Tasers Implicated In Far More Deaths Than We Previously Thought (fastcompany.com) 191
tedlistens writes: Independent studies have showed that when deployed correctly -- according to "guidelines" manufacturer Axon offers to police -- Tasers reduce injuries among both officers and the people they subdue. But amid a lack of official data about their use and effects, a new report by Reuters found 1,005 incidents in the U.S. in which people died after police stunned them with the electrical weapons, most since the early 2000s. The Taser was ruled to be a cause or contributing factor in 153 of those deaths -- far more than the 24 cases the company has counted. Reuters found that 9 in 10 of those who died were unarmed and one in four suffered from mental illness or neurological disorders; In 9 of every 10 incidents reviewed, the deceased was unarmed; More than 100 of the fatal encounters began with a 911 call for help during a medical emergency. Earlier this year, Axon rebranded, dropping the name Taser International to underscore its focus on body cameras and digital evidence, which is meant in part to add new transparency to fatal police encounters.
Don't Tase Me, Bro! (Score:4, Insightful)
In other news, in the hands of Law Enforcement, tasers produced far fewer deaths than firearms!
On a more serious note, I am a little disturbed by the occasional video that comes out showing cops tasing someone over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over, and low and behold, it turns out not to be good for the person being tased.
Re: Don't Tase Me, Bro! (Score:2, Funny)
Shocking isn't it...
Re: (Score:2)
Ohm my god, that was a terrible pun!
Watt is the world coming to?
(And before you all start, I'm just lightning the mood...)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I would find the percentage of death vs use more interesting... especially if compared to the same statistic for when they shoot people.
153 deaths in 16 years seems like it would be a very small percentage, I imagine they have been used many thousands of times. 10 people per year is a death statistic that bath tubs would love to improve to.
This journalist is negligent for not including all the data required for people to truly understand the extent of the problem. Too bad we can't have nice things when it comes to comprehensive reporting.
Re: Don't Tase Me, Bro! (Score:2)
It is over 1000 deaths. Just only 153 were it was proven. The rest just happened to die after being tazed for some unknown reason.
Re: (Score:2)
The rest just happened to die after being tazed for some unknown reason.
No, read the article. The rest died for other reasons. They were not unknown.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
With firearms, death is the primary outcome.
Next up, we'll be comparing thalidomide with Mengele harvesting tiny arms.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps more than that, death is the only desired outcome. Nobody pulls out a firearm to simply immobilize someone. Well if you're dead then you're immobilized, I suppose...
Re:Don't Tase Me, Bro! (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the major problems with law enforcement use of TASER technology out in the real world is that it's often misused as a compliance-by-pain-weapon of control/punishment, rather than a defensive immobilization tool of next-to-last resort short of a firearm. This certainly does nothing to improve the public's perceptions of or trust in law enforcement in general.
Strat
Re:Don't Tase Me, Bro! (Score:5, Insightful)
The previous compliance device was the baton - which resulted in not only pain, but broken bones and deaths, too.
TASERs are not perfect. But they're still better than every alternative that's been tried.
You're entirely missing the point.
It's the use of a weapon meant as a less-lethal next-to-last-resort short of a firearm defensive immobilization tool, as a tool to coerce compliance through pain instead, not like human cattle prods. Using the baton for that purpose was misuse just as using TASER technology for that purpose is misuse. Can you not discern a difference?
Strat
Re: Don't Tase Me, Bro! (Score:5, Insightful)
You of course believe that the police should wait to get shot or knifed before responding.
Yes, because as everyone knows, reality is always black and white with no shades of gray. Can we have something in-between? As it is, too many people are dying that don't need to and shouldn't die.
If a cop's highest priority is to save his own life, he's going to be of little use in saving innocent lives that are in harm's way if he's unwilling to put himself at risk. In fact, it puts innocents at risk as the quicker a cop is to escalate to lethal force if he suddenly "feels threatened" (such a nice precise legal definition based on 'feelz' that could never cover for bad actors/actions, eh?) the more people that will die needlessly.
This entire attitude of "going home tonight" being the top priority among law enforcement has been a large contributing factor to the distrust, hatred, and "retaliatory" executions of police officers by the public, yet law enforcement as a whole will not acknowledge it as a problem, so, sadly, I guess more good men will die needlessly.
And you blatantly, maliciously lie when you say that death is the desired outcome when shooting.
I never said that. Perhaps in your rush to knee-jerking a response you mistook another post's comments for mine? Slow down there, Cowboy!
