Earlier today I spoke with a LEO/client/friend and he disagrees with you vehemently.
His main points center around the fact that once an arrest is initiated, the officer must maintain control of the suspect/scene, which is sometimes difficult. Had the woman decided to drive off rather than be arrested, and if in driving off she caused an accident, the officer would likely be blamed. He has seen it happen.
Also, he told me he was bitten by a petite 20 year old woman. He had to sweat out the wait for HIV test results. Any contact with a LEO is a bad idea. He told me of situations where everything was going nicely until a suspect jabbed a finger at his chest. In under a minute, the suspect had a mouthfull of gravel and was cuffed with a knee in his kidney and an additional charge.
I hate being on the officer’s side in this case, yet I am.
And, as far as i can tell from a search of the ACLU website, it is completely without basis in fact. A search (using both Google and the ACLU website’s own search function) turns up a bunch of references to tasers, and every single one calls for using them less and/or for greater regulation in their use. I haven’t found a single instance that supports your friend’s claim. It’s possible that he’s right, but if the ACLU has taken the position that he claims, then the organization has hidden that policy beyond the range of my Google-fu.
In the recommendations section (pp. 15ff), it says, in part:
And in Appendix B, under the heading Best Practices Taser Policy, it says the following (p. 18):
This part of the Best Practices section was taken from the Taser policy of the El Dorado County Sheriff Department.
This report is from the Northern California branch of the ACLU, but the fact that it’s been placed on the main website suggests that the ACLU as an orgnaization stands behind the recommendations.
In their training, police are repeatedly told that standing by a person who is still inside the vehicle is a risk. There’s the obvious danger of a hidden weapon, the less obvious danger of the person deciding to run you over, and the general lack of visibility. The woman probably wasn’t a threat, but she could have been, and every second she refused to comply with the officer his appraisal of the risk to his self was increasing. He gave her more time than I ever needed to comply, and at the point he shot her she was guilty of resisting arrest.
I don’t normally defend the police, but in this case the tazing was justified.
It’s not like this lady is all sweetness and light, either. She was arrested for child abuse a little over a year later in the same county (11/17/2005).
Mhendo, I find I agree with the ACLU and Amnesty international as far as the ideas that regulations need to be rethought and the potential dangers examined. Even so, I wonder would the fact that the woman was giving directions as to the locations where she had been stopped to an unknown person on the phone, and was uncooperative and even verbally abusive perhaps tip things in favor of the officers’ actions? I certainly would want to have the situation firmly in control and the person to be arrested safely ensconced in the backseat of the police car before the person on the other end of the phone call arrived on the scene. Would that fact make the situation dangerous enough to require the officers get the situation under control very quickly? I find myself thinking so.
Tasers have been aggressively marketed to law enforcement as not only non-leathal but minimally invasive and only temporarily incapacitating – the ideal alternative to deadly force. There is increasing evidence that Tasing has at least the potential to cause greater damage, and longer-lasting damage, than Taser, Inc. has led the law enforcement community to believe. Like any other new technology, the results from Taser use were not initially available and really are not yet in, and the parameters on when, where, and how Tasers should be used are not yet set in stone. But Taser, Inc. is obviously invested in having law enforcement departments buy lots of Tasers, so the company has made claims regarding safety and appropriate use that many departments are only now beginning to question. This does not excuse this officer’s, or any officer’s, actions but may serve to explain why many officers have been quick to reach for the Taser instead of a baton (much less a gun), and may do so even before laying hands on a suspect in a manner that may injure the officer or the suspect, or both.
As to the particulars of this situation, I would never disregard the order of any person I knew to be armed, whether he was an officer writing me a ticket or a stranger mugging me in an alley, and I think anyone who does so is an idiot. IMO, the only acceptable response to “step out of the car please” is to step out of the car, immediately. Maybe that makes me a lackey of jack-booted thugs, but then, I’ve never been Tased so it works for me.
I’m not disagreeing with you; nor, in fact, am i necessarily disagreeing with the officer’s actuions in this case.
Every point i’ve made in this thread has been specifically aimed at a general assertion by another Doper, not at this particular incident of tassering.
My response to BMalion was only designed to address the issue of the ACLU’s position on tasering, not to offer an argument either way about the case under discussion.
I have an account with a background check company. I looked up the name, found the offense listed in the article, the child abuse arrest, and a possession of tobacco offense from 1999.
I am always polite to the police and appreciate the work they do. However they do need to act reasonably.
In this case, the woman staying in the car is a potential threat. Even if she doesn’t have a gun, she has the car. So the officer is entitled to take measures to protect himself and the public.
