IF it turns out that way, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. My inherent contempt for fascists and bootlickers would preclude an apology in any case.
This happened in a hospital. Are you telling me that the out-of-control-with-grief father couldn’t have been physically restrained by all those cops, given a nice big shot of Valium (or similar), and then removed?
Hospitals used to manage to deal with crazy-ass people without shooting or tasering them at all. When did this change, exactly?
Well, in matters of life-or-death, the time to restrain him may have cost the kid’s life. Tasing is quick, and is what officers are trained to do. I’m not sure having a cop pump the man full of Valium is legally or ethically a preferable option, nor is having some cop tell a doctor to do so.
Again, it’s unlikely 5 officers who presumably work regularly in hospital settings suddenly lost their mind and decided to go on a tasing spree. They likely determined that the father needed to be neutralized as quickly as possible and used the tool they are trained to use for that purpose.
We don’t know the truth, but I’m getting sick of this presumption that every time the police use some form of force they are acting in a brutal, racist, and thoughtless manner. It dilutes the actual instances of police brutality, which we should strive to put an end to.
So in your mind, it’s more permissible for a doctor or nurse, who is not an officer of the law, to forcibly inject someone with a potent narcotic against their will, with no knowledge of his medical history or possible interactions with other drugs he may be taking, than it is for a policeman to Tase him?
I think we’re really beginning to see here how critical it is to maintain the “the police are evil racist oppressors and literally anything else is better than whatever they end up actually doing” narrative.
Smapti, I appreciate your defense of the police; I really do. Good cops, of which I’m sure there are many, are both necessary and worthy of highest respect. And cops are sometimes put in no-win situations where they have to do something that may look bad to people who don’t know the whole story.
That said, if you don’t believe that there are police who are evil, or racist, or oppressors, you’re either hopelessly naive, wilfully ignorant, or in denial. And if you do believe there are, you’d be doing more for the police by condemning and rooting out the bad apples rather than by knee-jerkily rushing to defend them.
Its almost getting to point where these racism! and or brutality! threads about police officers feel like a regular scheduled set up for a Paul Harvey story.
The overwhelming majority of “police OUTRAGE” stories lately haven’t been about bad cops. Most of them have been situations in which the police response eventually turns out to have been completely justified, but the media and the pundits in the fuck-the-police crowd run with the early jumbled reports of “Cop brutally does something mean to black person because RACISM” because it’s good for business and it’s good for the agenda they’re trying to push at the ballot box.
In this case, we’re running with the “Police Tase black man praying for his son” headline… and ignoring the fact that he was interfering with attempts to save the patient’s life and physically struggled with the police when they tried to remove him.
Much like before that we had “Cop shoot unarmed black teen in the back… except that he was facing the cop and charging at him, and he’d just robbed a convenience store and had assaulted the cop and tried to grab his gun.”
And we had “Cop handcuffs black woman because she was making out with her white boyfriend and therefore he decided she was a prostitute… except that they were actually having sex in a public place and she refused to identify herself and tried to flee the scene.”
And we had “Cops Tase black man in front of his children for sitting on a public bench… except that he was actually trespassing in a bank and also refused to identify himself and tried to flee the scene, and his kids weren’t actually present.”
I’m very sadded at this spate of pre-verbal police. Do you think that we should all wear a ribbon to help raise awareness?
They had a couple of kinds of hammers to choose from. The guy looked like a nail.
Well, it certainly doesn’t help the cops public relations if they tase someone at that person’s dead/dying/really fucking injured kid’s bedside.
No one suggests the cop use a pharmaceutical.
Again, no one with actual experience in a clinical setting has explained why it’s better to tase and drag out a big upset guy, than to hold the guy down (five cops!), have a doctor – which one expects to see a few of in the ER – shoot the guy with some Valium, then take him out.
A snootful of valium is less likely to do damage than a snootful of electricity, IIRC.
Defaulting to violence – even the “medium” violence of a taser – is a problem. We did not use to have this problem, and seeing it constantly is one reason that a lot of boring middle class people are starting view cops poorly.
Doctors inject people with valium (which is not a narcotic) or haldol or similar medications (also not narcotics) “against their will” on a fairly regular basis in the ER setting. And without a full medical history being taken! You should read up on what happens when a psych case is brought in. (Assuming the cops haven’t tased or beat the shit out of the patient on the way.)