Shooting a subject is meant to stop a threat as a last resort, and most cops are trained to fire until the threat is neutralized, which means no discernible movement of the subject. Which, in a large percentage of instances if not the overwhelming majority, means the subject is likely dead or is moments away from expiring from multiple gunshot wounds.
So, although technically true that death is not stated as the desired outcome, the outcome that *is* desired and the procedures/policies behind them usually results in the subject's death.
Strat
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
How do YOU think a police officer should deal with a non-compliant criminal?
How about being much less violent? To put things in perspective, the police in the USA is orders of magnitude more likely to kill by any comparison to similar countries. For instance
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the maniac that just got tazed surely wouldn't try to hurt someone when they stop getting tased, right?
Yeah, that totally explains that cop tasing a 7 year old schoolgirl in Dallas. I guess he should have not put himself at such risk and had his partner shoot her while the taser had the little homicidal maniac helpless, as you know what berserker killers 7-year-old schoolgirls can be! She might have taken out half of Dallas PD before she was stopped! Oh, the humanity!
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps more than that, death is the only desired outcome. Nobody pulls out a firearm to simply immobilize someone.
Actually, that's EXACTLY why a police officer uses a firearm.....to stop someone from doing whatever it is they are doing. People are shot all the time who do not immediately die and still manage to kill/injure someone. This is why police officers are trained to shoot until the threat is down. Death is a side-effect. It's not like the movies. I suggest you read up/take a course on self-defense shooting and learn something.
Re: (Score:2)
How important is it to stop someone doing what they're doing? If the someone is being dangerous to people around, sure, tase them. Otherwise, there's almost certainly other ways to handle the situation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, yes, but on the other hand, police officers know that death is the primary outcome, and thus are more likely to show restraint when using a firearm, which probably partially cancels out the difference.
Re:Don't Tase Me, Bro! (Score:5, Interesting)
Not a good thing.
They also like to use the, but it's non-lethal excuse.
Any kind of assault by police should be a last resort instead their current go to attitude.
Re: (Score:2)
"... A cops time is better spent enforcing laws and arresting criminals ..."
And keeping the peace. The rest of the comment is a plea for something, but I'm not sure what.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You know, there are other choices available re police use of force between the US and Somalia.
Re:Don't Tase Me, Bro! (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news, in the hands of Law Enforcement, tasers produced far fewer deaths than firearms!
This would be useful information if accompanied by studies showing tasers being used instead of firearms. Unfortunately, police gun use does not see a decline - even despite crime rates having gone down, so tasers appear to be used in addition, making police more deadly than ever.
Re: (Score:2)
That is properly insightful and ought to be modded up.
Re: (Score:2)
There are confounding factors though. If police are more willing to use tasers than firearms, the actual death count could exceed firearm deaths even if the per incident odds are smaller.
Re: (Score:3)
I feel a case can also be made that, since police have "less than lethal" options available, they are more likely to employ force instead of deescalation and discussion.
The options have gone from "talk them down vs. kill them" to "talk them down, kill them or just hurt them really bad in a way I won't get in trouble for."
I feel it's a significant part of why police violence is such a problem.
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's important to note that Tasers were _never_ advertised as "less than lethal" weapons. They are "less lethat" weapons. The implication is that they are still just a little bit lethal.
In my opinion, because they are still a lethal weapon, cops should have to fill out the same reports and have the same reviews as when they use their firearms. Here in Ontario. a cop has to file a report if they draw their sidearm. Imagine what would happen to taser use if the same was true.
I'll cheerfully support a cop
Re: (Score:2)
Odd argument . That seems to have been the rationale to sell them: less lethal than guns. IF you were going to use a gun , and you use a taser, it's less lethal.
The reality is different. IF you had reasons to refrain from using guns, namely there was not enough justification for it, that restraint just went out the window. No restraint needed when using tasers. So all you get is tasers being used where the justification for guns didn't exist.With tasers you can be as trigger happy as you feel like.
Re: (Score:2)
In other news, in the hands of Law Enforcement, tasers produced far fewer deaths than firearms!
On a more serious note, I am a little disturbed by the occasional video that comes out showing cops tasing someone over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over, and low and behold, it turns out not to be good for the person being tased.
NO, you are wrong.
Most police officers would not have and did not use their guns, because they knew the outcome would be fatal. The Taser, they were trained to believe, would just stun the targeted person, and with an immediate follow up, they could arrest/handcuff the stunned victim. However, some victims suffered from the electric shock, and some police officers lost control from anger or excitementn and triggered multiple taser shocks, that caused a death.
