Tasers are bad?

I've been hearing alot about people protesting police use of tasers. I don't remember which organization it is, but it's somewhere out in california that wants the police out there to stop using tasers and go back to mace and bullets.

Does anyone else see a problem with this?

Tasers are a LESS THAN LETHAL ALTERNATIVE to putting a few rounds into mentally unstable johnnies head and making a large mess on the pavement that someone has to clean. It reduces the amount of lead being put into people. yet, there are people out there that want it taken away. Saying its a cruel measure, that it kills some people. Well...being shot kills ALOT of people. Yes, being tased will lead people to a law abiding life very quickly. It's....well....it's bad. Really bad, but it's alot better than being shot. and that's why tasers are used, to save lives that otherwise would have been ended in a police shooting.

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Permalink Reply by Xeranar on October 28, 2008 at 12:19am

The problem with tasers is that police are far more likely to use them. I don't have the report with me but police are by a fair margin more likely to use a taser in a situation that requires talking because it leaves little permanent marks. It is the same principle reason why police love a baton over a semi-automatic pistol. You can only fire a pistol once and that hopefully will stop the perpetrator by killing them. A baton can be used to subdue a suspect with such force as to stop them but also not instantaneously kill them.

Ultimately our police force need better training and should treat any tool with respect and try using their words before becoming a knucklehead and just trying to use force to solve a problem. If we used the bad cop approach to everyday life we would just shatter a pickle jar when it doesn't open on the first try and bludgeon our neighbors for not returning out weed whacker sooner. Violence largely begets more violence. Better training with tasers is far better than simply outlawing them for police.

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Permalink Reply by medicineman on October 28, 2008 at 12:46am

I agree whole heartedly with the better training portion of your reply, and pretty much everything else. There's going to be good cops, and there's going to be bad cops. I use the stanford prison experiment as an example.

Training methods are being updated all the time, police are more and more going towards a situation armed with conflict resolution skills as opposed to marksmanship training, but you're right, some officers are using it too liberally.

ps:
"bludgeon our neighbors for not returning out weed whacker sooner"

I think you're right about me being a sadist, I find that to be horribly funny.

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Permalink Reply by Xeranar on October 28, 2008 at 1:17am

I purposely wrote that to make people giggle. It was silly on a purely American level.

My father was a police officer in Pittsburgh, PA going on almost 20 years before he took early retirement over back problems. He never shot anybody. He ran a few folks off the road during the 1990s, he was involved in the fabled tunnel-pin where they drove a drug dealer/gang leader into a concrete wall at 70 mph and proceeded to shoot him afterward (though he never discharged his weapon). Those sorts of situations are uncommon and really happen maybe once in a decade.

A majority of his time was spent trying to talk people out of being stupid and gently placing them under arrest. We had family friends who were stabbed, shot, and had broken bones because they were boneheads who didn't know when to talk people down. Most people don't want to fight you, they are angry at the world, they did something stupid, and as a police officer you have to detain them.

I find the biggest problem is people being tasered at political rallies. Who the hell thinks its alright to taser somebody for being loud and obnoxious? If that is alright I plan on walking into the local off-campus bar and just start tasering every member of the football team. The training methods are lacking because police departments are strapped for cash and are very slow to move towards progress.

On a final note, I do feel a violent vigilante-style of law enforcement has its place in society. Sometime bludgeoning some drug lord with a baton until his face looks like more like a T-bone than a mug shot is just what is required. Giving punishment to those who are despicable is by all means fair in my book. But randomly tasering some poor stupid drunkard just isn't good.

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Permalink Reply by mikethorn on October 28, 2008 at 1:52am

ps: i laughed at that too :-)

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Permalink Reply by January.30.2008 on October 28, 2008 at 8:56am

There is A LOT wrong with law enforcement. I was a cop for over 2 years (2 years too long). I never once used my taser/baton/pepperspray on anyone. I worked the midnight shift too--bar/strip club closings. The problem isn't so much the training rather the mind set. When others tased someone it was the big talk around the station, everything thinking it was cool and wanting to hear the story (it went the same with anytime anyone had to use physical force).

A lot of cops feel powerful and for a lack of a better word, "better" than the average public. And most other cops will back them when they choose to do something ("the brotherhood").

