Kansas City:
And in a shocker, the Pentagon determines that shit the Pentagon did is not illegal:
Shortly after I retired from the Navy, I wrote to my congresscritter about an ongoing fraud on the US military bases in Japan and I even provided evidence of that fraud. Do you want to take a wild guess who the congressional committee responsible for oversight appointed to determine the validity of my accusation? Oh, yes. They selected the very people I accused of committing the fraud.
So, yeah. Twenty years on and the more things change, the more they stay the same.
# Georgia officer fired after video shows him using stun gun on woman during arrest
I cannot see the video. But I gotta say, from the description, it sounds like the officer’s actions were reasonable and correct.
If you can see the video, do the actions of officer match the description in the article?
911 is called because woman is suicidal; law enforcement arrives and helps her fulfill her wishes by shooting her–resulting in her death.
While it’s certainly possible law enforcement didn’t have alternatives, I wish they were better trained to deal with the mentally ill.
So nothing at all about the written description of the event strikes you as unreasonable? 
Unless I am missing something, no.
Cop called and he arrives. He sees video of suspect, and was directed to the house when suspect is alleged to reside. He goes to said house, visually identifies a suspect. Suspect is verbally combative. Officer makes several attempts to calm suspect down before informing her she was under arrest. Then suspect becomes physically combative.
“After several warnings, the officer told Smith that she was under arrest. Smith resisted a lawful command and refused to be placed in handcuffs. After refusing to be placed in handcuffs, she was warned that she would be tased. After she resisted the officer’s commands she was tased and placed in handcuffs,” the press release states. “After she was placed in handcuffs she kicked the officer and continued to be uncooperative.”
The article implies, but does not directly state, that Smith is the suspect identified in the video.
When Oxford went to the home of the suspects, he recognized a person on the porch as one of those in the surveillance video, according to the release. Smith began yelling at Oxford, and the officer yelled back and told her that she could be arrested if she did not let him do his job.
Is any of that contradicted by the video?
Tasing should only be used to deal with a threatening subject, never to enforce compliance.
ETA: That’s not the only problematic part of that encounter.
I didn’t watch the video; just reading “and the officer yelled back and told her that she could be arrested if she did not let him do his job” was enough for me to know why he prolly got fired: he was escalating the situation. Throw in the gratuitous cursing at her and yeah, I think he’s not in the right job. His employer thought so too and fired him.
Also, the article does NOT say that Smith was a suspect in the original incident.
The officer was verbally combative and actually escalated the situation. Swearing at someone while shouting that they are required to ‘calm down’ is not an actual attempt to calm a person.
According to what you quoted, she refused to follow his commands but did not pose any sort of threat to the officer. According to the police in other encounters and several LEO-affiliated posters on this board, use of a taser is dangerous enough to justify deadly force in response, there are multiple police killings that are justified because a suspect had their hands on a taser (in some cases, an inoperable one known to be inoperable by the officers). That doesn’t sound like there was an actual justification for use of force, like her physically threatening the officer, but rather that the officer was a typical thug looking for an excuse to torture someone into compliance.
My take is that warning someone that you’re going to use dangerous force in the form of electrical torture against them doesn’t justify the torture or use of dangerous force. But torture and life-threatening behavior by police seems to be well accepted by a certain segment of people.
Not just some people; MOST people. 11 years ago I asked the question right here on the Dope and responses were overwhelmingly in favor of police being able to cause harm in order to force compliance.
Didn’t count up replies, but at least there was a bit of pushback.
And I would say that there is a big difference in context as well. If you are arresting a murderer, then maybe a bit of forced compliance is justifiable.
But in a situation like this? No. Just no.
Police shooting in Kenosha WI. The video is almost unbelievable, except that we’ve seen this again and again. They just shoot him in the back, out of the blue, when he’s walking around to get in his car.
This follows a shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana, under apparently similar circumstances.
This is the guy armed with a knife (or something else shiny that clanked on the ground after he got shot), multiple felony warrants , and trying to reach into a vehicle after being told to, “Stop!”, by multiple cops with weapons drawn?
Just trying to be sure we’re on the same page here. Carry on.
You want to give them the benefit of the doubt – feel free. But don’t expect everyone else to join you, not with the history of law enforcement treatment of black people in America.
This is literally the argument she made at trial, and she was convicted, because the law in Texas doesn’t support this defense.
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There is no knife. Nothing shiny falls to the ground. Why would you make something like that up when we can all see the video?
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So what if he had outstanding warrants? They’re cops, not judges.
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Why does a cop have to shoot you for trying to get into your car? Whose life was in danger?
That looks like murder.
Aye; I noted that by quoting the later part of the article that made it clear the jury rejected that defense.
I wondered about that claim too, especially since he added the “clanked” part, like he heard it.