Re:Don't Tase Me, Bro! (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't need to make it structurally easy for people to act badly, though.
Abuse of force. (Score:5, Insightful)
Using a taser on someone who is unarmed? Is that really necessary? I'm certain there are some instances where it's a legitimate option but I feel like it's far more likely that tasers are considered by police to be non-lethal weapons when in fact they are merely less-lethal weapons. The "don't tase me, bro" incident is a perfect example of this abuse of force.
Abuse the force, Luke (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently talking and patience are too much to expect of police officers. I find it hard to believe that many people are initiating physical assaults on cops, it seems like these are cases where a cop decides that just talking things out isn't cutting it, and they need to cuff the drunken frat boy staggering around at 2 am RIGHT NOW.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose you would just let them go, or resort to putting yourself in harms way to subdue such a person?
Yes.
If officers put their own safety over that of the public they're sworn to protect and serve such that they will not put themselves in harm's way to avoid taking a possibly-innocent life, then I want them gone last week. Full stop.
Strat
Re: (Score:3)
It works by the cop using a strategy of communication and deescalation first, and only turning to some sort of violence when there are no other options. This is pretty advanced thinking, I know.
Re: (Score:2)
You completely ignored the posts that were being responded to. Pretty common on slashdot, I know.
Someone doesn't need a weapon to be violent, in a fit of rage, and non-compliant with the officer. I suppose you would just let them go, or resort to putting yourself in harms way to subdue such a person? Or do you really think someone high on something and in a fit of rage can be reasoned with?
So you're PAST the point of "communication and deescalation." The officer should not have to risk him or herself to subdue such a douchebag unless there are no other options.
Re: (Score:3)
Which applies to a small fraction of the times that tasers are actually used. They're usually just used to ensure compliance full-stop, and tend to be one of the first tactics employed.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Do you know of any case where a taser have been used instead of the officer reaching for his gun in a case like that?
Seems like tasers are mainly used where the situation could have been dealt with verbally.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it's obvious you don't get it. Someone doesn't need a weapon to be violent, in a fit of rage, and non-compliant with the officer. I suppose you would just let them go, or resort to putting yourself in harms way to subdue such a person? Or do you really think someone high on something and in a fit of rage can be reasoned with?
Non compliance is not the same as violence.
Police officers are using tasers on people who are not complying with their instructions, instead of using tasers on people who are dangerously violent. That is a problem.
Maybe not legal, but lots of fun (Score:2)
Here in Oz the NSW police tazered a Brazillian after he was handcuffed. He died, the family made a fuss and unlike the US the coppers did get into a little bit of trouble.
Don't they carry a big stick any mroe?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In far too many cases, they are on paid administrative leave (i.e., paid vacation) until their buddies can find a way to exonerate them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it's obvious you don't get it. Someone doesn't need a weapon to be violent, in a fit of rage, and non-compliant with the officer. I suppose you would just let them go, or resort to putting yourself in harms way to subdue such a person? Or do you really think someone high on something and in a fit of rage can be reasoned with?
Non compliance is not the same as violence.
Police officers are using tasers on people who are not complying with their instructions, instead of using tasers on people who are dangerously violent. That is a problem.
A little highlighting, in case you missed it. And your thought on the matter makes no sense to me... you are saying they use tasers on people simply being non-compliant (which can mean many things - we're not talking about "show me id," we're talking about "face down on the ground with hands behind your head" because someone has already shown they are not cooperative). But then you say "instead of using tasers on people who are dangerously violent." Which is absurd - it's quite obviously both, and you'd
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it's happened that way more than once, but I don't think there is much evidence that it's frequent.
OTOH, there's considerable evidence that tasers are use with reckless abandon. Saying it's malicious assault is probably more than the evidence usually justifies, but it often sure looks that way, and sometimes that's clearly what happens, even when the guy doesn't end up dead.
OTOH, there are LOTS of incidents, and we presumably only hear about the outliers. But the incidence of violence appears to hav
Re: (Score:2)
Using a taser on someone who is unarmed? Is that really necessary? I'm certain there are some instances where it's a legitimate option but I feel like it's far more likely that tasers are considered by police to be non-lethal weapons when in fact they are merely less-lethal weapons. The "don't tase me, bro" incident is a perfect example of this abuse of force.
The problem with tasers is they aren't reliable enough to be a useful means of protection. When a situation arises where you really need to stop someone you use a gun.
