This is hilarious! Thank you for this sentence.
By the way, I’m laughing at the umbrella thing and not your post in general. I agree with what you, Jodi and others have posted.
Here’s where it all falls apart for me – when he shoves her. He shoves her hard and she goes far. Beyond the obvious disparity in their sizes, that demonstrates to me that he seriously outpaced her in strength as well. And she wasn’t showing any sign of being physically combative. Resistant, yes, but not about to start fighting him. She’s standing, she’s walking, she’s not fighting. When he shoved her, especially the second time he did, he could’ve instead held and propelled. Put her between him and a vehicle and get her down and cuffed. That his body and brain were detached is demonstrated by the fact that he was yelling at her to get on the ground while shocking her with the Taser, as she’s falling over, as if she had a choice at that point. High on adrenaline and overaggressive, and having a temper tantrum with a deadly weapon in his hand. That’s not what a cop is meant to be.
I have said before and I will reiterate that if drawing a service revolver would not be justified, then drawing a Taser should not be either. Tasers have bred a new generation of lazy, aggressive cops who think that the way to handle a situation is to yell louder and louder, then immediately go to the Taser. The ability to diffuse an angry situation is lost on these young thugs and people continue to be hurt and die because of it. This woman didn’t die and apparently didn’t suffer a lasting injury. She’s lucky. That doesn’t make it right.
Both of my grandmothers had better manners than the bitch in the video, but if they didn’t, I’d say taser away, they were asking for it.
If I were to learn that my mother actually were still alive, which is quite possible, I’d be tempted to hunt her down and taser her myself just on general principles. She was not a nice person at all, to say the least.
He never explained anything to her.
He didn’t say: “Ma’am, signing the form is not an admission of guilt, it is not admitting you did anything wrong, it is just signing that you have received this paper and have agreed to show up in court to state your case”
He didn’t say:“Ma’am, if you don’t sign the form, I will have to arrest you and take you to jail”
When she agreed to sign the form, He didn’t let her.
When she got out of the truck, he didn’t say: Ma’am, please move away from the road. It’s not safe where you are standing."
Now, it might not have made a bit of difference if he had said these things. She might have been so mad that she would still have acted the way she did.
He demanded obedience (as I feel he has a right to do), she chose not to obey.
He warned her repeatedly, she chose to stand in defiance.
Don’t pick a fight with a policeman. He has the gun and the Taser.
That doesn’t make any sense at all. A taser exists to avoid physical confrontation. A gun represents deadly force. The woman clearly pulled away from the arrest and attempted to escape. the officer could have subdued her but she would certainly be worse off than a tasering. Her crime was resisting arrest. This is not a joke and the officer cannot treat it lightly.
tumbledown – he shoved her to get the both of them out of traffic. You want he should just stand in the middle of the road? As for the taser, again, he had no choice, the woman was resisting arrest.
And while neither of my grandmothers would ever have acted like that, I could definitely see my grandfather being tased. He’s one of the most beligerant individuals you’ll ever come across. AND if I heard of this happening to him, I’d probably assume it was his fault.
(Besides, isn’t a taser basically a stun weapon? Until we have the kind of stun blasters they do in Star Wars, they’re probably the best we’ve got.)
I don’t think you can say that she “certainly” would be worse off than a tasering. I don’t care what her crime was. Until she was physically combative, there were steps to be taken between yelling and pulling out the Taser – like calming the fuck down and deescalating the situation rather than getting all hopped up on his hormones and making things worse – and the cop failed.
No one was in or even near traffic the first time he shoved her, and she was well between the two vehicles the second time he shoved. And regardless of why he shoved her, it still showed that he had the physical strength and ability to corral her with relative ease. He never tried. He shoved, then he Tasered. He never did anything else to affect an arrest except yelling at her like an asshole.
Which means what? Last time I checked, American citizens have every right to say whatever they want to a cop, in whatever tone of voice or with whatever attitude they want. They have to folow lawful demands, but they can be as petulant, beligerent, nasty, foul-mouthed and obnoxious as they want, and they cannot be arrested for it. (Though usually cops turn that into “disorderly conduct” and arrest people for it anyway.)
Tasers are stun weapons that kill. They’re the best we’ve got but they’re still used entirely too often. This case is such a case.
He made her get out. He caused the whole thing. Now he is suddenly worried about her safety. She was safe in the damn truck. She was apparently not used to dealing with a nasty cop. She did not expect to be pushed around. When she saw how far he was willing to go, she told him I will sign the ticket. But they were past that. She did not respect his authority. For some cops, that is a huge offense.
He was calm when he yelled at her. Don’t you understand that this is how police are trained? It’s designed to get the attention of the dumbass resisting arrest. It’s nothing personal. the officer was in complete control the entire time. there is no de-escalation of someone physically resisting arrest. Granny was warned twice to comply. She is the one escalating the situation. It’a all Granny. If she runs her mouth in court and refuses a judge’s order to stand down then you’ll get to see another Granny video.
