Last week I was talking to a SJ detective about some of what Radley Balko writes at The Agitator regarding the use of Tasers. When I brought the subject up, he immediately said, “I’m a huge fan of Tasers.” I asked him about the case…

Taser is an acronym for “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle”.[4] Arizona inventor Jack Cover designed it in 1969 and named it after the science fiction teenage inventor and adventurer character Tom Swift[5].

by matttbastard
Ah, wonderful–yet another shocking incident involving the indiscriminate discharge of an electronic control device™SM®OMFGWTFBBQ!!!1:
Donnell Williams had just gotten out of the bath tub, wearing only a towel around his waist, …

but it DOES explain a lot. good luck with that. don’t be too surprised if it doesn’t win many converts to the ‘cop’ side of the argument, though.

My department does not allow cavity searches. Thanks God.

I was being **sarcastic***. I would suspect you would have gotten that at the end when I said I support him. Yes at times I am on both sides. I think I can support police and support much of what Radley does here. Why not? I don’t see from anything that Radley has written that he hates the police or the need for local police. Why can’t I? I may seem like Clinton but I dont see that.

I don’t care to prove my libertarian creds becasue I am not one. I am a conservative. I guess of the paleo-conservative type.

Robert I had four off the top of my head form memory Radley does this all day and has many people sending him links give me a break and some time.

Well as a conservative I will be finishing my copy of Day Of Reckoning tonight by Pat Buchanan and so, although I am not done with this site I am done with this thread.

Goodnight.

However, there is little investigation of overuse/abuse of pepper spray, tasers, whacking someone with your stick or flashlight, or even arresting them. Because there is little investigation, and little accountability, there is more likelihood of abuse.

As Radley has shown, a key problem is public accountability. Tasers are only emblematic.

Given the scope and depth of the problem, I advocate a reinterpretation of the 4th amendment. Currently, the defense against police misconduct is the “exclusionary rule:” the evidence cannot be used in a criminal trial. This sucks for two reasons:

1. Some scumbag criminal can get off because a legitimate and reasonable police officer made a procedural error. The result of this is that the exclusionary rule has been eviscerated to minimize “getting off on a technicality”

2. The average citizen has almost no recourse against police abuse, as proving a constitutional violation is very hard, and very expensive.

For example (a situation I heard about in DC a few years ago) the police officer performs a cavity search on a man, while the man is standing (bending over, actually) on a public street corner. Nothing was found. But if something was found, should it be excluded? Perhaps we should both (a) say that the perp is guilty of possession AND (b) find the cop guilty of excessive force.
As it stands, however, the exclusionary rule doesnt help the citizen, and its too hard and expensive for him to receive relief through Federal Courts.

Why would someone be convicted in federal court of violating someones civil rights for killing them? Because either they got off at the state level, or the state didn’t press charges. I don’t think there’s any chance that I would ever make it to a federal court if I killed someone running away from me, regardless of the circumstances. I would go to state prison, do not pass go, no unlimited funds for lawyers from a police union.

So you’ve found 3 cases, and in each of them someone had to DIE. Looked at the wrong door raids map much? There’s even a filter for raids in which someone was killed. Lots of the wrong people getting killed by the police, few, if any prosecutions.

So a few examples of police officers being appropriately prosecuted is supposed to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside? How does that make up for the dozens of stories of police coverups, stories about police beating, or shooting innocent people with no repurcussions? Are you trying to insinuate that police don’t get an EXTREME amount of leeway when it comes to prosecutions for assault and/or killing someone? If so, I think it’s time you open your eyes and take a look around.

I’ll grant you that all of it isn’t just cops being crazy, many of the policies in place are geared toward creating violence where none would have otherwised existed, but it doesn’t take too long to find a video of a cop on youtube being disrespected and beating someone down for it.

Oh, and as for Joe Horn, if I read the story correctly, he didn’t accidentally kill anyone, he shot them on purpose while they were in his yard. BIG difference. He would have gone to prison in many states, I bet New Jersey is one of them.

The real problem for cops is the blue wall of silence that protects the assholes, degenerates, idiots, and criminals of the police force. If cops would stop covering up for those idiots, it would go a long way towards repairing their image. Until they stop doing that cops really don’t have a leg to stand on when complaining about civilians not respecting them. Respect is a two way street, and it’s earned not bestowed on someone because of the outfit they wear.

does that sound like you “support” him?

of course, later on you DO make the obligatory “i support him + the 2nd amendment” disclaimer necessary to keep you in good stead on a libertarian blog. but it’s weak, marty. weak weak weak.

from *your own words*, it appears that:
1) you’re not at all happy at the mere suggestion that cops be held accountable for their actions
2) you sense your argument isn’t too strong, so you attempt to cloud the topic with another story on a different topic
3) in order to claim the moral high ground, you resort to clintonian mealymouthed positions on BOTH SIDES of the issue.

you also neglected to tell us if you think someone who accidently kills an on-duty cop should not be prosecuted. you don’t need to look up a case where this happened: balko has done so extensively. google “cory maye”. let us know whatcha think.