So cops use tasers for the one thing they are good for, compliance. Sometimes this can save lives, ie a crazy person with a knife that you can't talk down and would have been shot when they inevitably changed. But more often they're used to subdue uncooperative subjects.
It's understandable why cops like them, they make the very unpleasant job
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Next time you can try to subdue the 230lb gorilla high out of his gourd on Meth then... Let me know how that works out for you. When tasers don't work, you get this: http://www.nydailynews.com/new... [nydailynews.com]
Tasers are also more often used by female officers. Should we ban female officers because they don't have the physical strength to subdue 50% of the male population? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Re:Abuse of force. (Score:5, Informative)
Next time you can try to subdue the 230lb gorilla high out of his gourd on Meth then... Let me know how that works out for you.
Did you fail the literacy test? I wrote, "I'm certain there are some instances where it's a legitimate option". How did you not see that?
Re: (Score:2)
You didn't lead with that sentence, and his reactionary knee-jerking didn't read more than the first one before he was bouncing on the Reply button and firing off his vitriol.
Re: (Score:2)
Being "certain that there are some instances where it's a legitimate option" Implies that most instances are not, and that is fallacious and derogatory towards police.
Is every single tasing incident legitimate? No.
Are the vast majority of tasing incidence legitimate? Yes they are.
Do police know what it feels like to be tased? Yes, a lot of them do when they get the training.
What percentage of people die as a direct result of being tased? The number is extremely small, but your odds of death go up if you
Re: (Score:2)
Are the vast majority of tasing incidence legitimate? Yes they are.
How do you know this to be true? Do you have statistics to back up this claim?
The number is extremely small, but your odds of death go up if you are ODing on meth or other stimulants, or have other underlying health issues.
How do you know this to be true? Do you have statistics to back up this claim?
Tasers are not perfect, but they are a less lethal way to stop criminals who are resisting or fleeing.
Why do you need to tase someone that is resisting arrest? Why not give chase? Did police really just shoot everybody before there was the taser?
Your original post and this reply is exactly the smarmy, liberal bias that I was reacting to.
No, it was clearly your inability to read once you became outraged.
I hope the police take 30 minutes to arrive at your house when the career felon released early from prison by Obama is invading your home,
Home invasion is really to just to steal valuable items and done while people are either sleeping or not there. If caught in the act, they a
Re:Abuse of force. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Should we ban female officers because they don't have the physical strength to subdue 50% of the male population?" No, but we shouldn't permit a woman incapable of doing the job because she is weak any more than we should permit a man who cannot do the job because he is fat.
Re: (Score:2)
Then you have just disqualified nearly all women from serving in the police force. If you expect women to wrestle male suspects to the ground, almost no females can do it. The strongest women in the world, the Olympic competitors are only about as strong as an athletic high school senior male or about the top 20% of the male population.
Re: (Score:2)
Next time you can try to subdue the 230lb gorilla high out of his gourd on Meth then...
You get better luck with a banana... oh wait he was holding one.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Unless, of course, you were using "gorilla" as a racist reference to black people. But this is Slashdot, we're smarter than that, right?
Well we were... but then you went and posted that.
Re: (Score:2)
Using a taser on someone who is unarmed? Is that really necessary?
If someone is charging you, yes. If they're attacking another person or officer, yes. There are situations where an unarmed person can cause serious injury, if not death, to someone.
Or would you prefer the police stand by and talk in a quiet, soothing voice while the criminal pummels them or someone else?
Re: (Score:3)
There are situations where an unarmed person can cause serious injury, if not death, to someone.
Did you fail the literacy test? I wrote, "I'm certain there are some instances where it's a legitimate option". How did you not see that?
Re:Abuse of force. (Score:5, Informative)
There was a case in (I believe it was) West Virginia where an officer was talking someone out of being a problem, and appearantly being successful. Some other officers showed up and shot the now quiet "perpetrator". They were praised. The officer who talked the guy down was .... here I can't quite believe my memory. So I looked it up. http://ktla.com/2017/05/12/law... [ktla.com]
Well, this doesn't directly address the use of tasers, but it addresses how justified I assume the use of force often is. I know that good people join the police force, but it often seems that either they don't stay around, or they get corrupted.
FWIW, insurance claims don't substantiate the claim the being a policeman is unreasonably dangerous compared to other professions. It *is* dangerous compared to being a computer programmer, but not compared to being a forester or, I believe, an electric company lineman. (I'd really need to check the list of more dangerous professions again to be certain, but policeman wasn't in the top 10.)
