brianjweis wrote:
You may have noticed that at the bottom of my post I wrote /rant off. This was a rant. It derives, i suppose, from the local cops habit of killing folk needlessly and breaking the ribs of pregnant women who have the audacity to actually video tape an arrest.
Your rant was okay, I probably disagree most with what constitutes minimum force. I don't know the circumstances of your city's problems, but just wanted to comment on the fallacy of characterization of victims. In your rant you wrote one was "drunkenly walking", and here you mention a pregnant woman; from the context it sounds like she was abused simply for videotaping something, but I can't see what her being pregnant has to do with it. Other posters throughout the thread have described the tasered guy as a "kid". And the news always mentions the height and weight of a suspected victim of police brutality
if the person was small (though they don't mention it if it was a small person who killed 40 people at a school or something). Iffy security checks make sure to point out that it was an old woman who was searched, etc.
They seem to forget a couple of things--that a seeming innocuous person can be either extremely experienced at violence, or that they can also be carrying weapons that completely moot their minor physical differences. And they always assume that if a cop is at least 6 feet tall and 200 lbs, he's a master of hand-to-hand combat who could not be beaten by anyone smaller in the entire world.
And this from your rant:
Quote:
By what I've read in this post so far, if your mom was leaving the mall with mp3 headphones on and was ordered to stop and didn't, the cops would be justified in tasering her because she "ignored a direct request by a peace officer" an excuse I've seen for tasering more than once.
First the cases aren't exactly similar, the guy that was tasered was vehemently resisting control. Even while he was saying he'd be good and didn't want to get tasered he was jerking his torso and flailing his arms.
Second I don't care who the person is--white, black, tall, short, male, female, old, young, paraplegic, pro sportsman. If my mom had done the same things as that kid, she should've been tasered too in that situation.
In your hypothetical, the cop should probably physically restrain the MP3 person. But I wouldn't call it overreaction if they tasered them if for some reason they thought a bulge could be a gun, etc. The act of refusing to comply with an order is cause for suspician of itself. And I honestly have
zero sympathy for
anyone who disobeys a cop's order. If the order is questionable, you can file a complaint after the incident. Of course if the order is clearly criminal, such as take your clothes off and insert this into your mouth, that's a different case. But a routine traffic stop where you're asked to get out of your car, or walking in the mall and being ordered to stop--there's no justification for not complying immediately.
Cops have to have compliance, they simply can't let someone walk by them when they've told that person to stop. They have to use force at times {even on pregnant females and small males!), the only questions are when and how much to use.