Provided he’s identified himself and asked her to step out of the car, then she’s foolish not to comply. If there is a problem about the officer’s actions, it should be sorted out later.
Just wanted to add my two cents - I agree that the woman in this incident was entirely responsible for the course of events. I would have liked to have seen the officer give her another 30 seconds or so, but I doubt that would have made much of a difference, and I don’t have much problem with the way things went down. You have to know that in circumstances like this, failing to comply with a reasonable request is just not going to work out well.
I would also second or third the WTF? response to the idea of calling in a sergeant. Why would this be a good plan? Why is someone going to comply with a sergeant who isn’t complying with a regular officer? How many sgts does a police force typically have available? How long would it take for a sgt to arrive at such a scene? Are sgts somehow more compelling or skilled at negotiations? Why not just make all the police officers sgts? Why should someone have to be negotiated out of their car for a traffic stop? Should they be negotiated into handing over their license and registration?
Really, if police officers have no ability to arrest someone on their own (e.g., when pressed on the matter they have to wait for a sergeant), there is really no point to having police officers in the first place.
YES, it’s better to wait 5 minutes than zap someone to shit with 50k volts of electricity.
If you or I zapped someone with 50,000 volts of electricity we’d be in prison for ASSAULT. Wearing a uniform and a badge does not give you carte blanche to zap people with tasers if they don’t immediately do what you tell them to. There were other ways of arresting and subduing this woman with a much lesser amount of force.
For all the officer knew, she could have been delaying getting out of the vehicle until her friends she was calling could come back and kill the cop, or waiting for his attention to waiver so she could blow him away with the gun under her seat. This was a stressful and potentially dangerous situation for the policeman to be in. He gave her repeated warnings, and even warned her of what would happen if she didn’t immediately comply. He would have been just as justified yanking her forcefully out of the car at that point, but that would have been more dangerous to him and the woman. He would have been justified drawing his firearm and using that to intimidate her, or jabbing her with his nightstick. She got off relatively easy.
He would NOT have been justified to stand there waiting for her to make up her mind what she wanted to do.
Uh, no, it’s not. That’s 5 additional minutes in which this angry and agressive woman could have grabbed a weapon, attempted to run down the officers, called for someone to come to her aid with a gun, or any one of a number of different, dangerous, potentially deadly things. There is absolutely NO reason to give her time to do those things.
Actually, it does, as long as they are giving you a legal order.
OK, name one. Just one. The woman has been told to step out of the car, and she refuses to do so in an agressive and threating maner. What are your “other ways”? I’m all ears.
This situation parallels arguments at my house. My SO is a real “fuck the police” type, and she automatically distrusts police because she’s had family members who’ve had run-ins with cops where she felt it wasn’t handled correctly. Me, I grew up in the UK in the 1970s-1980s where I knew bobbies didn’t carry guns, and were the people to go to when you got lost. (Yes, they were beating the crap out of Black kids in Croydon when I was a kid, but I always thought that was an isolated incident :rolleyes: .)
My take is this: as a society, we’ve decided that some members, with special training, are entrusted and empowered to curtail one’s liberties if one is breaking (or attempting to break the law). Most of the people in this position take the job very seriously and do a good job. Some don’t. Ultimately, however, there is very little safe recourse for you in the moment if you run into the latter. Here’s what the woman should have done if she truly was fearful of the police officer:
[ul]
[li]Driven to a location at a normal rate of speed (if feasible) with other people around - like a gas station[/li][li]Carefully comply with the officer, but enable the “record” function on her cellphone to tape the conversation[/li][li]Politely request that she be able to call a family member AFTER complying with the officer’s request[/li][/ul]
If she’s encountered one of the good guys, I think any of these actions would have de-escalated the situation. If it’s a bad guy, she has protection of sorts. What’s more bothersome is that this woman probably knew she was driving on a suspended license - willfully breaking the law. It’s not like they’re not going to find out, so why not go with the flow and hope for leniency? Unless it gets physical, there are opportunities for recourse AFTER the traffic stop. I do not understand, for the life of me, why people take chances with their lives and personal safety by not understanding this. Purely out of self-protection, I say comply and attempt to de-escalate as much as possible… and if something is awry, note it so you can report it later.
I’m an African-American man who has been pulled over many times - never arrested. Rarely ticketed. Sometimes I believe I’ve been pulled over for no reason, but I handle it the same way (and it requires considerable constraint!) and I’ve lived in Texas, New England, and California without incident. I will teach my kids the same technique, because I don’t want them getting tasered or shot over something that a cooler, rational head could avoid.
