A new blog actually called Tasered While Black, found via Automatic Preference.
Check out this one in particular:November 29, 2007 TROTWOOD, Ohio -- The FBI is investigating after a Trotwood police officer used a Taser on a pregnant woman. Trotwood Public Safety Director Michael Etter said the incident happened on Nov. 18. He said the woman arrived at the police department asking to give up custody of her 1-year-old son. Etter said an officer spoke with the woman as she held onto the child outside the police department. "(He) attempted to obtain information on both the mother and the child, at which time the mother refused to give any information and became very agitated," Etter said.
Surveillance video from the police department shows the woman trying to leave with the child. The officer then grabs her coat in an effort to get her to stop.
Etter said the officer was doing what he thought was in the best interest of the boy.
The video shows the woman struggling with the officer, who then takes the child from her and gives the boy to another officer. The first officer then forces the woman down on her stomach, and he then uses a Taser on her neck.
Tasers should be outlawed. Better to err on the side of safety than on the side of control.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Tasered While Black
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4 comments:
My brother, for some reason, has been researching taser incidents online for awhile. He cannot believe the violence now justified by the police. He found an incident about a man, an immigrant I think from Portugal, who could not speak English, detained in a Canadian airport, surrounded by many police who tazed him repeatedly, until he died. They stood around, despite their own CPR training, and did nothing after the tazer stopped his heart. He died.
Then there was the Utah motorist incident. The cop tazed a motorist who was argumentative, but certainly not dangerous, when given a speeding ticket. The man wanted to show the officer where the 45 mph sign was. The man's pregnant wife got out of the SUV right after he was tazed, very worried about her husband, and was warned back by the ballistic officer, as if she too was some immediate extreme threat.
In another incident, a woman forgot her credit card after making purchases at a store. The clerk decided she deliberately left it behind because it must be stolen and called police. A woman officer confronted the woman outside the store, exchanged words, then tazed her. The credit card belonged to the woman and was not stolen.
Tasers should be outlawed. Police use them too often. Police need to learn verbal skills.
The graduation slogan of an Idaho state police class this year was, "Go out and cause PTSD."
Strayer,
I posted on all of those incidents, I think.... the man in the Canadian airport was emigrating to live with his mother. He'd been lost in the airport for ten hours, and when the police found him, they tazed him something like 46 seconds after first confronting him.
He was Polish, by the way.
That graduation slogan is pretty telling.
Thanks for the correction, Dennis. Kind of scarey, really. My brother and I also joke about the likihood these days of going to jail as an innocent person. Seems quite prevalent, the railroading, the district attorneys so anxious to win, rather than to defend justice, that they will twist evidence, suppress evidence, etc, to get a win, regardless of guilt. It's scarey.
As are the police interrogations sessions, that end up, likely as not, with confessions, whether a person is guilty or not. And the police seem ignorant of the fact if you isolate a child, or even an adult, for hours upon hours upon hours, denying bathroom use, even food and water, you will hear whatever it is you want to hear, in the end. That's not justice. We all want guilty parties to face the music. But we don't want innocent parties put in jail. I can't figure out what is going on, within the justice system, that now there seems to be such a disregard for common sense, human decency and justice.
Thanks for the link. Glad somebody's reading!
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