That’s rather disingenuous. The moral is that traffic stops are unpredictable and dangerous, and a prudent officer treats each one as a worst case scenario. If you don’t think so, watch the FX network one weekend; it lives off of showing traffic stops (not drug stops - traffic stops) gone bad.
Yes. That was nonsense.
[quote=One point and this may well be an urban legend, but it’s well known that once a cop opens your door during a traffic stop, you’re being arrested.[/quote]
Nah, Urban Legend. He could very well be removing you to conduct a search per Carol Doctrine. This allows him to look in certain areas of the vehicle if he has Probable Cause to believe something specific is in there. You’re not under arrest until/unless he finds it. That’s just one example off the top of my head. But just opening your door does not an arrest make.
From Dictionary.com
“Main Entry: bel·lig·er·ent
Pronunciation: b&-'li-j&-r&nt
Function: adjective
1 : waging war : carrying on war; specifically : belonging to or recognized as an organized military power protected by and subject to the laws of war
2 : inclined to or exhibiting hostility or a combative temperament”
(bolding and italics are mine)
There are always more than one definition, treis. “Belligerence” can describe a person’s temperament as well. It’s not just limited to physical violence. Arguing and not cooperating are good examples of hostile temperament.
Pain is obviously relative. I don’t believe MPs use or are ever exposed to pepper spray. I’d like him to get a good shot of OC across the eyes from 4ft away. And then compare the two.
Overwhelming is a pretty good way to describe it. But c’mon… it lasts for 5 freaking seconds and then it’s all over. There are no lasting effects. The pain is gone instantiously.
The third is Bear_Nenno’s, who blows it off as no big deal. When talking about pain, there’s intensity and longevity. The Taser is intense, but it only lasts 5 seconds. OC lasts for at least an hour and you can still feel it the next day. The next day it feels like you have sand in your eyes and your eyes ache as if from snow blindness or being in bright light all day.
He’s an attorney trying to claim is client was treated unfairly and with too much force. I think it’s safe to say his claims are biased!
I can go along with most of this. Barely feel the prongs, unimaginable (I surely couldn’t have imagined it) that lasts only 5 second…
Agonizing??? How in the world can something that lasts 5 seconds be agonizing. Shouldn’t it take more than 5 seconds to build up agony??
Yes it hurts, and it’s a very uncomfortable sensation. Your entire body locks up all at once. But as soon as you’re realize how bad it sucks, it’s over. Bam 5 seconds.
Every officer who carries a Taser, has been tased himself. It’s part of the certification and training process. And if you read some of their accounts, you’ll find that my description was not all that atypical. It is the most effective of any less lethal device (that’s deployable within 26ft) and there is ZERO pain after a 5 second jolt.
The device overwhelms your skeletal musclular system. All your muscles contract as hard as they can and you no longer have control of your body.
However, this lasts for 5 seconds. After that, you can move freely. You’ll notice the officer gave the command to put her hands behind her back in between Taserings and not during. He gave her a couple seconds to comply. Instead of complying she kept screaming and (I think) even tried to get up once.
All that screaming and acting like she couldn’t move anymore is being melodramatic.
… and about 7000 other departments and their respective legal districts.
Here we agree. The Boyton Beach PD (or whatever PD serves Boyton Beach) has policies, explained by a training sargeant on the linked site, that states that the taser is the correct level of escalation to affect the arrest, and should be used before a physical, flesh-on-flesh confrontation. Bear has stated the same, and I’m assuming he doesn’t represent the BBPD. If they went with wrestling the lady out of the car, it would have been against policy, as they would have skipped an escalation step.
The training sargeant also noted the policies are constantly reviewed and tweaked, so unless we want to believe the very worst of an entire PD (as opposed to the actions of individual officers), it’s fairly safe to assume that policies are implemented to protect their officers and the perpetrators (to a lesser degree than the officers).
It seems you disagree with the order of escalation. I’m more inclined to believe those who are actually in these situations more often, and who have spent considerably more time studying the most affective way to make an arrest.
Most drivers have never been exposed to pepper spray either. What matters is how painful the taser is to the person being shocked, not whether the person doing the shocking has gone through more painful experiences during his training or has more painful weapons in his arsenal.
Verbally refusing (saying No, or offering ultimatums like "give me your badge number first then I’ll cooperate), sitting down, pulling your hand away, locking yourself in a car, or materially lying to an officer… these are all examples of Resisting Without Violence.
You don’t necessarily after to be resisting arrest. The crime is not Resisting Arrest Without Violence. It’s simply Resisting and Officer. If you do anything to impede in the lawful performance of his duities, you can be arrested. If you refuse to comply with a lawful command from an officer, you’re resisting him.
