Taser-Happy Thugs

This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Liberty and/or Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 Responses to “Taser-Happy Thugs”

1. Tom says:
   

   That’s a very interesting argument, one I hadn’t considered. In both the Vancouver and Austin incidents — and also in the infamous “Don’t tase me, bro!” one — there’s no moment when an officer is actually responding to a direct threat. To spin their stories as much in the cops’ favor as possible, they were preempting assaults, not responding to them. That’s something I don’t want our cops doing.

   A few quibbles:

   1) It’d be unwise to make a judgment on this subject while only examining how tasers can be abused/are more likely to lead to abuse. I’m sure there are countless pro-taser stories out there.

   2) It’s worth noting that in the Austin incident, the problem had far more to do with a blatantly aggressive officer and the pathetically lenient disciplinary reviews he received, than with the fact that he was armed with a taser (which only made the problem worse, I concede). My blood boiled watching it, too.

   3) With regards to the Vancouver incident, I’ve some sympathy for the RCMP, since it seems that the incident was likely to end in violence; Dziekanski was a big guy who had been throwing heavy objects and was holding another when he was tased.

   Also, what killed him? The reporter left that point irritatingly unclear, considering he apparently had reviewed his autopsy. Did the taser give him a heart attack? Was he strangled by the officer’s knee? The pile-on at the end seems more egregious than the decision to tase.

   November 16th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
2. Apollo says:
   

   1. I don’t think “sometimes they’re put to good use” is a good argument here. The question I’m raising isn’t “Are cops with tasers a net good”, but “Is a police force armed with Tasers better than one armed only with guns and sticks”? Armed only with guns and sticks, a cop has three options: nonviolence, bloody violence, or deadly violence. With either of the last two options, there is lingering proof of the abuse and he knows he’s going to have to answer for what he’s done. Assaults with Tasers leave no lingering evidence and it’s pretty apparent that police departments are more than willing to forgive such things. Whether that’s an organizational problem or a psychological problem, the result of avoidable abuse is the same.

   2. When discussing police policy, we must always factor in blatantly aggressive officers (think of the types of people drawn to the job) and pathetically lenient disciplinary reviews. That’s the nature of modern police forces. They behave like jackasses, they always defend each other, and then they wonder why citizens don’t like dealing with them. Sure, there are lots of decent ones out there (I was recently pulled over for speeding by the most polite state patrolman you can imagine), but the tools we give them need to revolve around the presumption that blatantly aggressive officers will use them and then not be punished by pathetically lenient disciplinary reviews. The Taser, by offering a gradient of violence for which the cop will not be punished, aggravates the problem of aggressive officer and ensures a greater level of police violence than if they only had guns and sticks.

   3. Again, play through the scenario in your mind, but this time only give the Mounties guns and sticks. The way the guy was actively not assaulting the police (the story says it was a stapler in his hand) tells me that, had they had to approach him with handcuffs instead of being able to tase him from a distance, that probably wouldn’t have resulted in violence. From the moment the police confronted him he was not being aggressive toward them. Again, it was the option of tasing him from a distance that created the violence.

   I’m also a little peeved about not saying what killed him. It’s easy to speculate (I’d say either knee on the throat, or a combination of the stress and repeated tasing caused cardiac arrest), but that’s really important information. For my purposes, though, it was just the tasing that set me off. I just didn’t see any cause for violence there after the Mounties came in.

   I think as a general principle, you’re right that cops are using tasers to preempt assaults. This stems from a notion that a lot of people have that the safety of the police officer is the number one priority. But it shouldn’t be; the safety of innocent citizens should be the number one priority, and sometimes that means that cops will be hurt or killed. “To protect and serve” should be a pledge to the innocent, not primarily to other cops.

   November 16th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
3. conor friedersdorf says:
   

   I’m glad to see this post, because after the UCLA tasing incident awhile back I tried to sell an op-ed making many of the same points articulated by Apollo and was met with ridicule by editors. Perhaps I will dig out that old piece, peg it to this incident and try again.

   November 18th, 2007 at 9:22 am
4. Tom says:
   

   The question I’m raising isn’t “Are cops with tasers a net good”, but “Is a police force armed with Tasers better than one armed only with guns and sticks”?

   Your question is the one I want to ask. But to ask it properly, we have to know whether a police force armed with Tasers is a greater net good than one armed with only handguns and batons. You’re persuading me that that is not the case, but we can’t tell that if we only look at bad incidents.

   Here’s a very interesting article with some very interesting numbers, almost all of which back-up your point:

   [Houston PD] Officers have used their Tasers more than 1,000 times in the past two years, but in 95 percent of those cases they were not used to defuse situations in which suspects wielded weapons and deadly force clearly would have been justified.

   Instead, more than half of the Taser incidents escalated from relatively common police calls, such as traffic stops, disturbance and nuisance complaints, and reports of suspicious people.

   In more than 350 cases, no crime was committed. No person was charged or the case was dropped by prosecutors or dismissed by judges and juries, according to the Houston Chronicle’s analysis of the first 900 police Taser incidents, which occurred between December 2004 and August 2006.

   Of those people who were charged with crimes, most were accused of misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies.

   and this gem:

   Of those people who were charged with crimes, most were accused of misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies.

   In an interview with the Chronicle, Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt adamantly defended the department’s use of Tasers, saying the type of crime committed, or whether charges were filed, have little bearing on whether Taser use is justified.