I’ve heard of laws that prohibit abusive language against policemen, but I’m not sure how universal that is.
kind of hard to arrest her in the car. She is the one who turned down the offer to continue on her own recognizance.
I guess he could arrest the car too and take them both to jail. There’s already a song about it (track 6).
Hello? As others have explained, he had to restrain her her in order to cuff her! She wasn’t cooperating. Yeesh!
My point about my grandfather was that no, I would NOT necessarily be upset “if it was one of MY grandparents!!!”
Isn’t wasn’t her mouth – it was her refusal to cooperate and sign the ticket.
I suppose we’ll see the follow up?
Considering how much they’re used, and they’re used a lot more than you’ve witnessed on video. Just what percentage would you say is directly responsible for the death of suspects?
I’ve already cited the Wake Forest School of Medicine study. What have you got? If you want to use Amnesty International’s numbers, you should understand that those numbers represent in-custody deaths *after *use of stun, not deaths attributed to the stun directly. In cases where the ME noted possible contributing factors, stuns were accompanied most often by drug use, heart disease and mental issues. The vast majority of deaths falsely attributed to stuns are actually due to Excited Delirium Syndrome, which is a brain disorder recognized long before tasers were used by law enforcement. EDS is explained in great detail in the Miami-Dade Grand Jury report I previously linked.
To date, as far as I know, there has been no study that directly proves causation. Yet, there has been several studies indicating the efficacy and relative* safety of tasers. *I say “relative” because injuries do occur and range from mild to serious requiring medical attention. The vast majority, however, are mild. But that’s the nature of law enforcement. People get hurt. Better less people get hurt, IMHO, and the people who are tasked with dealing with the belligerent, violent, and impulsive have a means of enforcing the law at a reduced risk to their own safety.
I agree 100%. Shoving is an aggressive maneuver meant to bully and intimidate and it serves absolutely no other purpose. It’s even illegal in “no holds barred” cagefighting for this reason. If he wanted to get her away from traffic all he had to do was make himself big in front of her, or wrap his arms around her, and walk away from the traffic. Hell, he might’ve even tried, “stay away from the road, it’s dangerous,” but he didn’t. Shoving here was completely unnecessary and coupled with the screaming tells me he completely lost his cool. Screaming means you’ve given up on reason.
Bull. That’s a retcon George Lucas would be proud of.
That’s practically an oxymoron.
Watching the video again, I just cannot understand how some of you aren’t seeing excessive use of force here.
“I’m getting back in my car.”
“You’re gonna be tased, stop”
“I’m getting back in my car.” [Does not move an inch]
“NO MA’AM!” POP “TASED! GET ON THE GROUND!”
[Screaming]
“PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK!”
“I can’t!”
“PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK! PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK!”
It makes me sick.
Funny as you may find it, all it really shows is that the author does not understand what “goal posts” are. This was never a “prove X to me and I’ll agree to Y” discussion. I was dead set on one side of this from the start and don’t believe I ever gave any indication that I was going to change my mind. I don’t think anything short of proving granny had a knife drawn would convince me that this was not excessive use of force. Like I said, it’s not legal vs. illegal to me, it’s right vs. wrong.
I’d be shocked to see you ever justify any taser use that was trotted out in the media. Have you seen (and can you link to) a video that shows an officer using a taser that you deem is reasonable and justified? Just curious.
I’m sure their use is justified all the time. Big, aggressive guys, people with baseball bats, etc., would not upset me to get the taser. This case was very different than that. I think the controversial ones are the ones that tend to get trotted out, and rightly so IMO. Let’s face it: if there was nothing wrong with what happened here, it probably wouldn’t be on the news and we probably wouldn’t be talking about it.
Oh, come now. The media loves controversy. Just because the taser issue is controversial doesn’t mean that this cop was wrong in using it. So, there must be at least one video that you’ve seen in which you feel the use of the taser is justified?
How about this one? Would you be willing to admit that this encounter went significantly better than it might have without the taser?
Sure, they love to propagate it, but in this case they didn’t create the controversy. They showed a video that they knew would be controversial.
What’s the real reason you’re asking me this? I don’t care what your opinion of that video is so why would you possibly care what mine is? I don’t feel like playing games so why don’t you just ask me what you want to ask me?
I thought I was clear on the reason. It seems like whenever this discussion comes up it’s always about what the cop did wrong and what an egotistical pussy he is and less about the fact that generally the suspect is displaying a great deal of resistance and lack of cooperation to an officer’s lawful orders.
It seems to me that, for some people, there’s never going to be an instance of justified taser usage, so it doesn’t really matter if they think the cop was a dick for using it. They always are.
Now, I could be wrong. I could very well be pegging you all wrong. I’m just curious as to whether you are anti-taser altogether, or if the link I posted above seemed reasonable to you. If the latter is true, I can and do apologize to you for assuming the former.