Inspired by some of the comments in the most recent The Naked Wizard Guy Gets Tasered thread, I thought I’d lay this out as a poll, with an opportunity for some discussion (hence my placing it in GD).
Many of the people in this thread (and in the many others we’ve had over the years) seem to be ok with taser use in general, citing that it is less likely to lead to injuries than a nightstick, gun, or other physical confrontation that police may use to gain compliance from a subject.
Others counter that the infliction of great pain, while not leaving a mark, is a seriously disturbing thing to allow police (or anyone else, for that matter) to have as a tool, and that it is used too frequently and unnecessarily.
So just as a basic poll:
Do you think that the infliction of pain, without causing injury, is ok for police or other law enforcement to use as a compliance tool?
If you answered YES to #1, should there be limits to how much pain can be inflicted in an attempt to gain compliance? How would this be measured and/or monitored? How would transgressions be discovered?
If you answered NO to #1, what do you think police should do to gain compliance from non-cooperative persons? How would this be monitored? How would transgressions be discovered?
There are two different distinctions to be made here: Whether a technique leaves a mark, and whether it leads to long-term effects on the victim. All else being equal, I suppose that it might be better if tasers left a mark, to provide evidence down the road for what happened. But if you compare tasing to, say, breaking legs, the tasing will stop as soon as you let go of the trigger, while broken legs will take weeks to heal, at the least, and may cause problems for an entire lifetime. And using a nightstick on the torso or head can cause worse problems yet.
Just for the record, tasing does cause visible injury, since the electrodes penetrate the skin and are barbed to make sure they stay there. Obviously, this doesn’t necessarily constitute significant injury.
Victims/suspects/whatever can also be fairly seriously injured by falling after being tasered, since they’re unable to use the upper extremities to cushion their fall. I actually saw a guy get zapped in downtown Orlando last month after running from a bar fight and he fell facedown. Definitely broke his nose, appeared to have lost some teeth, too.
ETA: To answer your questions:
Depends. Clearly, the cops in the Naked Wizard guy forgot about “getting the suspect to comply” and moved on to “shocking the hell out of some stupid naked guy.”
See above- case by case basis. Clearly, tasers are ineffective as a compliance tool in some cases, since they just make the victim angrier/more resistant.
No. I would rather that the police had a way to incapacitate a subject that did not include the infliction of pain.
I doubt I could cover all possible situations, but I would rather that police be heavily trained in verbal negotiation skills and have it impressed upon them that any form of force is an absolute last resort. I feel that the taser is too often brought out for too little reason, and I think that the pain it inflicts is horrible, akin to any barbaric torture method.
Hit me with a nightstick, and I hurt. Punch me and it hurts. Tase me and it hurts. But the tasing leaves no injury which can be commeasured with the amount of pain inflicted (point taken, RNATB, ok?). I think it is dangerous and foolish to give a “magic instant invisible pain stick” to anyone, and not have VERY serious directives on when and how it can be used.
I’m not sure that this happens often enough to be a factor, but I can tell you that being shocked and then (a second later) being told (or yelled at) to do something, you may not have the mental or physical ability to comply with directions.
I’ve been tased (voluntarily), and I was fairly certain afterwards that I would have complied with most any direction provided thereafter. Clearly, though, this is not true for everyone.
I think in the absence of a method to safely and reliably render a victim painlessly and damagelessly unconscious, pain is an acceptable method to use to bring down a suspect. So yes.
Ideally, the precise amount of pain to subdue the subject should be used. With some suspects you can talk them down, and so the amount of appropriate pain infliction is “none” and tasering is completely inappropriate. With some it comes down to a choice between tasering and physically subduing them, which goes beyond my ability to assess the relative merits thereof. (And of course you could always just shoot them a few times, but they’d probably rather be tasered.)
And I think that each taser should track the number and durations of times it is used and that officers who tase should be required to account for their taser discharges in perhaps a similar way to gun discharges (though perhaps with different criteria for when use is appropriate - I don’t know much about how that is handled).
I’m not sure if I answered yes or no to the prior. So, at the risk of repeating myself, I think compliance should be obtained by the method the officer on the scene decides is best, with them keeping in mind that their actions will be reviewed through official channels. I think transgressions should be discovered by reviewing the taser log and comparing it with the officer’s reports.
