Friday, February 10, 2012

Don't Tase Me, Bro

The use of tasers by police officers nationwide needs to be reviewed. There are several videos portraying WRONGFUL, TERRIBLE, SCREWED UP use of tasers by police officers, but after enough search, I found a video of a few police officers using their tasers the CORRECT way.

Alright, I'll admit that I laughed the first time .. and probably the second time I watched the video that I marked as "wrongful." A man is sitting on a porch by himself and 8 officers approach him yelling, "Taser, taser, taser." I think 8 police officers can hold a single person without using a taser. In my opinion, the police officers should not have used a taser on this man. He was not running or resisting arrest.

The video I labeled "terrible" was exactly that. Cops tase a 14 year old girl on her high school's campus. The video does not have sound, but there isn't anything that shows her being hostile towards the officer. Again, I think this was the wrong time for an officer to use a taser.

The third video is of a compliant, non-resisting suspect. The man places his hands on the hood of the police car as instructed and the police officer approaches him with a taser. The officer sticks the taser directly on the back of his neck. The actual clip of the tasing goes on for at least 30 seconds without the police officer letting up. The man is screaming in pain and eventually passes out. This behavior and use of a taser is completely unacceptable.

After watching about 40-50 police videos on YouTube and other websites, I finally found a video of correct taser use by police officers. In the video I marked "correct," the police officers are suspicious about the man they pulled over right from the beginning. The officer asks the man a series of questions and has him exit his vehicle to pat him down. As other officers appear on the scene, the suspect decides he wants to run from the police. With a quick-reaction trip, the suspect goes down and an officer points a taser in his face making it clear that if the man does not cooperate, he will be tased. The suspect is handcuffed and begins to walk with the officers but decides he wants to try to run again. His attempt fails again as he is wrestled to the ground by 3 officers.

So after a suspect tried to run from the police twice he still was not tased by 3 officers. The police only threatened to use their tasers and that was enough to subdue a very large man that attempted to run twice. I agree with every single thing that the police officers did in the 4th video. The video should be shown to the officers in the previous 3 videos and in taser seminars worldwide, in my opinion.

Credit for the title I chose.

Thanks for reading.

Sources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bVa6jn4rpE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6I8iUWInds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqI4NnbRM4c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is3oHQTs2CU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiWHeJloS1I


2 comments:

  1. In another class I had to do a research paper on the "Don't Tase Me Bro" topic. I found this topic rather interesting because tasers are serious weapons that not just anyone should be able to use. I believe that officers should go to more training for tasers than they do. Even though these videos are all personal insidents that the officer had the choice to use them or not, all police officers should have a training coarse that goes far into how and when you use tasers. Also I believe that when officers use tasers when they are not really needed they need to be disciplined. These incorrect usage of tasers can be dangerous and it's very unacceptable.

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  2. When an officer uses a tazer in an Inappropriate mannor this causes problems with the community and the police departments. Situations that happen such as the above examples should never happen. I know of departments that do not even use tazers, and because of this do not have this problem. This is a very serious problem that has been increasing in the U.S. More training needs to be conducted for the use of the tazer. Also lets just get back to the basics, which is commuication.

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