Really? I never posted a Use of Force spectrum that contradicts everything you pussies are screaming about “The Taser shouldn’t be used for that” bullshit? Oh… my bad.
Wow. Where did this happen? I’d be interested to read the whole story.
BTW, it sounds like all three of these incidents would have ended far differently if the officers had Tasers!
For the record, I agree.
Interesting. If it was me, and the kid was actually walking out when I got there, I would have walked with him without touching him until we were outside of the building. Then, if I intended to detain him for a Trespass Warning or citation or something, I would tell him to stop. Then I would have put my hands on him if he refused. If he shoved away from me and screamed “Dont touch me!” the I would have considered the Taser and gone that route the way the officers did.
Touching a person at all is the easiest way in the world to make a YES person become a NO person. So if he was already on his way out, I would not have touched him inside. This is the same mistake fucking bouncers make all the damn time. It’s stupid. If someone is leaving, and you want them to leave, then why the hell would you touch him? But it doesn’t mean they were wrong for that. And it doesn’t excuse the kid’s actions, which were illegal.
The fact is, the officers did have the authority to put a hand on him and escort him out. Also, it assumes he was leaving when they arrived, which we can’t see. I’m just going by the report. That is the only mistake I think the officer made. But it’s a matter of tact rather than of law.
http://www.wweek.com/editorial/3252/8148/
Here’s a long news article about the guy who died from injuries after his arrest.
OK, so the 148 people the ACLU says have been killed by Tasers between 1999 and late 2005 - they just made that up, right?
To everybody who keeps trying to compare police officers to bouncers, WTF are you talking about?
Most club bouncers I’ve seen are big motherfuckers who would be more than happy to pound your face into a bloody pulp if you give them a reason. Their job is to be an intimidating deterrent. Many of them are regular weightlifters. One bouncer at the last club I worked in was an Ultimate fighter. Your typical police officer is none of these things.
A club bouncer only needs to get the troublemaker through the front door. He doesn’t care what the asshole does once he’s outside the club. Once the guy is off of the private property, he’s no longer the concern of the bouncer. A police officer, on the other hand, has to escort the perp out of the building and into the police car. They don’t want to have to chase him should he decide to make a run for it, whereas the bouncer would prefer to see the guy run as fast and as far as possible from the club.
A club bouncer will usually have the crowd to back him up. The regular customers will do what they can to facilitate the removal of the asshole, whether that entails moving chairs to provide a clear, direct path to the door, holding the door for the bouncer, or showing a united front behind the bouncer to make it clear to the asshole that his behavior is unacceptable and that his presence is not wanted. The asshole is harshing their buzz and they want him gone. A police officer in a situation like the OP has to deal with a crowd that sides with the asshole.
Different scenarios, calling for different responses.
Fuck this. I got as far as page 2.
Now I’m ready to Taser the little shit.
Before I stumbled upon this post of yours, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I thought you may just have been a jaded cop who has been through too many troublesome arrests. But now it’s clear: You are a twisted, sadistic asshole.
Have you no sense of decency sir?
First of all, full disclosure: I am a probation officer, not a police officer. I train regularly on pressure point/pain control and compliance techniques. I also train, even more regularly, on verbal deescalation techniques. I have never been trained in the use of a Taser and have never been tased. There is a major concert venue in my county, and I regularly work with the drug task force there when “problem” bands come to town (mainly Phish or the remnants thereof, but there are a few others as well.) This is where I get my experience in arresting people in the middle of large crowds that are generally sympathetic to the suspect and hostile towards police. It is somewhat different than the situation in the video because we are expecting there to be crowd resistance and plan accordingly; there are usually at least five or six of us present when making an arrest.
Now to your question. In my experience, they don’t react well when everybody’s favorite mushroom connection is being hauled off by police. And screaming “police brutality” (or “Patriot Act” or whatever) is nothing but a ploy to try to get the crowd onto their side. So the best way to counter it is to not brutalize the guy. If the crowd hears someone screaming “police brutality,” and comes to investigate, and the police are treating the guy properly, the crowd will likely say “meh” and move along. If, however, someone is screaming “police brutality” and the crowd comes to investigate, and the police are beating the shit out of him or tasing him while he’s handcuffed, the police are going to have a lot more problems.
