Six people in one fucking week die of tasers…What the hell is going on here? When did this shit even begin? I have always been a fan of law enforcement officers, but this shit is ludicrous.
I say bring back the big sticks. Cops don’t need to fucking shock people. If a cop can’t defend himself against an unarmed man with the use of a stick, then he shouldn’t be a cop. They don’t need these tasers, which are ridiculous.
Police brutality is a tricky subject, surely, but this shit has gotten out of hand. It’s fucking sadistic if you ask me.
Well, the bad heart thing rings particularly true to me. America is chock full of obese people with clogged arteries and weak hearts. Even athletes can have bad tickers. I’m no doctor, but my understanding is that electrical shock can be traumatic to the heart. And there’s no way for cops to know whether someone can withstand the tase.
ETA:
On posting, I see the comment about people abusing authority. I don’t advocate abuse of authority, but resistance to authority is often both reasonable and morally compelling. It is much easier for the authorities to abuse people than the other way around.
Morally compelling maybe, but still against the law. I don’t think having a bad ticker gives you a pass on behaving badly or physically assaulting police officers.
If a cop threatens me with tasing, I think I’ll comply and fight the charges in court.
It’s a statistical anomoly that 6 people died recently. Police aren’t averaging 6 people dead per week…according to AI , there have been 150 taser related deaths since 2001. My guess is more people died using tooth picks in that same period.
I think this is another instance of people being very bad at risk assessment and statistic, to be honest. People die of all manner of weird shit. Kids hit in the chest by a baseball die occasionally from their heart stopping. That doesn’t mean we should stop little league or change to nerf baseballs.
If the officers in question are using the things incorrectly, or inappropriately, then that is something that can be fixed. But to take a tool away because some very small percentage of people are at risk?
If I understand your reasoning correctly, so long as you do things the way you believe is right, it is okay if others are executed for doing things differently. Just curious … what do you recommend for *armed * resisters? Dousing their wives and children with gasoline and setting them on fire?
Those who do not submit themselves to the will of the state will be punished. If a police officer is pointing a taser at your chest you probably shouldn’t (as depicted in the linked video) walk away while mouthing off. I would comply with his orders and/or lay on the ground in a prone position.
As for the woman who was handcuffed and being tasered repeatedly, well, I’m sure she deserved it. Perhaps she insulted the officer’s manhood.
I can not wait until they deploy the device which emits an area of effect radiation curtain which makes the target’s skin feels like it’s on fire. Goodbye, demonstrations! Go back to France where you came from.
I think it’s probably true that police officers are more likely to use tasers than guns or sticks because they’re not seen to be dangerous, so that many people are being tased when the situation doesn’t call for it.
Take my friend. He’s a beast of a guy, about 6’4, 275 pounds. He looks very intimidating, but he’s really a teddy bear.
He had the misfortune to turn down an alley where cops were breaking up a brawl. He didn’t do anything threatening, but the cops immediately ordered him on the ground. He said, “What the hell, I’m not doing anything,” and started backing up with his hands in the air.
He got tased. Now, the next part makes him seem kinda crazy. He pulled the little taser thing out of his chest and threw it on the ground. He immediately got jumped by no less than 6 officers, who tased him again when he was on the ground and in handcuffs, because he was yelling that he didn’t do anything.
A bystander got it all on film, and he’s suing.
I understand the other posters who say that you should follow the cop’s instructions and let the courts figure it out, but in some situations I know I wouldn’t have the presence of mind to keep my mouth shut. Like if I walked down the wrong alley at the wrong time.
That’s a decent possibility, but we could also just accept the cost-benefit trade-off. Not letting police have tasers could lead to an even larger number of dead suspects from beatings and choke holds, and possibly dead police officers as well. The stats to compare might be those of a particular police department in the two years before and two years after adding tasers to their arsenal.
Demanding zero dead suspects just makes the cops useless, unable to physically engage any suspect, anytime.
I thought my position was clear - there are officers who are misusing Tasers. IMHO, that is the problem.
There are many things in our society that are ‘approved’ as good for us as a whole but cause accidental deaths such as inoculations, for example. My point was that compliance, as legally required, will go a long way solving the problem.
Be that as it may, power can drive people to cruelty and corruption. If you watched the video, you saw that in at least one case, the “resistance” consisted of walking back to his car during a traffic stop. Like I said, it is easier for those in authority to abuse those who aren’t than the other way around. A guy with a gun thinks he’s powerful, and he puts up a powerful resistance. But that’s not what happened in any of the five cases. No one was armed. No one offered any significant resistance. One didn’t even speak English. They did not deserve summary execution.
There’s nothing tricky about police brutality. There’s a simple answer: any use of force beyond the absolute minimum necessary to apprehend a suspect and/or keep him from killing or seriously injuring other people, is wrong. The cops who do it would be punished with bloody lashings and humiliating community service work if I ran the world.