I support the Old Fart! Did you hear? I support him and the 2nd amendment. I was not mad here at anytime.

In 12 years ,two people, once in a house and once in an apartment mistook me for non-cop. One sent his dog after me and the other threw hot sauce on me. The sauce was hot and hurt like hell but did not burn. I yelled a bit becasue of pain but neither person went to jail. The dog scared me but I knew it was the owners. And although basicly pinned me did not bite.

A Taser is Less Lethal force. Not non lethal.

As far as the person usign the Taser on the Ninja you speak of I will have to think about it and see if I can find a similar situation where somebody killed a cop by mistake.

what would cops say if a homeowner accidently tased a cop who’d come onto his property? say if the cop was chasing a bad guy; the homeowner was worried about said bad guy; the homeowner was “fearful for his safety”, which seems to be a key phrase; and the homeowner mistook the cop – who, in this instance, was dressed up as a badass ninja **warrior!!**, which cops seem to love to do so much – ….

and the homeowner somehow owned a taser, and tased the cop with it?

what that be ok with you cops? it WOULD, right? nonlethal force, right? he “feared for his safety”, right? what if it was one of those amazingly frequent “isolated incidents” where the individual who got tased – completely safe, mind you: taser tells us so – then proceeded to up and DIE? a cop accidently killed by a homeowner. sad sad sad. ah, well. honest mistakes occur, no?

how ’bout that? speaking as a cop, would you or your cop friends just shrug and tell yourselves “accidents happen”? “nobody at fault”? would you encourage the DA not to prosecute?

or would you howl bloody murder and demand the homeowner be prosecuted? and if so, why? why should the homeowner in this hypothetical be held to a different standard than a cop’d done the same thing to the homeowner? or a grandmaw who’d gotten too lippy to suit him? or an unhappy speeder? or a foreign guy who didn’t understand why he’d been kept locked up in an office for 10 hours? or a naked guy getting out of his own bathtub? etc etc?

you’re mad at the old fart in texas not getting in trouble for shooting baddies, right? so it’s CLEAR you hate double standards, right?

y The Associated Press

A former New York police officer who pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges in the 1998 death of a drug suspect he hit in the head with a walkie-talkie was sentenced yesterday to 2 years and 11 months in prison.

Judge Victor Marrero of United States District Court issued the sentence to Craig Yokemick, 36, who pleaded guilty in August to two felony charges.

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Mr. Yokemick had admitted violating the civil rights of the suspect, Kenneth Banks, when he hurled the two-pound police radio at him as he tried to escape on a bicycle. Mr. Banks later died of trauma to the head.

A grand jury cleared Mr. Yokemick in 1999 of using excessive force, and the city reportedly paid Mr. Banks’s family $750,000 in a civil settlement.

If pain compliance is a legitimate use for the Taser, what constitutes the threshold for belligerence or non-compliance for such use? The road we travel down if we accept this use for the Taser is that cops will get less confrontation de-escalation training because who needs to be reasonable when you can put someone on the ground with 50,000 volts and suffer very little scrutiny or reprecussions?

The short-term problem is that the Taser is in danger of being the fall-back tool of the untrained (insecure, power-hungry, megalomaniacal) officer in the field. (The long term problem, as I see it, is at the end of my post.)

Someone said to me recently, “Hey, I remember when they used to just club you over the head, so this Taser thing is a good idea.” But that seems to be a false choice to me. A new tool, which can be used wisely but rarely is, should not be considered substitution for proper training.

If we legitimize Tasers as a non-lethal, pain-compliance tool rather than as a potentially leathal weapon (which it clearly is) we’re simply inviting it to be used on people don’t comply with an order to disperse from a lawful protest rally, or on people who get a little mouthy, or on poor deaf guys who have their doors kicked in by cops who got the wrong address in the first place.

And ultimately, it’s not so much the Taser per se that I have a problem with. I’m confident it could be a legitimate tool for law enforcement if properly used. But I’m disturbed that its use has become so expansive and unregulated in such a short amount of time and that police departments across the county have become apologists for obvioulsy over-zealous use by their officers.

This, it seems, is how it all starts. The legitimization of pain-compliance tools in the civilian arena without oversight or clear rules of engagement will lead to the use of pain-compliance weapons on the civilian population in order to control/disrupt lawful dissent.

Because, in the end, the question becomes: Compliant to who?

I am a cop, work with cops and am related to cops. Believe me no cop wants to shut you up or anybody on this site. They may argue with you but they do not want you to shut up.

We have had meant come to our academy and range to practice in shot don’t shoot situations on the computer based on actual situations. It’s interesting to see guys with no guns getting lit up by ACLU lawyers.

This is why so many hae respect for their local police even while pointing out wrong decisions and outright abuse. I have a lot of respect for those people including the guys like that on this site’s combox.