Zzztt!

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I read the story about the gentleman who died after being tazered. It’s tragic to say the least. I do want to say something to counter your perspective, but respectfully and in the spirit of open discourse.
My husband is a police officer in the City of Phoenix Arizona. He sees things on a daily basis that the average person can’t even imagine. Real life is far stranger than anything most of us could make up. The officers he works with are held to very high professional standards, there is not much wiggle room when it comes to policy. It is a very well run department with cutting edge training and diligent supervision. Not all departments are so lucky.
I don’t know anything about the department where this incident occured, but I do know that many departments are full of officers who abuse their authority and the use of their tazers.
I also know that in some instances, particularly in dealing with individuals with overdose levels of drugs in their bodies, tazers seem to be potentially deadly. Back in the day, some of those same individuals might have been such a severe threat to officers because of their behavior that the officers were faced with violent confrontations in their efforts to restrain or arrest them. Many officers were badly injured. My husband has three bulging discs which cause him a great deal of pain as the result of an incident in which a teenager on methamphetamines attempted to take another officer’s gun after he had pulled his hands out of handcuffs. My husband did not have a tazer and in the process of grabbing the young man away from the other officer’s gun, hurt himself. The young man had taken an overdose quantity of meth and had just trashed his parents house- he was relatively calm when the officers arrived on the scene and was arrested without incident. On the way to jail, he had another fit and that’s when he managed to pull out of his handcuffs- an act that no doubt broke some bones in his hands- and proceeded to pound his head and face on the windows and screen. The officer didn’t realize he’d pulled out of his restraints until he had the door open and it was too late. My husband is a supervisor and “had a feeling” when the boy was arrested and decided to follow the officer to the jail to make sure everything was okay. If he hadn’t, it’s possible that the first officer could have been shot with his own gun or the boy could have been shot. Luckily, neither of those things happened, but my husband will have back pain for the rest of his life.
My point is- people who take drugs are taking chances. It’s not that they deserve to be tazed as punishment, and I know there are officers who have misused their tazers that way. (we have a local agency that I think is notorious for that behavior and I despise them for it)But at the same time, there have been situations where tazers were used where in the past bullets would have been the only alternative to immediatly stop the actions of a dangerous individual. I’d rather take my chances with a tazer than a bullet. There are situations where officers have been badly injured dealing with individuals who because of the drugs in their body would not or could not cooperate while being arrested, and officers have been biten, beaten and spit on in the process of doing their jobs. Cops are not supermen, they bleed, they bruise and they break when trying to subdue individuals who don’t feel pain and sometimes have almost superhuman strength because of drugs. Many officers careers have been ended under those circumstances. I think it makes sense to use a tazer rather than risk more severe injury to both the police and the suspects. Granted, it can be abused, but those incidents need to be identified and dealt with accordingly. The answer isn’t to take away a valuable tool from those who will use it correctly, but to have proper training and supervision to prevent misuse. Anyone who would abuse a suspect with a tazer or in any way, has no business being in law enforcement.

Eloquent and honest and informative, Katie, thanks for making the effort and taking the time to write. (MCSD are quite something, eh?)

I’ll stop back by tomorrow and try to address CD’s questions, even though I’m not one of those mysterious pro-tasering readers.

(And, yes, if an officer is in a situation where a suspect is a danger of serious harm to themselves or others a taser can save lives. But I can point to hundreds of YT videos which show relavtively harmless, peaceful, and even restrained people getting a less lethal zap)

… is the continued normalization of tasering for compliance in citizen-police interactions, and normalization of electroshock in society in general.

One imagines officials responding to, oh, citizens petitioning for the redress of grievances for example with tasers.

What policies would you recommend to allay these concerns?

For the scenarios nobody wants, but which might happen:

I suppose it would be better to taser the citizens than shoot them, Kent State-style, or set dogs on them, Birmingham, Alabama-style, but the options are not commensurate, given that tasering is being normalized through Tupperware-style parties, and shooting has not yet been.

Thanks for your excellent comment!

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

yes, tasering is on the rise. It makes me sick to see the lack of training police get on the use of technology. My concern is if someone resist arrest should police be judge, jury and executioner?
if someone is asking for help from over dosing should a police officer then task the person if hey run away? Is that the way to protect and to serve?

as i said, one half of my family is law enforcement vets, so believe me- i am very, very sympathetic to the Good People who are just trying to provide a valuable public service with dignity and respect for the law.

but we don’t need tasers. we just don’t. there are many ways to subdue people, and importantly, why do we subdue so many people in the first place?

that’s really the heart of the matter to me. this man needed help, and he didn’t get it. the police are by *no means* the only ones who failed him. we all did, by allowing his addiction to happen in the first place. that’s a long, long post and i won’t bore you with it here, but i will say this:

black people, poor people, people in the barrio and ghetto, don’t own fleets of ships and trucks. dope gets in this country not because demand is unquenchable, but because rich, powerful people (some of them in “law enforcement” although they besmirch the name) get it here.

why don’t we sudue them?

I don’t think much can be added to the perspective offered by commenter Katie upthread; the only thing I might amplify, although it is apparent in her words to any sensitive reader, is that officers and their families exist in a constant state of fear that one day there will be a phone call that no one wants to receive. It takes a great deal of courage to be a good cop, and the family of one, a fact that too often goes without commendation.

Alternative bottom line: For a health care approach to drug addiction to be effective, it needs to begin long before an addict reaches the depths that Mr. Anderson did. During a burglary attempt at 1 AM under the influence of a crack overdose is not the time to start an intervention, nor is it the place to start apportioning blame in the absence of clear law enforcement impropriety.

why do we let people get to this point in the first place? why do we allow so many drugs to come into this country, and why is our only response to those addicted to jail them?

i’m sure the officer who now likely has a ruined career is asking similar questions.