The NYPD says the use of a Conducted Energy Device, commonly known as a Taser, on a man who ultimately fell to his death from a Brooklyn building appears to have violated department guidelines, and that a lieutenant involved has been placed on modified duty.

Officers called to the building on Tompkins Avenue in Bedford Stuyvesant found 35-year-old Iman Morales naked and standing out on a fire escape. Police say that as they tried to calm him down, he began waving an eight-foot long florescent light bulb at them.

That's when police say an Emergency Services Unit lieutenant told an officer to use a Taser on him, which caused Morales to fall to the ground. Morales was taken to Kings County Hospital, where he died.

"He was a very, very quiet guy," said building superintendent James McPherson. "He don't give no trouble. He doesn't have too many visitors in the building. I don't know what happened all of the sudden he flipped like that."

Witnesses say Morales' mother had come to her son's apartment to take him to a doctor's appointment. When he became emotionally disturbed, concerned tenants called the building's manager.

Members of the community had questioned the officers' handling of yesterday afternoon's incident – which was caught on amateur video.

"He's sickly, you know, he feels like he has the need to jump and that's the only thing you came up with?" said one local resident. "There was no Fire Department. There was no trampoline. There was no net to catch. There was nothing said. You taser him and he falls head first on the ground and there was no comeback, nothing. And his mother was there like 10 feet away. It was like, come on."

"If you are going to Taser him, break his fall," said another local resident. "He would still be alive. He might have been a little stunned, in the hospital, but he would have still been alive."

The NYPD says department guidelines state the Taser should not be used in situations where the subject may fall from an elevated surface.

The NYPD also said that an inflatable bag had been ordered to break the man's fall, but it had not yet arrived on the scene when Morales fell. A statement from the department goes on to say that none of the officers were in a position to break his fall, nor had they come up with a plan to do so.

The lieutenant who told the officer to use the Taser has been placed on modified assignment, while the officer has been assigned to administrative duties.

At a news conference this afternoon, State Senator Eric Adams, a former police officer, called for 40 hours of training for police by licensed psychiatric specialists.

"You can suspend a police officer. You can put them on desk duty or modify them," said the lawmaker. "Those are Band-Aids on the broken bones of this system."

Just recently, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said he was open to making Tasers more widely available to members of the NYPD, after a study by the Rand Corporation said their use in tense situations could lower the risk that civilians or officeres could be seriously hurt.