Swinging at the officer…
A swing with no contact is more of an assault (as opposed to a battery). So a swing would still be resisting without violence. She would be charged with resisting without violence and assault on a police officer – Both still misdemeanors. The thing with Resisting with Violence is you need to have a Battery on an officer charge to go along with it or the DA will throw it out. After all, how can it be violent if no one got punched.
But that’s the legal part of it. This says nothing to the fact that officers can increase their use of force based on a suspects actions. They can always stay a step above. Just because someone swung and missed, doesn’t mean their not going to swing again, or that they’ll miss everytime. It’s not like a cop has to say “Well that punched missed too… I have to wait for one to strike me in the face before I can treat her like a violent suspect”
So, as you can see, a person can still be violent but not be charged with Resist with Violence.
If part or all of this doesn’t make sense. Ask for more clarification. I’m trying to explain the best I can.
It was quite possibly the swing at the officer that made him Tase her. Sure he had it out, but that’s how you use it. I think most departments are claiming that merely pulling out a Taser makes the suspect comply in more than half the instances. He kept warning her and then, when the partner tried to get the phone and was swung on, the cop Tased her.
Noone here can see that actual swing or what went on in the vehicle. I’m inclined to believe that she did swing at the officer.
No. What matters is how painful the Taser is compared to other currently accepted less lethal devices.
A person who has only experienced one device - like the Taser - will say it’s the worst, most painfully brutal option available. But if he were given the chance to compare it with the lasting effects of OC or a baton to the forearm, then he’d see it could have been worse.
Especially if the baton missed the forearm and broke the elbow.
Only if we’re trying to decide between the taser and another weapon… not if we’re trying to decide whether to use the taser now or wait until a more appropriate time.
I like to think we’re civilized enough to have better justifications for causing others pain than “hey, it could’ve been worse”.
a very effective explaination Bear. Much appreciated. It is clear and makes sense to me.
(a) Not my fault if you’re incapable of reasoning past “heart attack” on an autopsy report. (b) Not my fault if you’re capable of ignoring the correlation between tasering and death of an indeterminate but notrivial number of persons.
Why, thank you! Seeing as how you hadn’t even remotely suggested a source or title the first time around, that’s mighty statesmanlike of you to, like, mention it upon request.
Never mind that your cite comes from “Michigan Taser Distributing.” Heck, next time why don’t you just cite to www.tasertheirsorryasses.com?
You forgot the :p.
It is possible that anybody has a weapon. Zap! Pow! Take that, mouthy pain in the ass!
Ditto.
Or at least spend, like 90 seconds trying.
Well then heck, put a bullet in her mouthy pain in the ass head. After all, she might have a gun, and we have no way of knowing, and somebody might get hurt if the failure to kill her results in a meteor falling from the sky!
How many people have been killed by police batons? For present purposes, I’ll even accept people who were high on drugs or who had unusually deadly elbows.
The problem with this statistic is that it doesn’t address why the person died. There is a certain amount of carrot logic in the number. The Taser related deaths in my area of the country are generally the result of a drug induced psychotic episode. The cause of death is attributable more to drug overdose than the Taser.
If a Taser is the trigger to a heart attack (which is what I usually hear about) then the situation needs to be reviewed as to alternative methods of restraint. From my observation, it is usually the most dangerous situations to the officer that results in death. Using a stun devise is supposed to be a less violent method of restraint. I am not in a position to pass judgement between a Taser and Mace but they are both potential hazards to someone with heart or respiratory problems.
The alternative is to use a night stick or a football style pile-on by a half-dozen officers. The latter is only practical with advanced notice and unobstructed access to the person (such as a prison cell extraction). Someone sitting in a car has the potential of using the car as both a weapon and a tool for escape.
How many times do I have to say it? Tasers likely caused those deaths in conjunction with other factors such as drugs, alcohol, and weak hearts. But take away the tasers, and those people are still alive (albeit high, drunk, or congested).
Christ, you guys are familiar with the concept that there can be more than one necessary cause of a result, aren’t you?
My point exactly. If one out of every thousand people who gets tasered is going to end up dead, you’d better review the alternatives.
No kidding?
Yet another argument for tasering everyone at every traffic stop. Heck, who needs to evaluate the actual circumstances when we can just hypothesize how the driver might cause meteors to fall from the sky?
It was pointed out before that he is not required to tell her he’s about to arrest her. I’m no expert but my guess would be that by telling her before she gets out he is risking her being in a more advantageous position to resist arrest or attempt to flee which is more dangerous for the officers and others. Doesn’t that make sense? It was also pointed out that an officer has every right to expect compliance when he asks her to step out even if he has no intention of arresting her.
You point out that the officer never informed her he was going to arrest her. Yet when the officer asks her to get out of the car she doesn’t ask why, she simply says no. Then she tells the person on the phone that the officer is telling her he is going to arrest her, even when he hasn’t said so. I’d say it’s very probable that she knew he was about to arrest her and why and she still resisted.
