Interesting video of an Officer tazering a driver for non compliance. This officers actions have been called into question.

If the driver hadent started walking back to the vehicle, I would have said that tazering the driver was a little excessive. But thinking about it, from an Officer safety standpoint, the guy was acting a little squirrley.

Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMaMYL_shxc&eurl=http://...ltrib.com/ci_7523456

From a CG LE Officer perspective, any thoughts?

T

In the not too distant future, people may fear law enforcement officers so much that they will say or do anything, true or not, in order to avoid the pain of the tazer gun.

Sound familiar in this day and age?

I have and use a Taser, and it is an EXCELLENT tool. But, so is talking to people and explaining to them what is happening. If someone refuses to sign a citation (which in any situation is an arrest where you release a person on their promise to appear in lieu of booking), my department mandates that I book them. And people do quite often initially refuse to sign a citation on principle. However, after explaining the consequences and the fact that they will have every opportunity to take me to court, they usually sign. This subject was a jerk, but I did not see or hear the officer attempt to explain what was going on. I hate to judge a situation I had nothing to do with, but that is my observation. He may not have been too quick to Taser the subject, but I believe he was too quick to pull it out.

Guess the guy should of listened to the officer. Cop got his attention, nobody got hurt, and the officer went home that night.

In the future, tazer guns will be irevelant.

The embeded microchip that I talked about in this thread will feature wired electrodes surgically attached to the person's most sensitive bodily areas and will have the ability to send a painful amount of electrical current through the body either by a remote control triggered by law enforcement or by any negative thinking by the owner of the imbedded chip him or herself.

This may prove to be a painful existance for some but at least we'll all be safer - right?

quote:

Originally posted by marcus_leftcoastus:
In the future, tazer guns will be irevelant.

The embeded microchip that I talked about in this thread will feature wired electrodes surgically attached to the person's most sensitive bodily areas and will have the ability to send a painful amount of electrical current through the body either by a remote control triggered by law enforcement or by any negative thinking by the owner of the imbedded chip him or herself.

This may prove to be a painful existance for some but at least we'll all be safer - right?

Hopefully I'll be in heaven when that rolls around.

I suspect that if there are more persons with heart troubles or other health problems are killed by tazering, the act will probably become outlawed as cruel and unusual.

And, in several smaller police departments where training is not comprehensive, too many under-educated LE officers will find it easier just to tazer an unruly person rather than try to reason with him or her.

The last thing that citizens need is to become fearful of law enforcement officers. Putting the safety of LE officers over and beyond that of the citizens may only lead to more social unrest and contempt.

Hopefully, the tazer will continue to only be a tool of last resort when all else fails.

quote:

Hopefully I'll be in heaven when that rolls around.

They still might find you (depending, of course, on propagation conditions). There may also be QRM from this station:

...gjd

We had a kid get tazered not far from my home up in gainesville florida..you may have heard of it on the news..he was disrupting a John kerry speach.

I am all for it..Although i would never want to be a cop..i do respect them..if everyone did you would not even need a tazers or pepperspray etc.

I always thought college kids were suppost to be smart..he sure did,nt look smart..as he was screeming ..Don't taz me bro.. to the officers.

IMHO..for most not all college is over rated and so is all the crying going on about these tazers..it all about minumum force.

best minumum force is a officer telling you to act right..and you do...what is so hard about that ?

sc

Ps..i am just glad the mods don't have tazers i believe i could survive on these forums but on some of the others i would be saying ouchhhhhh !

This cop needs to find a new profession. He was way over the top in the use of force continuum or model. He placed the operator in a very precarious position by tasering him and allowing him to fall onto the highway. There was absolutely no aggressive behavior by the operator beyond a verbal refusal. The officer skipped the hands on methods required before using a taser and was not in control of his emotions throughout.

It gets better when he begins to tell the funny story of taking a ride with the taser. I am the last guy to criticize a brother officer but I'd much rather be the lawyer for the operator here than the Chief of Police. This young man will be hung by his own videotape.

Tasers, just another tool when not abused.

Pat,

I would be interesting in hearing your opinion on LE officers using tazers on persons doing passive resistance (sit down strikes, etc.) as has been done over the past few months.

Mark

When an officer tells you to stop STOP the officer wants to go home alive. The tazers are one tool. Would you rather have them shoot? I watched a live TV of crowds going nuts and attacking officers.