Re: (Score:3)
Using a taser on someone who is unarmed? Is that really necessary?
Why not? I mean it's a completely safe weapon to subdue someone. Just because they are unarmed doesn't mean you should meet them on equal footing. What happens if they are good fighters! /police industrial complex thinking
Re: (Score:2)
pain compliance (Score:2)
Who doesn't love Pain compliance [wikipedia.org]?
More statistics with body cameras (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Which is false, because tasers are much more lethal than that.
Even the very low current of a taser, perhaps no more than 3 or 4 milliamps, can induce fibrillation if enough current from the taser reaches the heart (even just a few microamps is sufficient,). The effects of this are not always immediately self-evident, but if a person who has been tazed is then immediately taken to a hospital to ensure that no heart damage has occurred, only then do the chances of a fatality really drop significantly.
Th
yeah. i read it (Score:2)
Some additional questions need to be answered (Score:2)
But amid a lack of official data about their use and effects, a new report by Reuters found 1,005 incidents in the U.S. in which people died after police stunned them with the electrical weapons, most since the early 2000s.
The summary mentions Axon and their product, but then the above statement uses the generic term "electrical weapons." The actual article from Reuters is not any more clear, as it too mixes the generic term "stun gun" and Taser in a way that makes it difficult to tell when they refer specifically to the brand-name product and when they refer to the entire class of product regardless of brand.
Are the 1,005 reported deaths the result of all documented electrical weapon deployments, or just
Re:Some additional questions need to be answered (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad Policing (Score:4, Insightful)
What this report is essentially saying is that police forces are comprised of poorly trained officers.
But it should have been obvious already that there is a problem. There have been plenty of incidents where police killed someone unnecessarily. Enough incidents to strongly suggest there is a real problem with police themselves.
While Americans in general have a total disdain towards the lives of their fellow human beings, police should be held to a higher moral standard.
As someone with a mild heart condition (Score:5, Insightful)
"Cause or contributing factor" (Score:4, Insightful)
After a splashy headline implying a "mounting toll" of death by taser, they strangely enough don't bother to break out the statistics where the taser was actually ruled the cause of death:
In 153 of those cases, or more than a fifth, the Taser was cited as a cause or contributing factor in the death, typically as one of several elements triggering the fatality.
I think we can safely predict the article would have separated out and trumpeted the actual numbers of deaths where the taser was actually ruled the cause had there been very many -- or maybe even any.
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, so, of 1005 deaths following tasing, only 153 are even partly attributed to the taser? That statistic doesn't pass the smell test. Something is almost certainly wrong with the presented figures.
Re: (Score:2)
Something is almost certainly wrong with the presented figures.
Only if you presume the answer to the very question at hand. I don't know why those figures would be surprising at all when you consider the fact that a significant percentage (in one study, nearly half [connecticutmag.com]) of tased people were strung out on drugs.
Re: (Score:2)
Most people strung out on drugs don't die immediately afterwards. Now, suppose that half of that 1005 were strung out on lethal drugs; that leaves 502 deaths after tasing with less than a third attributed, even in part, to the tasing. That is still extremely suspicious.
Re: (Score:2)
But the drug users aren't half of the 1005 that died -- they're half of the much larger population that was tased. The 1005 fatalities are almost certainly sub-1% of the total tased population (in the study I linked, 2 people out of 610 died, or 0.3% -- I can't find in the Reuters article the total number of tasings from which they gleaned the 1005, which probably means it was in a similarly low range and thus not helpful to their narrative).
So think of it more like 300,000 total tasings, out of which abou
Re: (Score:2)
So even the most generous reading of these statistics stills leaves you with Tasers being more than six times deadlier than the company has ever admitted.
That's a strange use of the term "most generous." The most generous reading of these statistics is that doctors arbitrarily included the tasers among a laundry list of other factors simply because tasers were used, and the tasers actually caused none of the deaths.
Re: (Score:2)
even the most generous reading of these statistics stills leaves you with Tasers being more than six times deadlier than the company has ever admitted.
Wouldn't that be the least generous reading of the statistic? The most generous reading would be that tasers actually had no causal relationship to any of the deaths.
Moreover, even if it is a factor of six greater, it really doesn't matter too much. I couldn't find discharge statistics for the US, but I did find them for England and Wales, which together accounted for nearly 2000 taser discharges in 2015 alone. Tasers are in use by police in over 12,000 jurisdictions in the US, so a sixfold increase is like
Statistics Altered by Litigation (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Alternatively (Score:2, Insightful)
Alternatively, being subdued by 30 rounds of 9mm leads to a 99.999% fatality rate. I would say the Taser is an improvement.
