I hesitate to ask…but do you have a cite for this? I found this:
There are several articles on this case, but I see nothing that claims that police in 5 different states are suing manufacturers for damages…I see a bunch of articles about one officer who was hurt in 2007. Here is another article on the same thing:
What this tells me is that tasers aren’t 100% safe…I mean, well yeah. Nothing is.
BTW, do you have a cite that 400 people a year are killed by tasers as well? That seems like a pretty low number (less than the number of people shot accidentally by guns per year, less than a third who choke to death on foreign objects, only a fraction of the number killed falling off ladders in their houses a year, etc etc).
I misunderheard what you said…you claimed 400 deaths total, not 400 deaths per year. I can’t find anyone claiming 400 deaths total…Amnesty International seems to be claiming 200-300 deaths since 2001. I found this on Wiki:
This seems to be a world wide figure from what I can tell. So, unless I’m mistaken here, we are talking about approximately 245 deaths due to tasering world wide since 2001…
While plenty of cops have been plenty guilty of abuse, there is no police brutality occurring in this video. They are exercising the bare minimum force needed to provide lawful arrest of a non-compliant, drunk naked guy in public. If you have a problem with what occurred in the video, then you have a problem with the law, not those enforcing it. The only thing these cops are guilty of is scarfing down too many jelly donuts.
I think this is changing. I have no cites, but I am under the impression that the use of tasers is moving towards greater monitoring and documentation.
And I have to ask, tasers scare you more than guns? Really? The potential for shock treatment scares you more than the potential for having the back of your head blown off?
I think his point is that tasers are being used in situations that guns would never be. For example, had this ‘naked wizard’ incident occurred before the advent of tasers, he (well, hopefully!) almost certainly would not have been shot.
One thing I don’t see people discuss much is the danger of head injury. It’s not relevant in this case where they’re on grass, but when a person is tasered they fall down and they’re unable to break the fall with their hands. That can be dangerous if the person is standing on pavement or concrete.
We aren’t talking about “brutality”. The point was that people who are ready to die, pretty much anything can kill them. Regular “safe” procedures can be deadly. The second link below includes pepper spray, hog-tying, making people lie prone on the ground, or holding a person down anywhere on the upper half of their body as causes of death. So I mean if making a person lie prone is just as apt to kill someone as tasering them, I’m not real convinced it can be labeled a lethal weapon.
On a slightly different note, what is wrong with that guy’s penis? Seriously, I had no idea a penis could be that small. It’s about 1/2 inch in length. Is this natural or some sort of… defect?
I’ve been trying to figure this out too. I wonder if he is transgendered. I apologize if that is the wrong word. I’m meaning when someone is born without an obvious gender. His scrotum looks off too.
While looking up transgendered, I stumbled upon micropenis, it might be that.
Yes. Red Barchetta’s correct. Cops, even rent-a-cops, even slimy untrained power tripping rent-a-cops will think twice before shooting at you, heck they’ll think long and hard before they even pull their weapon. Tasers ? Not so much. In my experience, a cop will put more thought into whether or not he should lay into you with a baton than shocking your nuts with his shiny new painbuzzer. Again, and again, and again.
ETA :
I do have a problem with that fat prick drive-stunning that poor naked bastard over and over as he’s writhing on the ground helpless, yes. Think about it for a second : imagine you’re seeing the exact same vid, but instead of tasing the git, the cop’s just kicking him in the stomach as hard as he can. That wouldn’t be OK, right ? That would be the sort of thing you’d see in a WW2 movie, with the evil German kicking the old guy who’s not strong enough to get up, right ? Well, repeated tasing is actually worse. Oh sure, it looks innocuous, it’s sanitized violence. And that’s the whole idea. That’s why tasers are really, really not a good idea to put in the hands of poorly trained people.