   “When people are charged with minor crimes or nonviolent crimes, maybe the reason is because they were stopped before they committed a much more serious offense,” Hurtt said.
   

   but…

   Mayor Bill White and Hurtt, meanwhile, steadfastly support the weapon and note that none of the people who were shocked has died. But, in the face of public criticism, they have agreed to allow independent groups to study Houston’s use of Tasers and the weapon’s medical effects.

   They maintain that Tasers have saved lives — including those of the 40 armed people whom officers chose to shock, not shoot.

   and…

   Hurtt, the first major-city police chief to arm all of his officers with Tasers, had noted success with the devices in Phoenix. In 2003, the first year the Phoenix force was fully equipped, shootings were cut in half.

   In all, I’d say pretty damning stuff.

   One more thing. You wrote:

   Armed only with guns and sticks, a cop has three options: nonviolence, bloody violence, or deadly violence. With either of the last two options, there is lingering proof of the abuse and he knows he’s going to have to answer for what he’s done. Assaults with Tasers leave no lingering evidence and it’s pretty apparent that police departments are more than willing to forgive such things.

   Tasers — as opposed to stun guns — fire a wire that administers the shock. Watch the Vancouver video again and you’ll see the black Mounty wind it around his hand toward the end. So their is objective evidence that a cop has used his taser; certainly easier to answer than whether or not he’s used his baton.

   November 18th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
5. Apollo says:
   

   So their is objective evidence that a cop has used his taser; certainly easier to answer than whether or not he’s used his baton.

   During the UCLA tasing incident, the police used the “drive stun” feature, which doesn’t launch the wires, so there’s confusion about how many times he was shocked. Also, once the darts have attached, the user can shock the victim over and over again (in Vancouver, note when one of the Mounties says “tase him again”).

   Regarding batons, it was my impression that patterns of bruising can pretty much prove that a baton was used. In terms of disciplining/suing police, visible harm to the victim seems a lot more likely to persuade factfinders that harm was done.

   That Houston story was a great find. I especially liked the bit from the police chief saying they tase so many non-violent people because “maybe the reason is because they were stopped before they committed a much more serious offense”. Being tased is good for you! If everyone were tased once a day, we’d have virutally no crime!

   “We wanted to make sure we all are on the same page,” Executive Assistant Police Chief Charles McClelland said. “But officers do not have to wait to be assaulted prior to using a Taser.”

   That’s the key problem, there. Once you give that instruction ot cops, they use it every time they’re threatened, which encourages them to feel threatened very, very often. They’re wearing bullet proof vests and wielding guns; that cops should feel “threatened” by people during routine traffic stops is a sign that something is wrong in the general state of policing the republic. Is it worth putting cops in a situation where they feel “threatened” to give someone a $100 speeding ticket or $50 seat belt ticket?

   The outcome of criminal cases has no effect on whether an officer’s use of a Taser is ruled justified.

   You want to stop Taser abuse? Make it so that the officer is disciplined (something along the lines of two warnings and then fired) every time he uses a Taser and the tasered person isn’t convicted of a crime. Leaving this up to review committees of other policemen means that there is virtually no accountability for police officers who assault innocent people because the cop felt “threatened,” whatever that may mean.

   November 18th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
6. Tom says:
   

   This op-ed on the Dziekanski case asks some very legitimate questions.  I stand by my earlier comment that tasing in this incident may have been justified.

   Also, apparently the autopsy failed to find a clear cause of death.

   November 19th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
7. Apollo says:
   

   My problems with that op-ed:

   He has his back to the camera and is talking and gesturing. One officer fires a Taser at him at 6:47.

   He continues to fight with officers for more than a minute, prompting Mr. Pritchard or the unseen witness to remark “Wow, he’s still fighting them off.”

   Actually, he doesn’t “continue to fight,” he only starts fighting after they taser him. Had he fought with them before, violence would have been a no-brainer (though I still don’t like them using Tasers).

   But, again, we have no way of knowing what the officers had been told they would be facing, and thus no way to determine if their action was appropriate to subdue a man they judged was a potential danger to himself or the public.

   It doesn’t matter what they’ve been told. They’ve got a guy there who is not assaulting anyone, who walks away from them when confronted, who’s in a room seperate from the public. There are four of them, and they’re all armed with Tasers and batons, and wearing bullet proof vests. Even if he had a stapler, how on earth is he a threat to them or anyone else? There is a simple rule that should apply here: Cops ought not preemptively assault people not hurting anyone.

   There are lots of questions people can ask that muddy the water, but at the end of the day it boils down to this: Objectively, he was not a threat to them or to anyone else. To get to where he is, they know that he has already passed through airport security, so they know he is unarmed. Yet they tasered him to preempt violence. Remove the Tasers from the equation and preemptive violence becomes very unlikely. I’m not so much faulting these particular Mounties, I’m faulting the system that put Tasers in their hands for dealing with unarmed people. It encourages them to feel threatened in situations where a reasonable person would not.

   November 19th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
8. Tom says:
   

   Even if he had a stapler, how on earth is he a threat to them or anyone else?…Objectively, he was not a threat to them or to anyone else. To get to where he is, they know that he has already passed through airport security, so they know he is unarmed.

   This is the one point where I think you’re wrong. Dziekanski had already thrown a laptop and a chair, probably destroying both (both as the woman tried to calm him). The situation was violent before the mounties arrived. Whomever called for the mounties could easily have described the situation as follows:

   “There’s this crazy Russian guy down here and he’s throwing laptops and chairs and now he’s grabbed a stapler. You need to get down here now before he hurts someone.”

   Now, that being said, I completely agree with you that Dziekanski did not act violently towards the mounties, and that tasing him the way they did — and repeatedly — was wrong.

   November 19th, 2007 at 7:48 pm

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