I agree completely with Thalion’s assessment. As I said earlier, just because you can tase a guy under the rules, does not necessarily mean you should. I work closely with police officers, and I know some that repeatedly find themselves in situations where using the taser is appropriate, while others who work the exact same beat never use theirs. If a suspect is on the floor screaming “fuck you,” like the guy in the video, it does not take much imagination for a police officer to turn that into a situation where a taser shot is allowed. However, a good police officer can often turn a situation with a guy on the floor screaming “fuck you” into one with a peaceful conclusion with just a little bit of patience and deescalation techniques. In my verbal deescalation and pressure point/pain compliance training we watch videos like this one. My trainer is an exceptional police officer who fights competitively in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. And he gets into fewer fights and violent altercations than practically anyone else in his department, because he is a master of verbal deescalation. I’m almost positive he would view this situation as a failure on the part of the officers, because their actions, while perhaps not technically outside the rules, only escalated the situation to higher levels of confrontation with not only the suspect but the bystanders as well.
The guy wasn’t tresspassing! He was a student. He had every right to be in the college’s library. His “crimes” were forgetting his ID card and being a dick to a cop. For that he got shocked with a motherfucking cattle prod.
Crap. Now Bear_Nenno will assign this view to all who disagree with him.
I’m not certain of the laws regarding trespassing, but i’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter whether he had his I.D. card or not. The staff of the library and the college police decided to eject him; from that point on, he was trespassing. They could have said “Ok, we’re not letting anyone with green tshirts on in the library” and people attired that way would have to leave.
And there’s a big difference between a cattle prod and a taser, though the taser was used in the same way as a cattle prod here.
Entrance to the school facilities are conditional upon compliance with certain rules. If you dont comply with the rules, you have no right to be there. Security, or any other agent of the premises can ask you to leave. And they have the right to make you leave, or call cops to make you leave.
Being a student has nothing to do with his right to be there. If there is a policy that “every student will present ID” or something similar, then the staff is not required to let you stay.
I’m suprised, though, that there is no “disruption of a school function” or similar law to charge him with. In my public school district back home (K-12), students can theoretically be arrested for outbursts like the one in the video.
Also, being a dick to a cop is not an offense. He could have explained to the cop how much he enjoys fucking the cop’s fat mother or otherwise acted like a dick, provided he cooperated with the officer and walked out of the library.
All he had to do was put his feet down and walk out of there like a man. He could have done all the bad-mouthing and talking and Patriot Act screaming he wanted. But he still has to cooperate and comply with lawful commands.
The comment on page 1??? Are you reading this thread backwards? If I need to apologize for the statement again, I will. This is the Pit and at that time, it hadn’t become the semiGreat Debate that it is now. That was my kneejerk honest first reaction to watching the video. If I knew I would have to explain shit I would have taken a different approach.
I might just be twist and sadistic, though.
I agree 100%, but would add that as long as a person is justified, I wont fault him or condemn him for it. If it were in person, I’d probably just say “meh” it’s a technique I guess. You just made more work for yourself, though". I wouldn’t call him a totalitarian thug or accuse him of being abusive and evil.
No I will be careful to avoid that for now on.
Really? Neat. I take back my snark, then. 
I agree he was tazered after being handcuffed, as I pointed out in an earlier statement, my original assertions were based on a film clip not as long.
As for the verbal interaction, I heard talking at the beginnning of the tape, BUT you are correct, there is no evidence to support verbal intervention on the tape since we do not know if the police ran in there and tried to tackle him immediately without ever saying a word.
My assumption that they tried verbal intervention is subject to the same flaws as outlined. However, it is far more plausible than three police officers running into the computer lab, physically engaging the subject, without speaking to him first. But, I do concede, my statement that they likely used verbal tactics was flawed. That is why I said “it highlights my point”. You see, I was acknowledging that you are right and that I am subject to these same mistakes. This is why I have simply stipulated we should use caution before calling them jack-booted nazi’s or angelic officers.
Now, were there verbal tactics good ones, did they treat him with respect and try to de-escalate the situation, I don’t know. That is something that must be investigated as well.
However, I am not able to come to conclusions and neither are you, we don’t have the information. Witness statements must be gathered, people interviewed, tapes reviewed etc… by people trained in these sorts of situations. Then, we will know.
I fully admit, my original posts about ground fighting and such were NOT RELEVANT in regards to the use of the tazer after his restraint (based on the video).
This video, in my opinion, raises SERIOUS questions, as I have said.
Just for the record, if he won’t show his ID card they won’t consider him to be a student in “his own library.”
And, hopefully, you won’t generalize your experiences to apply to a completely different situation. Personally, I’ve met both good and bad police officers; some I’d trust with my life and some I wouldn’t trust with my change from McDonald’s.
The police can only operate effectively with the help of the population. They seem to have forgotten this. I am a fifty-year-old conservative retired army officer. I do not trust the police. I am afraid of them. Someday the alienation of the public by the police will come back to bite the police.