Well said.
You’re right, there, but the thing is, tasers aren’t solely used as weapons anymore.
They tase smartmouth punks to shut them the hell up, they tase hysterical & panicked people rather than talk them down, they tase crazy hobos because it’s easier than leading them to the looney bin, and more often/most frighteningly they tase to punish, like a new and improved version of the old “whoops, you bopped your head on the squad car’s doorframe, be careful kid”.
Punishment isn’t and shouldn’t be what police work is about - LEOs are supposed to keep the peace, period. Their job is to take offenders off the street with the minimum of fuss, and leave the punishment to a jury.
And it’s a frustrating job, don’t get me wrong. Which is precisely why tasers are scary - they’re just the perfect opportunity to vent those frustrations, hand out pain the perp “deserves”, or a little bit of revenge for running/insulting/hitting the cop(s). It’s hard to trace, nobody will complain, fire away. That’s the problem, not the taser itself. The taser debate isn’t about whether or not the tool is safe, or useful, or better than its alternatives ; it’s whether its usefulness makes up for it potential for abuse and frequency of abuse.
As you say, tasers are probably the safest and preferable alternative available in quite a few situations that fall squarely within the weapon’s intended use (i.e. taking hostile, dangerous suspects down safely). Trouble is, that intended use is becoming less and less what tasers are used for in reality.
The question therefore becomes, what can be done about that ?
No argument here - you are quite correct, IMO.
Police acting to punish rather than merely to arrest is is not a new problem. Your example of hitting your head on the doorframe is a good one.
There was a thread a while back about a cop arresting a 15-year-old shoplifter. It was captured on his dashboard cam. She was screaming and struggling as per usual, he was trying to cuff her, and eventually she bit the cop on the arm. And he hauled off and smacked her on the side of the head. And then cuffed her.
Now, in a way, that was indefensible. Hitting her upside the head was not going to calm her down, and was not hard enough to stun her and make it easier to cuff her. So in that sense it was punishment rather than to bring about an arrest. In a small way, therefore, it crossed a line.
What should have happened to the cop who did it? Nothing, in my view - in the context of the arrest, it hardly mattered. The mouthy teenager wasn’t injured, it is understandable than getting suddenly bitten would cause a cop who was human to react by a smack upside the head, and it can even be seen as sending the message “don’t resist and especially don’t bite - just accept the cuffs”. “Single men in barracks don’t grow into plaster saints”, as Kipling said, as well as de minimis non curat lex.
But that was a case where a Taser was not involved but the same issue of punishment vs. simple arrest came up. What I am asking is, what do you think it is about Tasers vs. other non-lethal force that makes the problem worse?
If that is what you are saying. And I am not attempting to be confrontative - it is a real question.
Regards,
Shodan
I couldn’t agree more with Shodan. I also feel that it’s unreasonable to expect LEOs to risk being bitten and worse in the normal course of their duties and if there is a way to decrease that risk and simultaneously decreases the risk of injury to the people being arrested, it’s reasonable to implement it.
ISTM that one of the points under discussion is if Tasers are safer for LEOs (and suspects) as well as easier to administer, they might be used in situations where a less violent option existed - talking the perp down, waiting them out, or whatever.
In other words, rather than waiting twenty minutes for some nutcase to calm down enough to get into the squad car on his own, you pull out the Tazer and zap him. Much faster.
What I am wondering is [list=a][li]Does it happen that way, or do LEOs think of Tasers in the same way they would a tackle or an armlock? I don’t know if or how that could be established, which is why I am asking rather than asserting one way or the other.[/li][li]If it does, is that a bad thing? I can certainly see the advantage in time and resources to a one-minute Tazering rather than a ten minute struggle where the LEOs and the suspect are both at elevated risk of injury, and limited cop resources are not spent standing around waiting for the adrenaline rush of some enraged drunk in a wife-beater to wear off. Is that worth the increased risk of death by Taser, and the unpleasant experience of said drunk being zapped? [/list]I am not sure. I can see the idea of Tasers as punishment, but that is not automatically a bad thing either. A lot of folks (myself included) tend rather often to shrug when people complain of being Tasered, and recommend the usually simple expedient of not pissing off people with weapons. Which has the drawback of causing me to miss it when there really is a wolf, as the old fable goes. [/li]
Maybe that is where the thread has morphed - is it better to Taser a non-compliant person, with the risk of death and the (probably greater) risk that a less violent solution would have worked better? If the question can be answered, can it be embodied in a policy statement that a police officer can use in a tense situation as many arrests tend to be?
Regards,
Shodan
While it isn’t illegal many police departments have a policy against apply choke holds that cut off the air supply with the LAPD being an example. In the 1960s -and maybe the 1970s- it was an accepted practice in Los Angeles for a police officer to use his baton to cut off the air supply of a suspect that was resisting. That kind of situation is a bit different from a judo match that’s got a referee watching to make sure everything is relatively safe.
