Just as a side note, I am curious how many of you have actually attempted to restrain someone who is fighting you with every ounce of their body and soul to not be restrained. I believe St. Urho stated it earlier, but I’ll just reiterate it for those who missed it.
It is a bitch to tie someone down who doesn’t want to be. Saying “just put them in cuffs” doesn’t make it magically happen. Even with training and experience I regularity use 4-6 people to tie someone down who is fighting me. Because of this I won’t initiate the fight until I have that many people unless absolutely necessary. Granted, we generally don’t use pain compliance, just brute force. Because of this patients have gotten hurt and other paramedics have gotten hurt.
For paramedics a taser is not an acceptable tool to restrain someone, but I sure as hell understand why a police officer has one.
I didn’t become a paramedic to fight with people, but it is occasionally a part of my job. I think police officers have the same attitude. More so, I don’t want to get hurt while I am at work. Anything I can do to avoid that, including not fighting fair, I’ll do.
To echo you, echoing me , our restraint protocols call for a minimum of 5 people to restrain someone. It usually works best with 6, if you can get them.
Um, I DIDN’T become a cop because I want to get into fights. I wanted to help people. Sometimes I’m forced to get into fights, if I absolutely can’t avoid it. If I can win that fight without me or the other guy being seriously hurt, I think that’s a good thing.
As I’ve said before, I agree that tasers are being overused and used improperly. Law enforcement agencies need to refine their taser policies to address this, and allow their use only when it is really appropriate.
And upon what do you base this rather nasty accusation? I don’t believe I’ve ever said anything to deserve that.
Actually, these studies were all based on average people.
My own experience is a range training exercise. Another officer (and we don’t have any Olympic hopefuls here) stands behind you at the range. He slaps you on the back and starts running. You draw and fire, and he stops as soon as the gun goes off. Turn and see how far he made it before you could get a shot off.
It’s a real wake-up!
And yes, people high on meth may react differently. They may be considerably faster than they would be otherwise! And if they get on top of you with that knife, they are sure to cut you to ribbons.
Yeah don’t they teach you guys the holds and nerve pinches? My dad could take me down with 2 fingers, you can cause a lot of pain and compliance if you know where to hold.
This is real life, not your living room. Depending on the reliable use of such techniques against desperate, drunk and/or drugged-up subjects is foolish and dangerous.
I have to agree after seeing several of these videos that police are using their tasers to basically shorten arguements. Particularly the last one linked in this thread, it was really a case of the cop using a taser to say SHUT UP.
While I would prefer that to a night stick in the gut, it is clear that some cops are using tasers in preference to keeping a cool head and talking their suspects down lower stress levels. Maybe they see it as a time management device – it is SO much faster than listening to some fruitcake vent for 10-20 minutes until they calm down.
Is it torture? I’m not sure, but it certainly isn’t MORE torturous than using a billy club. OTOH, it’s also certainly less torturous than just letting an angry suspect vent and burn out their anger by ranting. Well, less torturous on the suspect, maybe not on the cop.
You’re going to have them no matter what, no matter when. Until we get around to inventing Robocop for real, we’re going to have humans doing the job. And just like any other group of humans, you will have a bell curve, skewed to the right: the vast majority performing at average or above average, the slackers performing below average and the few who piss in the pool and ruin it for everyone else.
We only hear about tasings when something goes wrong. Ever stop to think how many times people really do get tased in a day? A bunch. Tasing saves lives, both the officers involved and the arrestees, who might otherwise have been shot.
I don’t like that one either, frankly. 70 in a 65 and a front plate but no rear plate don’t strike me as heinous infractions to begin with, and it looked to me like the cop got way too impatient with a driver who was maybe stalling a little bit, hoping to talk his way out of it, and so he flew off the handle needlessly.
Granted, the driver seems like he could use a common-sense lesson on when to shut the fuck up (both before and after the tasing), but not one that needed to be delivered through electrical wires.
Now look at this video. This shows you exactly how to deal with assholes. This guy almost deserved to be tasered, but seeing as it was taken in 1992, the officer probably didn’t have one. I’m sure he would have been had the previous officer pulled him over.
This guy is nuts, but the officer keeps a cool head. What happens? In the end it makes him look like a nice guy who did something admirable. He kept his cool to an essentially harmless guy.