Patients, yes. This man was not a patient. You’re OK with the cops ordering doctors to drug civilians with whom they have no professional relationship?
And you’re telling me that if that scenario had occurred instead, we wouldn’t currently have a thread about “RACIST COPS DRUG GRIEVING FATHER IN THE ER”, and you wouldn’t be complaining that surely there was something else they could have done?
Bullshit. Cuffing and detaining someone without the proper legal authority is absolutely “bad cops”. Maybe they can be educated and turn into good cops, but that’s definitely “bad cop” stuff. And shooting someone while he’s backing away, hands in the air definitely qualifies as “bad cop stuff”.
We’re not ignoring that. We’re just saying the force was excessive.
This is not a factual statement based on the evidence out there.
She didn’t try to “flee the scene”. She had the legal right to leave, and the cop didn’t have the legal authority to detain her. By detaining her, it was the cop in violation of the law.
He wasn’t trespassing in the bank, and the cops didn’t have the legal authority to detain him. He was waiting for his kids, he wasn’t legally required to provide ID to the cops, and he was in public property when the cops tried to detain him.
Again, this was cops violating the law, not the guy who got tased.
You might want to work on your reading comprehension skills.
Astonishingly enough, the lawyer involved seems to be attempting to make a career of representing people being Tased by the Pittsburgh po-pos.
Unfortunately, not all his clients are as sympathetic as they might be -
This would be the same lawyer who claimed that the step son was dead when his father was Tased. The hospital says otherwise.
Regards,
Shodan
More facts should be released soon; apparently the hospital has to respond to the lawsuit, if I recall correctly in my un-caffeinated state.
In a world where judges can order a sheriff to activate a shock cuff worn by a self-represented defendant when the defendant is merely talking over the judge and refusing to be quiet, not much surprises me.
The back story: Demented “Guantanamo Bob” Nalley, in July, elected to zap one Delvon King (a/k/a Saamir Jaleed Khaleei King Ali), a self-represented defendant. Delvon’s act was merely talking over Bob deploying his (admittedly cockamamie) argument of sovereign citizenship being why the court had no jurisdiction over him (“Moorish citizen” argument … I now understand it’s a “thing”). Delvon’s right to present a defense of his choosing – however ludicrous – came up against the judge’s (legal, available) choices of penalty for direct contempt (for not shutting up when so ordered). The contempt penalties naturally do NOT include the equivalent of Taser-ing a defendant who just so happens to be wearing a shock cuff*; indeed, the court has the power to sentence a person to prison for life for contempt of court (it’s entirely within the judge’s discretion, short of the death penalty).
Guantanamo Bob had a proxy, one Sheriff Deehan, who acquiesced to the illegal demand from Bob to activate Delvon’s shock cuff for five seemingly interminable seconds. (Apparently, there was a brief internal wrestling match by Sheehan with his conscience, and the training on circumstances under which he might use said device – e.g., defendant attacking someone, flew out the window.)
Sheriff Deehan cannot hope of living down a decision to follow an (at best) unlawful order to torture, though he along with the now-deactivated judge (who was already retired, but working as a temp judge) have and doubtless will continue to reap benefits accorded by their respective clans. (The Sheriff’s Department has already declared, no surprise, that he did nothing wrong, despite being unable to show anyone a whacky reg that indicates the sheriff should feel free to activate the device simply when told to do so.) Being under tribal protection, both will almost certainly be shielded from any criminal and civil penalty(ies), so the humiliation penalty must be appropriately huge. At least Deehan has the luxury of rationalizing that his five-second act of (criminal or no) malfeasance isn’t so bad as what (possibly he too but also) many officers of the court and law enforcement are content to do daily without so much as batting an eyelash.
In a surprising move, it only took the Court of Appeals a month to hand down an order rescinding Nalley’s ability to act as a judge (“for good cause”, though of course the order doesn’t mention the events).
- Delvon was forced to wear one because, at a previous hearing, he’d “fled custody”/departed the courtroom and evidently eluded those who belatedly noticed and went after him. He parked himself (“hid”) elsewhere in the building. This was embarrassing to the (pro’ly) fat sheriffs who didn’t prevent him from leaving the courtroom or failed to catch him in short order, which led to the dubious decision [“Yeah, that’s the ticket!”] to make him wear the electrocution device, as disincentive to ever do something that’d require them having to walk fast, let alone jog or (gasp) run. Tangent.