Here’s the story: in June 2009 a 64-year-old man injured himself falling down the steps outside his home. Paramedics came and treated him, then left. Shortly after that two sheriff’s deputies showed up. The injured man made a crack about how, if he had a gun, he’d shoot himself. The deputies didn’t recognize it as a joke - they thought he was suicidal and decided to take the man to the hospital. The man refused to go, so one of the deputies pointed a taser at the guy and threatened to tase the man if he didn’t comply. The injured man’s wife told the deputies that her husband had a heart condition. The guy still refused to surrender to the cops, so the deputy tased him three times, all the while telling the man to “stop resisting.”
The man filed suit against Marin County this past Monday - that’s why it’s in the news now. The sheriff’s department says they are confident their deputies will be vindicated. Yeah, right - circle the wagons.
Experts are saying now that the tasering was unjustified. They’re saying the deputies should have tried cuffing the man first. Really? It’s not clear to me that it was necessary or even advisable to take the man into custody at all.
Did these cops receive any training in how to deal with people, or do they only know how to use force? What sense does it make to torture someone with electricity when he poses no threat, and when your goal is supposedly to help him? Why risk killing him if you’re trying to keep him from committing suicide?
Too many cops act as if their main job is to get people to obey orders by any means necessary. Refusal to obey - even hesitation - is a challenge to authority that must be met with force regardless of circumstances.
Why are these badge-holding thugs still employed by Marin County?
I think that the tasing should not have been used as it was. Probably the cops could have used some other technique first. However, I wasn’t there.
However, there’s a time and a place for cracking jokes. It’s one thing, for instance, to make a joke about a bomb when you’re in your own living room, surrounded by friends who know you. It’s quite another thing to make a joke about a bomb when you’re standing in line to board an airplane. The cops CANNOT assume that a comment about committing suicide is a joke. If they did, and someone actually DID commit suicide after the cops had left, we’d have another Pit thread.
And refusing orders from cops, or “passive resistance”, does carry a certain amount of risk. My dad always told me to just do what the cops told me to do, even if I felt that my rights were being violated, and to fight the action IN COURT, with LAWYERS, because cops have to make snap decisions. Anyone who wants to make a passive resistance is free to do so, but in doing so, should accept the consequences of this decision. This guy was warned several times that the cops were gonna tase him if he didn’t get up and go to the hospital with them.
So let’s start with this. It’s not clear to me how these experts were chosen for the story. Are there any experts who reached opposite conclusions? How many experts were consulted, in total?
As to the advisibility of taking the man into custody… after his suicide, I wonder which of his family members would be castigating the police for failing to do their duty under the California Welfare and Institutions Code, Sections 5150-5157 et seq, as relates to suicide threats. Perhaps you would be here complaining about incompetent police officers who don’t know their job is to help suicidal people, not ignore them.
In any event, if the police had probable cause to believe the man was a danger to himself, they had the authority to take him into custody to prevent that harm. A man saying that if he had a gun he’d shoot himself clearly provides that probable cause.
Yes. However wrong the deputies may have been, the man could have easily avoided the pain and suffering had he just went with them and dealt with the rightness or wrongness of it later. When it comes to the police, resistance is **always **futile, and doing so only opens the opportunity for them to clear themselves of any wrongdoing no matter how out of line they may actually have been.
When an ex-girlfriend was 14, she and her 17 year old sister were driving back home from a concert. There had been a few reports of young women being pulled over in that neighborhood, ordered to get out of their cars, and raped by the cop. That night, they were pulled over by a cop and ordered out of the car. They refused. They DID NOT comply.
I can’t remember how the story ended, but being that their grandfather was chief of homicide in that town, I don’t think it ended well for that cop. I think he accidentally fell down some stairs a few times.
One thing that I don’t understand (and which Bricker might be able to explain) is how this kind of use of a taser complies with the 8th Amendment’s ban on crual and unusual punishment.