Odesio
We’re discussing police increasing their violence towards people who are resisting them, but we’re kind of ignoring the elephant in the room - a fairly reliable way of avoiding police violence is to not do things that make them tase/chokehold/baton/shoot you. We all expect the police to protect us and keep our society safe, but we don’t want them to do the things it takes to accomplish that? Or we just want them to subdue violent resisters in a kinder, gentler way? If a police officer reaches for their taser instead of wading into flying fists and taking a chance on getting injured themselves, I’m basically okay with that.
As a matter of fact, I think at least one of those who died from a chokehold was from the baton choke you describe. Sleeper holds are safer as well as faster and more effective - chokes against the trachea, either with the forearm or a hard object like a baton or shin, hurt like hell but do not produce unconsciousness very quickly. Slap on a sleeper, and the guy goes nighty-night in a couple of seconds. And it doesn’t hurt at all - usually the first time you realize you have been choked out is when you wake up.
But air chokes get lumped into arterial chokes, and people blame deaths on “chokes”. Same with Tasers, of course - die of a cocaine overdose after being Tased and people will blame your death on Tasers.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s not the elephant in the room. It’s not really relevant to the discussion. If the police use tasers unnecessarily then the public doesn’t know what to do so they don’t “make” the police taser them.
This entire discussion is about the fact that police appear to be using these things in a way that is not necessary for safety or for any other purpose. When a grandmother gets pulled over for speeding and gets Tasered for arguing with the police officer, that doesn’t “keep our society safe.” This woman was tasered over and over after she was already on the ground and in handcuffs. (And she’s been pepper sprayed, and it was not a situation where any of those things appeared to have been necessary.) Beating, choking, or shooting her would not keep society safe either. It’s just an abuse of power. What people want is for cops to use these things only when it is necessary for them to do so. That’s not too much to ask.
Right. I have no problem with looking at it through Shodan’s utility calculation – is it worth it to wait out/talk down what could potentially escalate into a more violent situation, is it riskier to attempt a different way to subdue an actively resisting subject, etc.
However, when it looks like this calculation was lazily glossed over, and the use of the stun gun was more a matter of saving the officer the bother of a couple of minutes, or of shutting up someone merely obnoxious but not otherwise a threat, or of getting someone already subdued to be meek, that reservations arise.
Esentially, IMO if in the absence of these devices the person’s degree of resistance would NOT have been seen as meriting violent physical contact to take them down, then it should not merit use of the device, which is after all a safer alternative to violent physical contact.
And, however much I appreciate that LEOs are only human, that NEVER excuses the “I’m gonna teach ya to respect me!” reaction. To me “don’t do what gets you tasered” means don’t take a swing at people, don’t throw or brandish objects at them, don’t kick and bite, don’t charge at them. OTOH I’d say you can call him a “gdmn mthfing fgg*t pig” all afternoon and if you’re already cuffed and on the ground he has no real need to zap you.
Police officers risk being killed in the normal course of their duties, and if we can’t require them to risk that (and lesser outcomes), there’s not much point in having police at all.
Of course, it’s appropriate to do what we can to reduce the risks to police officers, but the idea that there shouldn’t be serious risks in the appropriate performance of their duties is grossly impractical, to say the least.
Make an attempt next time to read the sentence in its entirety. I realize it was a bit of a run-on, but I can’t believe you couldn’t understand it seeing as how you just made the same point I did.
I never said it wasn’t a risky job. Firemen have risky jobs as well, but we don’t simply expect them to get burned sans providing them with every resource to avoid that injury. We don’t send them into a burning structure without protective gear.
We’ve had instances where police have tasered people in diabetic shock, one was a man who was sitting perfectly still because he wasn’t able to move or speak because his body was essentially shut down. We’ve had instances were police have tasered people who were in the middle of epileptic seizures.
We have had countless instances of police tasering people with autism, because they weren’t able to answer questions, or follow orders or because they were presumed to be mocking the police because they exhibited a typical behavior of people with autism who are confused, which is to repeat things that are said to them.
There are people with mental retardation who’ve been tasered. Non-combative, unarmed, just confused, slow to respond and therefore “non-compliant” which is enough to justify sending electricity through their bodies.
And more and more frequently, Tasers are being used to force compliance by people with mental illnesses. Police are more and more often the first responders to scenes where people with mental illness are having breakdowns, and though these people are in the midst of a medical crisis, Taser use in these situations is increasing.
So for a good number of the people who have been Tasered, the only way for them to have “not (done) things” to “make” police Taser them would have been to not dare be in public with an illness or disability. Or not to encounter someone who couldn’t tell the difference between their epilepsy or cerebral palsy and public intoxication. Or to not have their illness worsen in a way that makes the people around them concerned for their wellbeing.
Now how exactly do you propose that they might’ve done that?
For one thing, I believe that they are excessive in what they do - getting a slap in the face, or even a full fist if you’re really being combative, that I can deal with. It’s pain I know, so to speak. Taser pain is really something else, even if it fades away quickly. Time passes very, very slowly when every bit of meat you’ve got is on spastic fire.