Re: (Score:2)
Alternatively, being subdued by 30 rounds of 9mm leads to a 99.999% fatality rate. I would say the Taser is an improvement.
What kind of improvement? The problem is that the rest of the world treats 9mm bullets a bit different to the USA. If a police officer discharges a firearm in most of the west, even for a warning shot it:
a) makes the news
b) gets heavily investigated
c) causes the officer to get punished if the warning shot was not justified.
On the flip side tasers are sold to police forces as a "safe" compliance tool so they have no problem doing things like tasing 10 year old girls, because just tasing someone is easier tha
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Police have a duty assigned to them by society as a whole, to stop dangerous criminals. When they interact with the public in a law enforcement capacity, they do not know John Q. Public or if he has just murdered someone, so they are inherently cautious and suspicious. If you are actively resisting police, they will verbally warn you and then they will start using escalation of force to make you comply. If you are unarmed but reaching into a concealed area and ignoring verbal warnings, you will be tased
Re: (Score:2)
Until someone robs their house, or rapes their sister or murders their brother... Then they will go crying to the police to catch the criminals and probably wouldn't say a peep if the felon died from a tasing while resisting arrest...
I'm shocked! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And kudos to the parent poster.
Used for torture (Score:4, Informative)
Tasers should only be used as an alternative to using a gun. That means if the cop did not have justification to kill the person, he did not have justification to use a taser. Every time a cop uses a taser, the same review process for using a firearm should happen. Unfortunately, that isn't happening. Cops use tasers to torture people into compliance, often as a way to force people to follow unlawful orders. Reviews seldom happen unless someone dies. And even then, it's the standard rubber stamping "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong," bullshit. Lots of police departments have dropped tasers because they were paying out so much money for lawsuits because of too many cops abusing their authority.
This isn't a taser problem. It's a blue line problem. Every cop who witnesses another cop breaking the law and does not report it is guilty of being an accessory. In every instance where a bad cop finally gets charged, the ten cops who witnessed the act and didn't report it should be charged as well.
The first damn step to a fix is to take away immunity. Why is a city (thus the taxpayers) paying out millions in lawsuits when the cop clearly violated the law and written procedures? If the city tries to cover it up, yes, they should pay part. But if the city does a proper investigation then disavows a bad cop, the taxpayers should not be on the hook. Take the criminal cop's pension.
Re: (Score:2)
Then DON'T RESIST (Score:3)
Re:Then DON'T RESIST (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're running from the police, but stop when they tell you to stop, you will get shot.
If you're resisting the police, but stop when they tell you to stop, you will get shot.
If you're using common sense against the police, but stop when they tell you to stop, you will get shot.
The police in America doesn't exist to protect and serve the people, it's to protect the government against the people. It is literally an HR department with tasers and guns.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Even if someone is unarmed they can seriously hurt someone high on something, or in a fit of rage; the officers should not be required to subdue the perpetrator by putting themselves in harms way. It's really simple; firearms often result in death, tasers rarely result in death. Choose one.
So, here's your clue for the day: if the police officer tells you to stop and put your hands up, do it. If they say to get face down on the ground. Do it. Resist and you may be lucky to get a taser instead of a firea
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You forgot one very important bit of advice. Be white. If you're black then even while doing everything the police tell you to do you still might get shot.
Re:advertised as non lethal (Score:5, Insightful)
While you are both technically and practically correct, "do as you are told and you might survive" is a message for hostages, not citizens. It seems we are both...
Re: (Score:2)
That's why you sue them later. If an officer is being excessive - especially repeatedly, they actually do get in trouble or fired.
And then they just get hired somewhere else, and do the same shit to people somewhere else. Meanwhile, you become an outcast in your community, and you and everyone you know will be targeted for police harassment forever more, unless maybe you move to a state whose law enforcement personnel think that the law enforcement personnel in the state you moved from are some kind of bad joke.
That's not a reason not to go through it, I guess. But unless there's the potential of a big cash payout at the end, I wouldn
Re: (Score:2)
You know the guy who shot and killed Philandro Castile for no apparent reason, after he was stopped for driving while black? He got a $48K settlement to be removed from the force.
Re: (Score:2)
Why? Seriously, why? Could it be that people get unjustly arrested and pressured to plead guilty to something more in the US?