God and Tasers At Yale
by digby
As the reader who forwarded this to me commented, perhaps when the children of the elite are subjected to tasering and a ban on recording police brutality, someone will wake up. This took place at an annual Yale party that was being held in a local nightclub:
When the NHPD arrived at the club, Melendez said officers could see that students were getting in without showing proper identification. Gentry said that of the five students that were arrested, one was for illegal possession of alcohol by a minor; two for interfering with police officers; one for assault on police officers and related charges; and one for disorderly conduct.
As police swarmed around the dance floor early Saturday, students stumbled to get down, the lights flickered on and the music dimmed.
Students who tried to text or photograph the scene were told they would be handcuffed and arrested if they did not desist, witnesses said.
By 2 a.m., as the officers were handcuffing uncooperative students and putting others in what witnesses said police called “time out.”
Within the hour, eyewitnesses said, a sophomore was Tasered, jumped on and beaten in the middle of the dance floor by at least four New Haven police officers — as more than a hundred students looked on — because the student was "uncooperative during the raid."
The raid took approximately an hour to complete, he said, adding that the Liquor Control Commission will handle any liquor-related offenses. It was not until nearly 3 a.m. when police cars, lights flashing, departed Crown Street and the area outside Elevate darkened.
In the hours following the raid, students made their way back to campus in fits and starts. Some were detained because they could not locate their IDs; others, because they had left their personal belongings inside the club and were not allowed to retrieve them until the raid had ended.
About two hours after the raid, Morse College Dean Joel Silverman sent an e-mail to address the onslaught of concern he had been receiving from students.
“We have received many upsetting reports about a police raid which took place downtown, early this morning, at the nightclub in which the Morse/Stiles dance was being held,” Silverman said.
They got lucky. Nobody was killed.
The good news is that people are slowly starting to wake up. ViaAllison Kilkenny here's the latest on the recent taser killing in Minneapolis, along with the news that Taser is finally succumbing to some pressure to modify their weapons to be less lethal:
David Smith was buried last week, the seventh person in the past seven years to have died in the metro area after being shot with a Taser.
While the investigation into the mid-September confrontation with police that led to Smith's death continues, a leading police research group and a major manufacturer of the devices are rolling out new safety measures nationally in response to the relatively small but troubling number of deaths linked to them.
And on Friday, Minneapolis police unveiled a new Taser policy that for the first time designates the device a potentially lethal weapon.
The manufacturer, Taser International, sent users a bulletin last year suggesting that they avoid shooting people near the heart.
And after lobbying by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), Taser International has agreed to offer by early next year a weapon that shocks for a maximum of five seconds with one trigger pull. Current models deliver voltage as long as the trigger is depressed.
"We think there's a time and a place for them," said Chuck Wexler, PERF's executive director. "They shouldn't be a substitute for talking through an issue with someone. And there's a limitation. There's a point at which we are convinced we have to go through another option."
Yeah. The taser isn't a magic weapon to be sure. It's a weapon that makes police lose their common sense and forget their other skills. It makes some of them lazy and turns too many of them into bullies.
My main objection to tasers is not that they are often lethal, although that's a huge problem. My objection to tasers is that I don't think the police should have permission to electrocute citizens to get them to comply with their orders. If they used them only in situation where they would otherwise use deadly force --- in self-defense or to stop someone from hurting another --- then they would be useful. But it is indefensible for them to use these things the way they have been used and I have a feeling that we're going to look back on this unbridled era of taser torture with horror at our barbarity. At least I hope so.
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