Well, I still maintain that the man could have avoided all of that by simply complying. At the same time, I would agree that the taser was essentially an ineffective tool and they should have gone to another method.
Obviously he could have avoided it had he just complied. The US has a wonderful history, however, of not mindlessly obeying authority figures. People can expect to be forcibly evicted or even arrested for passive resistance, but they should not expect to be tasered into obedience.
If you agree that that the taser was not the right tool for the job you are partway to agreeing that its use was excessive. I'm sure we'd agree that bamboo shoots under the fingernails is excessive, so its just a matter of establishing a line. The police drew the line with their policies and that matrix.
Police officers are beyond reproach until it is demonstrably proven that they have engaged in any wrongdoing.
I am not blaming anybody or accusing anyone of racism. A person is perfectly entitled to feel unfairly treated, and to express that. Tasering somebody who feels unfairly treated will not solve the problem, but exacerbate it.
It makes no odds whether or not he
was being unfairly treated.
Aside from which, was it determined that the librarians made the call and the police responded? If that's the case, that puts a damper on the whole racism charge.
Yes. I'm not saying the police were racist. I'm saying that the student felt singled out by the library staff/CSOs. According to his statement, he expressed this, asked that other students be asked for IDs for fairness this was refused and he was asked to leave. He finished off the work he was doing and got up to leave. At which point the police arrived, and he became upset with being prevented from leaving.
Well, what a convenient defense.... LOL! That way, whenever a person from Middle Eastern decent has done anything wrong, they can always fall back on this in order to place the arresting party on trial.
It isn't a defense. It is a description of the event. When you encounter somebody who is not being aggressive but feels discriminated against, you don't strong arm them you try and calm them down. If they leaving, you let them leave and offer your support.
You don't grab hold of them, taser them, handcuff them, and taser them over and over again.
Unless there is any evidence that this student was being threatened we should assume he was innocent. That rightly puts the pressure on the police to prove that the actions they took can be justified. Until the police can give a decent rationale, and given the evidence so far presented regarding proper use of tasers, the video evidence, witness accounts and the student's statements, alongside the police statements...I'm going for excessive cruel behavior from the police.
Modulous, anything has the potential for injury. A man attacking a police officer may indirectly hit their head on the floor during an ensuing struggle and bite their tongue. Does that mean that takedown maneuvors should be outlawed?
No. What I am saying is precisely what the taser policy states. That the potential for injury should be considered. Was there a need, in this case, to risk seriously injuring this student (and some of the bystanders) by tasering? No - control could easily have been asserted more effectively and more humanely in a different way. Thus: tasers should not have been used, especially after the first jolt.
The fact is, I can't find a single case of someone dying as the result of being tasered, not to say that it isn't possible.
Really? I went to google and typed
taser death and the
first article discusses a conservative figure of five deaths and seventy as an upper boundary.
That's not a good enough reason to abandone the whole project. You'd have to show that tasers routinely cause death or serious injury. Otherwise, just about everything could be outlawed. Hell, we take medications that pose a greater threat than tasers ever could.
It seems you think I am spouting off some anti-taser propaganda in an attempt to convince people they should never be used. On the contrary, I think that after suitable safety testing and regulation they can be used as a safer alternative to firearms. I'd rather be unfairly tased than unfairly shot, even if the latter is more unlikely than the former.
The alternative is hitting them with a big stick. I don't need any medical documentation to show how much worse batons are.
Batons don't have to be used as blunt weapons, they can also be used very well to apply to pressure points, engage join locks, or if necessary throttles. I'm not saying that a baton is better in all cases. I simply said that the police have found ways of dealing with lone passive protesters in the past without the need to engage in anything more violent than dragging them out on their heels.
Serious threats require firearms. I guess we'd have to first come to an agreement on what constitutes a serious threat.
Somebody actively acting aggressively and not necessarily in a lethal manner would be an ideal time for taser. Somebody wielding a knife would be a good one for tasers. Even if the threat was just that somebody could get more hurt than a few scratches or bruises might be a good time to crank out a taser. All those times when a gun would also work, but where a gun isn't really necessary.
It was implied, based on audio, that he was becoming combative, but I can't say for sure.
You're the only one that gets this from the audio though. I'm hearing somebody loudly protesting about a police officer grabbing him. Personally, I think you should probably expect consequences for fighting the police even at such a minor level, and the kid would have had no sympathy from me for being tased that first time. I might have thought 'a little bit excessive' or I might have not.
When I first read the OP title I was convinced I was going to come in here and find out that the student was being hostile and so got tased for it. I have great confidence that a lot of the time, the police in question were in a tough spot and may have made a mistake, but rarely would they be brutal.
We're all human too - and the multiple stunning situation we saw here is, as you accept, not necessary. It was, as such, a few police officers engaging in unnecessary pain application in an almost punitive manner. There may be no lasting bruises but applying pain to somebody unnecessarily is generally frowned upon. If the taser was an ineffective tool (as you say) we can safely say that the violence caused to this young man was without any point (it had no effect). One comes to the inevitable conclusion that this was pointless police violence.
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