The thing about being tasered is that officers use it far more often than they would use a night-stick. Imagine if the guy who had no back license plate had been hit with a nightstick? The cop would probably be charged with assault. Yet, when it comes to tasering people, it’s all hunky-dory because it leaves no physical effects. That’s why I’m pissed off now that I see it’s being used all the time. Wasn’t it reportedly used on someone in England who was in a diabetic coma? WTF? It pisses me off that it’s killed some folks because there is some fucking merit in the argument than you can’t taser someone just because they want to put up an argument.
The officer escalated outside the car, escalated it by making him get out, and after he DID comply, he tased him for no good reason. I would file assault charges if I were that guy. Pain and suffering is real. Maybe not intantaneous but how is this guy going to feel around police officers from now on? Are we supposed to be concerned about being tasered at every single run-in with the cops if we don’t bow to their every whim?
You don’t taser people who are resisting non-violently. If you’re afraid of it becoming a fight, then these cops ought to learn some social skills.
And to Clothahump, I understand there are those that piss in the pool and ruin it for everyone. But why the fuck aren’t these guys fired after the first infractions? At the VERY LEAST take away their tasers. You use it on someone who has a smart lip to teach them a lesson and you get fired. Simple as that. There’s an area where it is useful, and an area where it is clearly not. That cop before is clearly in the wrong. The cop who tased the pregnant woman in the neck is CLEARLY wrong. Why aren’t these people being fired? If it were painless then I wouldn’t care, but it isn’t so it’s wrong to use it as often as people do.
Tasers have become the patrol officer’s sparky little equalizer. There’s a sense of false comfort involved with them because unlike chemical sprays they generally can’t be used against you, and also unlike sprays, experienced suspects (aka frequent fliers) can’t get used to the sensation, because it’s automatic. The training you get (from the company) tells you that it’ll take down a hardened marine (the instructor shows a vid wherein this heavily muscled GI gets dropped like a wet sack of portland cement) and even a bull who just tips right over mooing with his legs stuck straight out.
Torture? No, because that’s not the intent of the taser, the intent is control, restraint, and safety. Not to gather information. Unfortunately, the modern patrol officer isn’t as adept at talking through problems, so we go from ‘give me your license now’ “but I don’t know where it” …zzzaaaap
That APD guy ought to be tased a few more times to remember what it feels like.
Then fired. That was a disgrace.
I would certainly have pissed off that Austin asshole.
My registrations and insurance cards are in my glove boxes, and not always on top. One is in a zippered pouch containing the owner’s manual and, generally, several car-related receipts that should have gone into the house and been scanned into the computer months ago. The other is in an envelope with papers for my extended warranty and maintenance bills to back up my claim that the vehicle was properly maintained in case I ever need to use the warranty on the road away from my computer and scanned copies of these bills.
There’s no way that I could find things as fast as this cop wanted them found. He’d have declared me “un-cooperative”, for sure.
All of this mess for 5 over the limit, which would have probably been payable at a window without the driver’s getting anywhere near a courtroom,and a “warning ticket” license plate offense that would have been resolved at the police station once the driver showed up within 10 days with his replacement plates on the car.
I’ve generally blown off a lot of this “Driving while Black” prejudice stuff, but maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to do so in the future.
Actually, the fact there was no back plate was a good enough reason, 5 over is what caused the second look. Like a lot of men, this douche likes the chase but is afraid of the capture.
Don’t blow that DWB thing off, it happens. Thankfully, the majority of cops are decent, hardworking men and women who have the interests of the public at heart. Attack the person, not the profession.
Torture doesn’t require a motive of gathering information, it can be simply about punishment, intimidation, or control. In my mind, inflicting pain for no discernable reason is MORE torturous, than say, trying to find out wherea nuke is hidden in the big city. At least in the latter case the victim can understand how to make it stop.
That’s not to say I agree that tasing is torture by definition, but a taser certainly could be used as a torture device.
Of course, but in the case of police tasing all you have to do is stop whatever it is you’re doing and sit still, which theoretically SHOULD stop the tasing.
, our restraint protocols call for a minimum of 5 people to restrain someone. It usually works best with 6, if you can get them.