I accept that a weapon like this could be used for self defence, or for defence of a third party. But how can it be used simply to compel obedience to a police officer’s orders, without the person threatening violence against anyone else? Isn’t that just punishment? I doubt if a court could order it, e.g., for a person disrupting court proceedings, so how can a police officer decide to do it?
I can answer that, as I once had to ask it; it was Bricker who answered for me back then!
It isn’t punishment.
That’s it. The act you are describing isn’t punishment, as the term is defined legally. Mind you, since IAMAL I won’t cotton to point out the particulars and the history of the term, but as it was not ordered by a court as a result of proceedings, it’s not punishment in the legal sense, is the gist of it.
I’m not thrilled about the tasering, but in some circumstances, a remark like that may well have been followed by an attempt to get a gun, like on the spot from an officer, or later on from someone else.
Was it, “Oh, jeez, my ankle hurts. If I were a horse they’d shoot me.”
Or was it, “FUCK YOU PIGs, I want to die right now. A gun, a gun, my condo for a gun!”
Doesn’t sound like it was the latter in this case. From what I can tell, the guy was probably a little pissed off and in pain and he made a crack. If the cops were that worried about his well-being, they could have talked to him and his wife to figure out how serious or idle the threat to himself was before arresting him.
Chrissakes, how many times have you put a finger to your head in mock suicide on a frustrating day? Does that warrant hand cuffs and an electrocution on the off chance you were just limbering up for the real thing?
This was not punishment. It was force to gain compliance. IANAL, but I do know from past experience (coming from where you are now, actually) that legally, this is not considered punishment.
Had he continued to tase the old man in the back of the cruiser, it still would not be punishment, it would be use of force or even just criminal battery, but AFAIK these actions are not, legally, punishment.
It’s probable cause to investigate further, not to torture and deprive him of liberty on the spot. IF he had stated his intent to immediately go locate a weapon, then - maybe - there’d have been cause to detain him on the spot, or possibly even taser him if he actually started to get moving and wouldn’t listen.
The correct response, from the evidence presented, was to 1) inquire what he meant, 2) determine if a weapon was potentially available to him, 3) determine from other witnesses (his wife!) their assesment of the man’s state of mind, and and 4) contact mental health authorities - or at least a supervisor - with the collected information for further guidance.
And yes, I’ve had some law enforcement experience. Not a huge amount, but I’ve responded to domestic situations, riots, near-riots, assault, and violent disturbances of the peace (as opposed to drunken singing in the street. Well, I’ve been to those, too). I’ve set working dog handlers to control unruly crowds. I’ve put people in jail cells. And yes, I investigated before so doing anything that resembled force or coersion, excepting in direct violent confrontation. If I, an only sometime player in LE, can do that, I seriously wonder what the hell those officers were taught, or were thinking.
I agree with Alessan. The public was sold a bill of goods about how tasers were a replacement for guns and were going to save lives. The police instead have over-used tasers as a compliance device. Unfortunately, a minority of police officers are all about “RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH!!!”, and a taser is fun toy for these assholes.
When you lawyer types use the term “probable cause,” what sorts of probabilities are we talking about? More likely than not? A nontrivial chance, but not necessarily anywhere near 50-50? Substantially more likely than not?
When I say, “It’s probable that it will rain this afternoon,” I mean that it’s more likely than not that it will rain. But what do you lawyers mean by it?
This is the sort of thing that erodes respect for the law. When the use of force to gain compliance involves inflicting of pain, the distinction between using force to gain compliance and meting out punishment for the failure to comply up to that point is purely a theoretical one, and there’s no difference in actual fact.
That the lawyers and the courts refuse to call it punishment simply puts them in the position of playing a game of “let’s pretend” with people’s lives and freedoms at stake. Anyone can see it’s bogus, it’s a dodge to protect the men in blue from the consequences of their actions. Except the legal system, of course.