Obviously this is just a WAG but there are many men, of normal erect length, who have penises that are hidden inside a suprapubic fat pad while flaccid. The actual flaccid length when measured with the fat pad depressed is normal also. This is medically occasionally referred to as an “inconspicuous penis”. Urologists often like to operate on these people but from what I can gather they function just fine and obtain normal length when erect. That is in clear distinction to a “trapped penis” in which the skin of the shaft is adhered to suprapubic skin in which it is recessed or a “micropenis” which is measurably small when measured with the fat pad depressed.
Well, it’s not a good idea to put any tool in the hands of the untrained. While I do accept that that one cop was a bit heavy-handed, I don’t accept your analogy. We are not talking about sadistic nazis beating on helpless people, we are talking about police enforcing a law. That dude in the video was not helpless. He placed himself in that position. He was there by choice. He chose to get tased. All he had to do to avoid getting roughed up and then tased was to put his hands behind his back. That’s it. He chose against that.
Ok…but even if I accept that data (and I haven’t been able to find any corroborating cites…you?), that’s a minuscule number of people killed. I think more people died in air craft accidents since 2001 (not even counting 9/11) than that.
From your other cite:
Again…this is a minuscule number of people hurt. Compared to just about anything else this is hardly a blip on the radar. As with accidental gun deaths this is getting blown WAY out of proportion. When I get home tonight I’ll see if I can dig up some figure on police related non-taser deaths/injuries…I’d be very surprised if it’s not double or even triple these figures over that same period of time. Heck, I’ll be mildly surprised if the yearly figures for non-taser deaths/injuries involving police aren’t greater than the entire 2002-2007 range.
Oh, come on. You’re being disingenuous at best. The man was clearly too impaired (inebriated… ok, ok he was tripping balls) to make any rational conversation OR CHOICE about what he was doing. He was too out of his gourd to even be able to rationally comprehend what was going on around him. He didn’t choose to resist or be tased or even have a conversation with those officers. That’s just a silly attempt to rationalize and justify what happened.
To be fair, I’m pretty sure they are monitored. Most tazers keep a record of every time they are fired. The problem is the cops just lie and say that their victim was violent/threatening. As long as there are no permanent injuries, nobody cares enough to bother questioning the word of the police. Only when it’s caught on tape do they have to resort to this nonsense idea that they are required to force complience with their orders.
Once again, they don’t actually have to force complience if there is no danger to anyone.
Is that their function? How are they serving that function by initiating a violent confrontation just because some guy dares to ignore their orders? I suppose if the cops hadn’t proven their ability to get their way, the puiblic would have seen it as a sign of weakness and erupted in chaos and anarchy right?
Agreed completely. I don’t think that excuses their behavior at all.
Just because someone is breaking the law does not make force neccessary. It is not neccessary for police to assert their athority whenever they encounter defiance. It is not their job to prove how tough they are. It is their job to keep the peace. That purpose is not served by using force when the only danger is to their own ego.
I know you weren’t asking me but… I have no reason to expect a police officer will use a lethal weapon just to assert his dominance. The same cannot be said of a taser.
I’m not disagreeing with the fact that the guy was being uncooperative, and made a poor decision. Drunk’ll do that to you. But you know what ? A cop’s entire job consists of dealing with uncooperative people.
And I’m sorry, but if three strong cops can’t throw a tarp on and haul some naked, out of shape, baked out of his wits guy off to the drunk tank without using a weapon, they shouldn’t be cops, period. He was being an ass, yes, but at no point is he overpowering or threatening anyone. He’s not throwing punches, he’s not even yelling at them ! And they had ample time and opportunity to cuff him as they were twisting his arms to try and force him to get dressed - they’re clearly on top of him. So yes, when I watch that video, I interpret the knee-drop jerk’s actions as losing patience and using a completely inappropriate amount of force on a helpless moron.
Again, a major part of a cop’s job is to be patient and calmly deal with irrational, hostile people with as less violence as possible. And one of those 3 cops failed to do that, big time.
ETA :
You have been whoooshed, my friend :). City 17 is the name of the city where Half Life 2 takes place - an oppressive, 1984-like police state with aliens enslaving humanity with the help of lots of big brutes with stun batons.