said. Two officers accompanied him to the hospital in the back of the vehicle, he said.

Holtzman said he wasn’t sure how many times Brown was shocked with the Taser, which is designed to subdue suspects by shooting dart-like electrodes into the skin.

“Individual Tasers have a computer inside them that registers how many times they’re deployed (and) the length of time they’re deployed,” Holtzman said.

He said that information has been turned over to the sheriff’s office as part of the investigation.

Hagerstown police officers receive annual training in Taser use, Holtzman said.

Officers are trained using the guidelines of the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, an organization that sets professional standards for police agencies to follow, he said.

“We do follow standard policies for training with Tasers,” Holtzman said.

He said all five officers involved in the incident are white males and have about 32 years of combined law-enforcement experience.

The five have been placed on administrative duty.

“They’ll be assigned here to the (police station),” Holtzman said. “They will not be working the street until we’re satisfied with the internal investigation.”

The officers will be permitted to carry weapons during that time, the chief said.

Brown had convictions for drug possession, disorderly conduct, escape, and property destruction in Prince George’s and Washington counties, according to The Associated Press.

He was scheduled for a hearing May 26 in Hagerstown for allegedly violating terms of a 2013 plea deal on a second-degree assault charge.

Brown’s relatives in Temple Hills, Md.,  declined to comment when reached by telephone Friday by the AP.

As 39-year-old father of two Calvon Reid was beaten by police, hit by a stun gun, and in fear for his life, eyewitnesses claim he looked at them and said “They’re going to kill me.” Shortly afterwards, he lost consciousness. Two days later, he died of his injuries.

The police force in Coconut Creek, Miami then kept his death a secret, refusing to issue a press release about the incident. When reporters contacted city officials to investigate rumors of the death, the city claimed everything associated with the case was “confidential.”

The tragic events of February 22. began with a heavily-injured Reid, his clothes torn and bloody, arriving at the gated retirement community of Wynmoor at around 1am. He approached resident Perry Weiss in the parking lot.

“He came over to me and asked me, ‘Will you take me to the hospital?’” Weiss recalled. When a nervous Weiss declined. “He said, ‘Okay, will you call 911 for me?’ I said, ‘Certainly, no problem.’”

Weiss called Reid an ambulance, and went to leave.

“He said to me, ‘Will you stay with me?’ I said, ‘No, I can’t, somebody’s waiting for me,’” says Weiss.

Weiss left him in the parking lot, without asking him why or how he was injured.

Fellow resident Wendy Ritter was at home with her boyfriend Marc Lamorte when they heard screams coming from the parking lot shortly after.

“It was screaming, screaming like somebody was being beat,” Lamorte said.

The couple went outside and saw Reid on his stomach on the ground, hands shackled behind his back, surrounded by four officers.

“He said, ‘They’re gonna kill me! They’re gonna kill me!’” she said. “In my wildest imagination I didn’t believe he would die.”

Police asked if they knew Reid, and when they answered in the negative, they were ordered away from the scene. They went upstairs but continued to watch the scenes unfold.

“One of the cops says something to him and socks him,” says Lamorte. “He hit him. Just bam. This guy was no threat to anybody, he was on the ground. He was tied. There’s something wrong here.”

After that, “It got very quiet,” Ritter said.

Another resident, Bonnie Eshleman, testified in a sworn affidavit that she saw four officers surround Reid and pin him to the ground. While he lay prone, one officer threatened to break his arm while another hit him with a stick or baton. She remembers seeing Reid cry out to an unidentified woman stood about 25 yards away (likely Ritter):

“Baby, baby, baby, help, they’re gonna kill me!”

Eshelman states that she saw two officers drag Reid to his feet. Then, according to her testimony, the other two officers simultaneously shot him with stun guns from a distance no greater than 10 feet. They threw him face down onto the grass afterwards and she heard Reid call (for the second time) “I can’t breathe!”

At this point, Reid stopped moving and Eshelman heard officers call in paramedics. She said:

“After the paramedics stopped performing CPR on Mr. Reid they displayed no urgency transferring him to a gurney and they casually rolled him away to their ambulance .When they departed the scene, they slowly drove away and didn’t turn on their flashing overhead lights.”

We do not yet know if more urgent medical attention could have saved Reid’s life. What we do know is that he was alive when paramedics placed him on the gurney, and he did not die until February 24.

Then came the alleged cover-up.

According to the Sun Sentinel:

Days after Reid’s death, city and police officials refused to acknowledge that the incident even occurred. The Sun Sentinel confirmed the death through public records from the Medical Examiner’s Office. His family said police told them he was stunned three times. Michael Mann, the former police chief, first spoke publicly of the incident more than a week after it happened.

When police finally came clean about the death, they told the press that they used the 50,000 volt stun guns on Reid because he was being “aggressive.” However, Eshelman and her fellow witnesses refute this version of events. She says it was the police who behaved in a physically and verbally aggressive way.

“It appeared Mr. Reid just wanted to be left alone,” she said.

Weiss agrees, and now regrets leaving Reid on his own that night. He said:

“He was calm, he was pleasant, he didn’t argue. He wasn’t looking to do any harm to me, he needed help. He didn’t get wild or noisy.

Maybe I should have stayed with him.”

Calvin Reid’s father is also skeptical about the version of events given by police.

“I really don’t buy any of this,” he told the Miami Herald. “We don’t know the cause of death. We don’t know why he was there…We couldn’t talk to the doctors at the hospital. There are so many unanswered questions.”

Less than a week after publicly declaring that there was “no cover up,” Police Chief Michael Mann was forced to stand down, and three of the officers involved have been put on desk duty while an investigation is launched. According to records obtained by the Sentinel, Taser certifications had expired for three of the four officers on the scene.

This seemingly totally unnecessary death is yet another in a long line of questionable practices carried out under the stewardship of Michael Mann. One month before Reid’s death, not-for-profit news organization FloridaBulldog.org (who were first to raise concerns about Reid) reported that between 2010 and 2012 Coconut Creek police botched 82 criminal cases involving reports of child abuse — sexual and otherwise — and alleged neglect or exploitation of seniors. While senior officers like Mann have been allowed to resign, there has been no criminal accountability for this litany of failure.