The politics of the job are ridiculous and obsurd. And those politics are not going to change.....

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Permalink Reply by Jessica Miranda on October 28, 2008 at 10:35am

I agree with you there - I come from a family of cops so I know exactly where your coming from on the political side!

As for the discussion up top I agree 100% with the better training for the taser useage - a college student just died here in my area -if you are familiar with Miami University at Oxford - he was drunk in public and being drunk tried to start something with what I consider inexperienced cops in Oxford and that officer tased him right in his heart - and tased him to death - it was a big controversy and for someone who was just publically intoxicated I don't believe he deserved to die and if I was his personal family I would have drawn out a very large lawsuit in this matter as well

so.....tasers can be good and they can be a bad choice for cops in this above kind of situation - the problem is the choice these cops are making to either use them or use something a little less life threatening in these type of situations! these cops in Oxford are campus/Oxford city police the only thing they deal with in this small little town is the publically intoxicated students so to kill one for that is just obsurd.

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Permalink Reply by Xeranar on October 28, 2008 at 4:25pm

Because speeding is completely alright? Please, get your own greed out of your thoughts.

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Permalink Reply by Xeranar on October 29, 2008 at 2:39am

A broken tail light can cause an accident. Simple as that. Do some cops abuse that rule? Sure...But in most states for a regular car it is something like a 30 dollar fine and no points.

Police have no more authority than they did 25 years ago. You complain about them now and you don't have a clue about an era before Miranda rights and search and seizure not applying to local jurisdictions. The police we see today are tame by comparison. The problem now is that some drug runners have become powerful enough to game the system and abuse the lack of brutal enforcement the law has now. But that is of minimal issue with comparison to the now safer system of police we have today.

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Permalink Reply by Huwdlum on October 28, 2008 at 10:40pm

i...hate...cops...

check out my blog post "Problem with Authority"

you'll understand why.

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Permalink Reply by Sirius on October 28, 2008 at 7:51pm

my dad is a cop. he was (relatively) recently certified to use a taser. but he's only threatened to use it twice in the year or two that he's had it. it has powerful persuasion skills. otherwise rowdy criminals pay full attention immediately and don't mess around in the slightest. and cops realize how much these things hurt. to get certified, you have to be shocked with it atleast once. not enjoyable, but understandable in the fact that it will make the cop realize how powerful it is and how he should only use it when actually needed. but i fully agree with using tasers over guns. however, i do believe police should still have guns on them for whatever situation that it actually be necessary. apparently guns are fully illegal in england, even for cops. (correct me if i'm wrong). i don't mean to offend the british, but i personally think that's a terrible idea to just have battons.

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Permalink Reply by January.30.2008 on October 28, 2008 at 8:45pm

All taser training is the same no matter where you go, and you DON"T have to be tased to pass the certification. I opted to get tased because I had the mindset that anything (besides my gun) that I had on my belt and might use, I want to know what it is like. There were cops in my department that opted not to get tased. So I am assuming there are a lot of cops out there from all departments that don't know what it is like.

There are always three sides to every story: The sides of both people involved and then the truth. As much as I am not a huge fan of cops I have to be weary when I hear that someone died from being tased. There are two ways to use a taser. 1) A drive stun-which is mainly used for pain compliance. You press the taser to someone and pull the trigger. 2) You can be several feet away from some one and use the laser to point and shoot at them. Two harpoon like prongs (approximately 1.5 inches long) shoots out and as they travel further in distance they spread apart. This way is more effective to "control" someone because it is not only pain compliance but it incapacitates the use of muscles. If you pull the trigger once it will last 5 seconds. The trigger can be held down consistantly for ongoing incapacitation and pain. The prongs will not go in far enough to affect anything internally in anyone's body. This gentleman that got shot with it may have had some other underlying problems that along with the alcohol and taser may have caused some serious damage, but will we ever know what truely happened?

A problem is that some cops may be too trigger happy. And it is a lot easy to shoot a taser than a gun knowing it is a nonlethal form of compliance.

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Permalink Reply by Sirius on October 28, 2008 at 8:51pm

please forgive me of my error in words. (not being sarcastic). i've heard from many that it is required to be tased in order to have a taser. and i agree with the trigger happiness of some cops. i don't know what can be done about that, but it should be regulated in some way.