A Council Bluffs man is demanding answers from the Omaha Police Department, claiming he was tasered three times while asleep. The department denies it ever happened.

It's a powerful tool in the hands of police officers, 50,000 volts of momentary shock, intense pain and usually compliance.

Orrin Sterba doesn't know why police were looking for him or why an officer tasered him three times.

He says he was asleep in his father's Omaha home last July 6th. Sterba says his girlfriend let officers in the house and three of them entered the room where he was sleeping. Then, according to Sterba, one of the officers tasered him three times while the other two were cuffing him.

"The next thing I know I'm being tasered, handcuffed and taken away in a police car and I even asked them when I got outside, why didn't you just try and wake me up?" asks the 53-year-old Sterba.

"I'm sleeping and you attack me and then you come out and tell me you're sorry."

Omaha police say that didn’t happen.

According to their records, it occurred on June 28th and Sterba was suspected of shoplifting.

He was cited, there was no physical confrontation and a check of the officer's taser shows it wasn't used.

In a statement to Channel 6 News, Omaha Police say, "Based on a review of the incident and an audit of the taser, possessed by the only taser certified officer present, it does not appear as if the taser was deployed on this date in question."

Sterba's attorney says he's represented too many people tasered by police and that OPD needs to change the way officers use tasers and the order has to come from the top.

"I have case after case after case where people have come into this office and complained that they've been tased," says Sterba attorney James Martin Davis.

"If the mayor doesn't do something to bring in the police department with respect to this case, he's going to need a few more million dollars for something other than the stadium."

What happens next may be in the last line of the OPD statement, which says if Mr. Sterba wants to pursue legal action, he can contact the city law department.

Davis says the police department's credibility is at stake and he's calling on the department to release the names of the officers involved as well as all police reports.

In a news conference late Thursday afternoon, Davis presented a witness who claims he saw Sterba get tasered.