I would say she set the stage for no cooperation from the start. During that time the officer never treated as a physical threat. When he discovered her suspended license he had cause to arrest her and reason to suspect her verbally combative attitude might turn physical. He ordered her from the car twice. She didn’t ask why, she just refused and was on the phone to an unknown person. She’s refusing a lawful command and calling some unknown person. This increases the potential threat to the officer. When he attempts to make her comply by reaching in for her she pulls away. That’s a crucial point. In doing so she has escalated the situation. At this point the officer can reasonably expect her to put up a fight and has no way of knowing if she has a weapon or how far she will take it. He also has to consider the danger of her fleeing in her vehicle since she’s still in her car. That’s a potential danger to others that he is obligated to nullify.
Well driving with a suspended license, being verbally combative from the get go, and most importantly, refusing to cooperate with an officer during the lawful execution of his duties. Wouldn’t you say that separates her from a huge percentage of other motorists pulled over?
and you may be right but that is an unknown by you, me, and the officers on the scene. As pointed out to you in the above post because of that unknown the officers are trained to deal with worse case scenario. The vehicle she’s sittng in is more potentially lethal than their stun guns. If she flees and someone is killed during a chase who do you suppose gets blamed for that?
I don’t agree. We have a responsibility as citizens to cooperate with police officers in the preformance of their duties. She failed thsi responsibility big time.
The officer has the responsibility to preform his duties professionally and within the guidelines of his training. He did exactly that. He didn’t respond emotionally to her crappy attitude. He remained professional throughout the incident.
The average motorist would have cooperated. The fact she resisted made it more likely that she might have a weapon under the unkown factor previously mentioned, as well as the potentially lethal weapon she was sitting in.
What radio conversation are you talking about?
Ah ha! Progress! We now agree that the upper 50th percentile of people in terms of cooperativeness during a traffic stop should not be tasered.
Watch out, all you smart aleks. 50,000 volts coming your way.
Any method of subduction may cause death, Minty Green. This guy would most likely have benefited from the use of a Taser and would probably still be alive today.
I’m sure if I spent more than three seconds searching, I could easily find over 100 cases just like this one. Cases where a suspect died as a result of the combination of physical trauma from police officers, drug use, and current medical conditions.
Though the officer are not at fault in his death, had they not tackled him and punched him and clubbed him, he would still be alive – that was your test wasn’t it? That regardless of his present condition, if there was no Taser the man would be alive so the Taser is bad? Well here it was the physical techniques that caused the death. The officers were not excessively violent or abusive. Yet, the man still died.
And notice that the suspect was not violently resisting until AFTER the cops bum rushed him and took him to the ground.
It’s not uncommon for a suspect to be simply nonviolently resisting. And then, once you physically try to take them to the ground or cuff them, they become increasingly violent, requiring even more physical force (punching and clubbing) from the officer.
Some methods of subduction are more likely to cause death than others, Near_Nenno.
Also, when weighing the risks and utilityies of tasers vs. dragging mouthy pains in the ass out of their vehicles, please make sure to consider the relative incidence of the two reactions. 100 deaths by wrestling suspects to the ground is a drop in the bucket compared to 100 deaths by taser, if the overall incidence of wrestling outnumbers tasers by 100 to 1.
Evaluate the circumstances? When does this magic Kodak moment take place? This person was under arrest. How many seconds of evaluation are you going to take after being struck? Does the person have to draw blood first?
How’s officer minty green going to extract Miss-Congeniality from the car? Give us a blow by blow account starting with: “Mam, please step out of the car”.
Your sarcastic insults don’t make you any less wrong. If you’re insinuateing your conclusion is more accurate than the professionals who have studied it then it’s certainly not me ignoreing the facts. You misquoted the existing facts{unintentionally or otherwise} and then when proof was placed in front of you you refuse to accept it.
Which happens to more courtesy than you showed the first time I asked for a cite.
ture, but it was not their material. It’s an article from the Cincinnati Enquirer, a newspaper in a different state. You convientiently left out that tidbit.
Here’s an interesting pattern. When presented with realistic scenarios you respond with exaggeration that makes no legitimate point.
It’s been pointed out that even in routine traffic stops officers are trained to anticipate the worse case scenario in order to save lives. Is it hard to understand?
Yeah, but now we’re just making up numbers. . .
If those were in fact the actual numbers, then you’d be on to something. But they’re not.
I think it’s quite a few more than 50% that tend to cooperate. That doesn’t mean they like it or say thank you officer sir. Thy’re just smart enough to not resist when an officer is pointing a weapon and issueing a command. I’ve been pulled over plenty and I asked questions and dealt with aggressive officers without any physical confrontation. How did I pull off that magical statistic? By repsecting their authority even when I didn’t agree with their method, and by respecting the difficult job they do even when they weren’t doing it in a way I totally approved of. What a concept.
or possibly those who repeatedly resist an officer.