For a second thing, there’s no control to it. Even if it comes to actual violence in an arrest, and even if the cop feels he needs kung fu or his truncheon, a trained policeman can gauge the amount of smackdown he gives. Sometimes, just a little bop in the fleshy parts is enough of a reminder that real trouble is on the way so knock that silliness out, son.
But tasers don’t work that way - it’s all or nothing.
When all is said and done however, it’s the simple ease and frequency of use that’s the problem. I might have my nostalgia goggles on, but it really seems to me that (and this goes back to my earlier examples) cops didn’t use to, say, apply tonfas to the mouth of insulting pricks, or chokehold panicked innocents so they’ll stop yelling.
As it stands right now, more and more often LEOs go directly from “sir, shut up and do X” to “all right, eat voltage.”, without escalation, without taking the time to assess whether or not it’s really necessary, without making an effort to solve a situation some other way, sometimes without even giving the poor guy any *time *to do what they want him to do before sparks fly.
And yeah, IMO that is a bad thing - if only because 1 time in a thousand the guy just keels over. And then, what ?
I’m not even talking about people who are actively, physically resisting arrest here (because, let’s be honest, if you’re dumb enough to even think of attacking a cop, you’re pretty much going down HARD either way) - simply people who aren’t being politely cooperative for one reason or another, or who are only aggressive verbally, or who are simply too freaked out/zonked out to behave coherently.
In short, tasers lead (or seem, to me, to lead) LEOs to resort to immediate violence in lots of situations where they wouldn’t have otherwise. Which is profoundly uncool to the violencee ;).
We’ve also had mentally disturbed people standing on ledges a number of feet off the ground tazed. The predictable result of that was a lethal fall.
The officer kept his job. Because, you see, tazing someone, which makes them lose control of their muscles, while they are balanced on a object high off the ground, is within acceptable boundaries for police behavior.
Sadly, he then killed himself.
Thanks for your response.
Regards,
Shodan
Like Kobal, I’d like my police officers to be professional, competent and as confident in their abilities as they can humanly be. I don’t want some lard-ass or inferiority complex ridden fuckwit reaching for their taser just because things have gotten a little beyond their pathetically limited abilities to control. You shouldn’t be allowed on the streets arresting felons, unless you are adept enough at close quarters combat not to shit yourself everytime things get a little hairy.
You’re welcome.
To clarify/expound on what I said, I thought about it some more, and perhaps the crux of the problem is the counter-intuitive nature of tasers. Not sure I phrase or formulate this all that well, but what I mean is this :
It is intuitively, self-evidently understood by any human being (yes, even cops :D) that curbstomping somebody because they’re hurling epithets your way constitutes gross overreaction, just as it is intuitive that choking a traumatized person is the *wrong *course of action. Human beings have an instinctual understanding of physical violence. Most of us even have a natural aversion to doling it out, both out of fear of hurting the other guy, and of hurting ourselves in the process (which is why most practical martial arts courses start with teaching you how to stop pulling your punches - it’s surprisingly harder than it seems)
But for some reason, those same intuitions do not seem to fire as often as they should when it comes to tasers, to the point where LEOs will use these weapons (and they are just that : weapons, with all the baggage and implications that word carries) in situations where any other type of violence, save strong language perhaps, would be far from their mind.
I do not know *why *that is, mind you, especially since AFAIK everybody who’s issued a taser gets zapped at least once so they know how it feels and what they do. Yet there’s no empathy to be had. Perhaps the fact that there’s absolutely zero physical exertion or risk of hurting oneself overrides the notion that it’ll hurt the other, I dunno. I’m no shrink.
In any case, this factor, coupled with the fact that as I said tasers are binary devices, creates the problem : violence is used when it shouldn’t, and that violence cannot but be inappropriately over-the-top.
The problem with that is that, just like the Army, the police is perpetually starved for raw recruits. Not surprising, really : the hours suck, the pay sucks, and half the population will spit on you before they tell you the time of day.
Which in turn dictates the amount of triage and selection PDs and police academies can realistically do, as well as the amount of time they can afford to train rookies before letting them loose on the streets. Of course, this goes twice for rent-a-cops and security guards, who don’t even have the prestige of “real” police going for them.
Finally, by its very nature law enforcement appeals to bullies - I daresay the worst of them are weeded out, but again, that balancing act between the guys you need and the blokes you got dictates that a bunch of petty jerks will end up with a badge. Nothing much to be done about that, I’m afraid.
There’ll always be shitty cops. We’d better focus on ways to deal with them and limit their impact, rather than ask for a full übermensch police force - unless we’d like to have a total police force of two, I mean ;).
Tell me about it. 
I think a lot of it is this. Coupled with that is that Tasers usually leave no marks, and do no lasting damage. Even the apparently excessive and inappropriate use of the Taser in the OP does not seem to have injured the subject at all. Which, I suppose, is why it is considered a step down from the violence of a nightstick. Is that appropriate? Dunno.
Regards,
Shodan
Yeah, that’s part of the thing: if from it being a *safer alternative to *blunt force violence, it becomes viewed as it being per se a lesser level of use of force, the temptation arises to use it in situations where traditionally the threat level would not have been considered worth the risk of a violent takedown.