Taser Update

by digby

Just a little note to let you all know that the latest development in taser nation is to allow average citizens to carry tasers. For self-defense. Or maybe just to keep the kids in line.

Here's a recent typical incident:

The stoush between the two Queensland law-enforcement bodies comes amid a CMC investigation into police officers who in April held down and tasered a 16-year-old girl who had defied a move-on order because she was waiting for an ambulance to treat her sick friend.

The girl, who cannot be named, had a charge of obstructing police dismissed after the Children's Court last Friday ruled one of the two officers involved did not give adequate directions, under police move-on powers, before he and two private security guards held down the slightly built teenager, shot her in the thigh with the taser and then arrested her, initially on a charge of assaulting police.

Closed circuit television footage of the incident, seen by The Australian, shows an apparent breach of the guidelines in tasering the slightly built juvenile - who was sitting down in a garden bed the time - where there was no risk of injury to police.


Wouldn't it be great if parents and teachers could do that? And why shouldn't they? It's not like they leave any marks or anything...

Police departments are very happy with them:

Last September, Suffolk Police Officer Duffie McLamb deployed a Taser on a mentally disturbed patient who was struggling after being pulled from the third floor hospital window he’d just tried to jump out of.

McLamb’s efforts earned the officer a lifesaving award.

In Norfolk last month, a cop shocked Pamela Brown – known as the Hula Hoop Lady of Granby Street – three times with a Taser as he tried to arrest her.

That officer, who was criticized by some for being too quick to use the Taser, was placed on administrative duty pending a review of the case. The incidents show the two sides of Tasers: the controversial weapon and the device that can deter crime and save lives.

In South Hampton Roads, two police departments, Suffolk and Norfolk, widely outfit police officers with Tasers. Suffolk got them in June 2007, Norfolk in February.

Suffolk officers have deployed them 88 times this year, a figure that includes drawing a Taser, but not activating it.

In the first seven weeks the Tasers were used in Norfolk, 20 people were struck with Tasers, and 48 others decided to cooperate with police before getting shocked.


I suspect the police would get a 100% compliance rate if they put a gun to citizens' heads and threatened to pull the trigger. They'd probably only have to kill a few people before we got very clear on how important it is to immediately comply when a police officer gives us an order (and hope to hell we understand what they want of us or that they aren't in a bad mood.) And since they are already killing people with tasers anyway, maybe this is the more efficient way to go.

I still think the best, safest, way to use this taser technology is to figure out how to implant electrodes in every person so that they can be dropped to the ground writhing in pain whenever they do things that those in authority feel are problematic. That way the authority figures can remain "safe" when they are torturing citizens into compliance, which is what this ostensibly is all about. After all, it doesn't last for more than minute or so and after it's all over the person knows exactly what they did wrong and won't do it again. That's what liberty is all about.

Update: And there's some news on "shockwave" which will be a fantastic advance in the control of political dissent.


Update I: Here's a story about Antioch police officers being sued by a San Francisco police inspector --- for tasering her. Maybe if all the authority figures start tasering each other we might get some insight into why this is so wrong. It certainly isn't obvious to them in the abstract why they shouldn't be allowed to zap citizens with 50,000 volts for any reason at all.

And by the way --- volunteering to be tasered doesn't prove anything. It's the freedom, stupid.

Update III: Oh, and one thing that's really, rally cool about tasers is that you can use them on animals both for fun ---- and to save time. It's no biggie. After all, it doesn't kill them and doesn't leave any marks. In fact, tasers are tested on pigs to see how much pain they can tolerate.

Imagine how great it will be when Americans can buy these things down at WalMart! I feel safer already.