They could have cordoned off the area around her car, brought eight or ten squad cars in, maybe tracked down a family member or two, perhaps found the woman’s minister or clergyman to plead with her to surrender herself. An experienced negotiator could have brought in, offers to send in coffee and doughnuts to the car, made her comfortable until the inevitable pressures of the bladder brought her out.
Yes, all of that could have been done.
But I believe that’s nuts.
I would much rather my tax dllars are used to zap the idiot, arrest her with a minimum of time spent coddling her idiocy, and the officers in question get back on the job of stopping crime elsewhere.
Your willingness to bend over backwards, to give her more time to consider her options, is, in my view, an extremely poor and unwise approach.
Was the liscence suspended or expired? There should be a difference, right? I almost found myself in a situtation where I might have had to drive with an expired liscence (thanks to all the whole new 6 point ID crapola), thank goodness I got everything straightened out in time.
So was it suspended or expired?
Regardless I think she should have cooperated with the officers, though I would have prefered to see the officers back off a little and try and calm her down at least once more.
Really?? I can’t imagine how you figured that. She was the one who had attitude from the get go. She asked why she had been pulled over? fine! He told her. She told him he had done that illegally {does anyone know if she’s right} He commented okay tell me how to do my job. She continued to question him while he was on his radio requesting a check on the vehilcle. That was rude and disrespectful. He never made any nasty comment while she berated him beside her car. All this time she was probably aware that she had a suspended liecense. All the training in the world doesn’t prevent officers from being human and having good days when they’re more patient than other days. If you get an officer on a day when he’s patient and in good humor lucky you. If you don’t that’s too bad. People who break the law shouldn’t whine because the officer wasn’t as nice as he could have been. He continued to behave professionaly while she was rude and beligerant.
Are you sure you watched the same video I did? I suppose it depends on your definition. Here’s a lady with a suspended license who starts off with a bad attitude. Now you play the race card. You may be right. Since we have zero evidence either way I guess we don’t know. She might have been also treated differently if she had not been driving with a suspended license, cooperated with the officer, and complied with the command to exit the vehicle. Here’s another possibility we have little evidence for. She’s on the phone talking to someone and tells them the officer has a gun while ignoreing his warning. She screams bloody murder when tased and then comments she’s going to sue. HAve you ever met petty criminals who purposely escalate the situation hoping for an incident that allows them to sue? I have. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if that was her plan all along. I just hope she doesn’t get with any BS lawsuit.
I didn’t see the alleged swing she took? Did anyone see it or is it just in the report? Near the end the officers are talking about a swing which she denies. Pulling away from the officer as he grabs for the phone is not the same as a swing alhough it is resisting an officer. The first officer had drawn his taser before the second officer reached in the car. She clearly said no when the officer asked her to put the phone down. At this point they might have allowed her a minute to inform whoever was on the phone what her situation was and where she was but they are not required to. If she was indeed looking for a lawsuit she would have continued to be beligerant and uncooperative until they had to physically remove her.
There’s a link on the video page which leads to other taser stories. Those, if true, show blatent missuse of tasers, unlike this woman in the traffic video.
Are there cops out there who will tase anyone who gives them too much lip? It seems so. Then lie about the details to CTA ? Uh huh? Welcome to reality.
Do I think that these incidents show officers shouldn’t have tasers? Nope. It’s the same old arguement with a new technology wrinkle.
I just wanted to add that, while I had considered law enforcement as a career path (it runs in my family), you could not pay me enough to do traffic stops. In hindsight, yes, it appears as though the woman was fairly harmless, if annoying. But at the moment of crisis, you are a cop making a routine traffic stop, and the person you have pulled over refuses to comply with any instructions, is combative, is in communication with unknown parties, and appears to be stalling for time. You are unable to get her out of her vehicle, where she might have any sort of weapon, and she’s acting erratically, waving her hands, etc.
What do you do? The easy answer is to call for backup…but can you do that with every suspicious incident, with the resources it drains? Should police only travel in convoys of 6 officers and greater?
Look, a tazer is not a perfect solution…but I’m sure people would object even more to the cop dragging her out of the vehicle, throwing her down on the ground and handcuffing her with a knee in her back.
Also, I wonder how much of the outrage is due to the gender of the perp rather than any actions on the part of herself or the officer.
Nah, I think most of the outrage is from a misunderstanding of the Taser, its effects on a person, and it’s position on the Use of Force Matrix.
Despite the neverending screaming of that lady, the effects from the Taser are over almost instantaniously when the trigger is released. Hell, I’d say I was more pumped up than sore afterwards. It doesn’t hurt when it’s over. Other than having those prongs removed, there’s no after effects. Compare this to the hour or more it takes to recover from pepper spray. And that’s when you have the benefit of flushing with pleanty of water. It really is a great and harmless weapon. And I don’t know of any instances where it caused a reaction to a pace maker.
I’ve been Tasered, Pepper Sprayed and esposed to CS. The only one that I’d really mind doing again is the Pepper Spray. That shit sucks and even the next day your eyes will feel like they have sand in them. This is after an hour or so of pain and more hours of wearing off. CS isn’t too bad. After you leave the chamber there’s a feeling of great pressure on your chest. But after that, everythings pretty OK. The Taser, the Taser is the easiest thing in the world. It completely incapacitates a person and then it’s immediately over with no after effects. And the tasing itself is not really painful. I’d call it more, “uncomfortable”. It’s like those rehab machines that send little shocks to your muscles. But it’s one big shock and it locks up all your muscles.