As long as the pain ends when the trigger is released, I think the cops should be allowed unlimited tasing until the suspect takes a rufee, which in turn will allow more tasing and other so-called harsh interrogation techniques at will. Society is served due to fewer crimes being committed, respect is maintained due to increased compliance, the suspect is served because they face less risk of increased charges (e.g., resisting) or injury but without memory or emotional scarring, and I get to make another reference to City 17.
Arguing about possible numbers of deaths via different forms of inflicted pain is not what this thread is about. I’m not interested in deciding that waterboarding is worse than tasing, or vice versa.
What I am interested in hearing is people’s views on tasing, and whether the infliction of great, severe and excruciating pain is acceptable in order for a peace officer to gain compliance from a subject.
And then I want to know why they think it is, or is not, acceptable.
If you would like to debate the merits and demerits of various tortures, please start a thread to discuss that.
As peaceably as possible, as forcibly as necessary. You can’t measure it or monitor it. Each case is unique and the only thing you have to go by is compliance. Some people can resist pain more than others. Some people are gorked out on drugs to the point where their pain threshold is up on the roof. You gotta do whatever works.
I teach Pressure Point Control Tactics. They allow hurting someone without injuring them, and there is a big difference in those terms. Pressure points are great up to a point. Here’s an example.
Visualize the bolts on Frankenstein’s creature on the side of the neck. That’s the location of the brachial plexus origin. If I whack someone on the side of the neck with the back of my hand, that impact will stun them enough to disorient them for 5-10 seconds. I can handcuff someone quite easily in that period of time if they are not fighting me, and a brachial plexus stun will take the fight right out of someone. (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZttwJ5_Ojc)
Now - suppose your bad guy is a meth monster and is tweaked on crystal. A shot like that would not put him down because the drugs mess with pain reception. You’d have to hit him harder or with a stick and now you got issues with potential lethality. So how do you handle someone like that? That’s exactly why the Taser was invented. It totally overwhelms the entire nervous system, even on a meth head.
Pain in and of itself should never be used as a compliance tool.
Specific localised pain that causes an instictive reaction I am more ok with.
eg: somebody is holding onto hand railing when police are trying to cart him off to jail.
A quick rap on the knuckles with a billy club - no problem (up to and including breaking a finger of the offender is particularly stubborn).
Nipple twist to inflict pain and get compliance = not ok (or taser, or anything else that inflicts pain)
The thing is, “no visible injury” was the justification for such things as “rubber hoses,” in that no permanent physical damage allowed the interrogators plausible deniability. It was later “upgraded” to include techniques like waterboarding and the “Chinese water torture” that also didn’t leave a permanent mark. When I was a kid the US claimed to be above these things. Then came Dubya, Cheney, and Clothahump, who see some advantage in them beyond the ability to say, “You can’t prove it happened.” For a human being raised to believe the USA was basically good, it is sickening that such methods would be contemplated, much less used in my name.
Of course…assuming there is proper oversight so that it’s not abused. What use a police force that can’t enforce the law and require compliance? I’d much rather the police have less-lethal options that are also a bit less brutal than a night stick to the head.
Of course there have to be limits…inflict to much pain and regardless of whether there is physical damage there is going to be psychological damage. As for how it would be measured…gods know. Probably as it’s measured today…best guess for the largest number of people. How will transgressions be discovered…again, as they are today when there is alleged police abuse it is and should be investigated and if sustained then those involved should be punished.
The flip side is that folks need to chill out a bit and get some perspective about a system that has caused less than 400 deaths in the past 6+ years. I’m not seeing the massive abuse here…nor am I seeing the looming threat or danger, especially when one considers that some of those deaths were due to other complications. Again…a bit of perspective here would be nice.
I think that tasering to force compliance is wrong. I think it needs to be distinguished from tasering to incapacitate, however, which I think is acceptable. No one should be tased and then given an order to follow with the threat of further tasing to back it up, they should be tased only as a means of bringing them down and making it possible for police to physically restrain a person.
Ironically, this means that taser use would be less acceptable if it were less painful. To use an extreme example, I can think of plenty of situations where tasing someone is appropriate, but I can’t think of any in which repeatedly fillipping someone on the forehead is acceptable.
ETA: By my understanding of the law, what this means is that fillipping someone is torture, but tasering them in order to arrest them is not. Of course, tasering someone to force compliance IS torture, of a much worse sort than filliping; the potential for abuse is obvious.