If people understood how mild a thing it is. And if they understood that an officer shouldn’t HAVE to fight noncomplying suspects, and that with a taser, even the tiny female officers are as effective as huge male officers in subdueing suspects, and how it’s actually safer for the suspect to get tased than for her to be wrestled to the ground or hit with batons or on the other end of “pain compliance” or some other physical technique. If people understood that, I think they would be more accepting of the Taser.
But it looks like a gun. And watching someone get Tased, makes it appear to be a very violent last resort or something. But it’s not. It is supposed to be used BEFORE resorting to a baton or physical punching or wrestling with a suspect.
It doesn’t hurt much at all, and whatever pain there is, is gone immediately. Because the Taser is so effective, and because it is used before the baton, there will be few instances where officers will have to strike suspects with clubs again.
Nah, I think most of the outrage is from a misunderstanding of the Taser, its effects on a person, and it’s position on the Use of Force Matrix.
Despite the neverending screaming of that lady, the effects from the Taser are over almost instantaniously when the trigger is released. Hell, I’d say I was more pumped up than sore afterwards. It doesn’t hurt when it’s over. Other than having those prongs removed, there’s no after effects. Compare this to the hour or more it takes to recover from pepper spray. And that’s when you have the benefit of flushing with pleanty of water. It really is a great and harmless weapon. And I don’t know of any instances where it caused a reaction to a pace maker.
I’ve been Tasered, Pepper Sprayed and esposed to CS. The only one that I’d really mind doing again is the Pepper Spray. That shit sucks and even the next day your eyes will feel like they have sand in them. This is after an hour or so of pain and more hours of wearing off. CS isn’t too bad. After you leave the chamber there’s a feeling of great pressure on your chest. But after that, everythings pretty OK. The Taser, the Taser is the easiest thing in the world. It completely incapacitates a person and then it’s immediately over with no after effects. And the tasing itself is not really painful. I’d call it more, “uncomfortable”. It’s like those rehab machines that send little shocks to your muscles. But it’s one big shock and it locks up all your muscles.
If people understood how mild a thing it is. And if they understood that an officer shouldn’t HAVE to fight noncomplying suspects, and that with a taser, even the tiny female officers are as effective as huge male officers in subdueing suspects, and how it’s actually safer for the suspect to get tased than for her to be wrestled to the ground or hit with batons or on the other end of “pain compliance” or some other physical technique. If people understood that, I think they would be more accepting of the Taser.
But it looks like a gun. And watching someone get Tased, makes it appear to be a very violent last resort or something. But it’s not. It is supposed to be used BEFORE resorting to a baton or physical punching or wrestling with a suspect.
It doesn’t hurt much at all, and whatever pain there is, is gone immediately. Because the Taser is so effective, and because it is used before the baton, there will be few instances where officers will have to strike suspects with clubs again.
You have apparently never been involved in the handcuffing of a combative individual.
Even the officers involved in taking down a combative suspect will normally be a little scraped up, and often have a couple small muscle strains and such from overpowering the individual in question. Bruises, serious abrasions and sprains are not all that uncommon. Its worse for the loser.
As is been said many times before. Cops aren’t magical super ninjas just usually experienced fighters. Considering the end result she got off easy. Physically fighting with a officer is far more potentially dangerous and far less likely to leave her able to place in beauty pageants.
The video establishes the resist pretty easily. I’d urge her to plead. If she absolutely refused to plead, I’d have to explore other possible defenses based on her condition and circumstances at the time. Was she suffering from some sort of diminshed capacity? Was she in fear for her own safety, based on publicized police abuses?
I don’t see those panning out to an acquittal… but if she was willing to plead down, I might take that back to the Commonwealth’s Attorney and threaten a jury trial about police brutality and the prospect of hanging a jury… and maybe get a good deal out of him that way.
Personally, I think it’s probably the fear of being shocked that sounds worse than anything. I’ve only been shocked once in my life-when I touched my grandfather’s electric garden fence on a dare. It didn’t hurt exactly, but it sort of made my arm ache.
I was talking about this with a friend of mine and his opinion was that tasers should only be used when the officer faces a serious physical threat. We talked of physically pulling her out of the car which he advocated. My questions was, why should these officers risk being clawed or kicked or punched by this lady who refused to cooperate? People have suggested calling for backup but I believe that wasteing resources. Even two cars for a routine traffic stop might mean some more serious crime isn’t prevented because of this ladies bad attitude.
The big issue seems to be is how dangerous is the taser? Some have said not very. Others report serious consequences. Does anyone have a cite for the serious consequences?
Bricker, that’s just a ridiculous thing to say. Once again, you are creating a silly and irrelevant false dilemma by pretending that the ONLY alternative to using the taser was to call out the entire police force. Stop it, for Christ’s sake.
Here’a an idea; instead of bringing out every cop for miles around, why not wait sixty seconds for her to calm down? Would that have been so hard? I certainly am not suggezsting police officers should never use force, but escalating to force in less than a minute to subdue a suspect who isn’t presenting a danger to anyone is simply not what I’d like my local police officers doing. IMHO, these police officers escalated to violence WAY too fast.
What should the police do if they observe someone spray painting a building? Should the owner hire private police to protect the building? What if the building is publicly owned?