I've never used a Taser, but I have used OC.

OC is Level 4 on the CG UofF continuum, but locally (PD-wise), it's Level 2.

Yup, you tell someone they're under arrest and before they finish "Fu...", they get sprayed.

Not having Tasers, the next level of weaponry is the 26-inch ASP baton, which I had to use one night on a guy who was drunk, walking down the double yellow lines of the road, yelling at cars and charging them.

He yelled at me that he was going to kick my a$$ and charged towards my car. When I sprayed him, he turned, shook his head repeatedly, and continued his march down the road. When my backup units arrived, he started running. I caught up to him and gave him a common peronial strike to the back of his thigh as one of my partners tackled him high and took him down.

The OC remediation occurred at the station, whereas the bruise to his thigh probably took a few days to heal (he was visibly limping when I dropped him off at his house later that night).

The LT called me a few months later and told me the guy filed a complaint for excessive use of force, that the SGT at the scene that night should have never hit the subject with a squad car. I told the LT the SGT didn't hit the guy with a car, I hit the guy with my ASP. It must have been a pretty good hit, I guess.

This was over three years ago. We are one of the only dept's in the area without Tasers.

Seems excessive. Sure the guy was not being completely compliant, but he was not showing violent tendencies. I think the cops could have just talked with the guy instead of rapidly escalating the situation. Man, the video really pisses me off. The cop just escalated things so fast.

Made me think of this famous movie:

"Ron Burgundy: Boy, that escalated quickly... I mean, that really got out of hand fast.
Champ Kind: It jumped up a notch."

- Anchorman

Hooligan1790:
Though I agree that the officer was a little quick to pull out the Taser, and I cannot speak to his agency's UOF policy, I can tell you that most agencies (CG included) do not require all lower use of force levels to be attempted before trying a higher level. I have been on many a call where we jumped straight to baton or Taser without ever attempting to touch the person. I can't say I would have done so in this video's case, but I do want to make clear that that officer was more than likely not required at all to attempt to physically restrain the person prior to using the Taser. Probably would have been the right thing to do though.

Esther,

quote:

When an officer tells you to stop STOP the officer wants to go home alive. The tazers are one tool. Would you rather have them shoot? I watched a live TV of crowds going nuts and attacking officers.

No, I would not want them to shoot but I would want them to follow the use of force model or continuum, whichever is accepted in their state. That was not done here.

d1b3,

quote:

I have been on many a call where we jumped straight to baton or Taser without ever attempting to touch the person.

I agree that not all levels of force need be tried. However, at most we are allowed to be one level up. I am unaware of any state that allows jumping two or more levels up on use of force.

Someone mentioned OC as level 2, that seems odd. I have always been taught:

1. Mere Presence
2. Verbal commands
3. Hands On
4. OC
5. Impact weapons
6. Deadly Force

Since the inception of the taser, they have been placed interchangeably above and below OC. We do not have them and I think they are truly a wonderful thing when used properly. However, I think they are used far too often.

In discussion with many officers from different agencies around the country the taser gets a mixed reception. "Just one more thing to think about" seems to heard a lot. I just hope officers don't reach for the taser when a firearm is required or reach for the taser when a stern word would suffice.

All of this discussion is good for the topic. The more it is discussed the better everyone will understand the issue. One thing though, regardless of whether it was a taser, OC or a baton the suspect ended up on the ground with his head in the travel lane of the highway. That won't look good in court no matter how it is presented.

To my brother officers out there, stay safe.

I think it's important that law enforcement officers are constantly reminded (by others and themselves) that the first five levels offer good (even preferable) alternatives to the sixth.

It kind of reminds me of Star Trek: Even though their hand held "phasers" had various settings ("stun", "heat", "disrupt", "disintegrate", and "vaporize"), only the first was usually employed, with one member of any group almost always reminding the rest to "set phasers to stun."

Not a bad lesson to learn, even if it does come from a mass market Sci-Fi flick.

...gjd

We did a fishing boarding not too long ago where the master refused to sign the forms. There is a box that the officer checked that says something like "master refused to sign" The master took his copy of the paperwork and threw it out the window. Now, did we taze him? spray him? uh....no...

At this point in the traffic stop, the cop already knew the guys name, date of birth, car make and model, liscense plate, how he took his coffee, etc... He had the whole thing on video. Asking the guy to step out of the car simply put both guys lives in danger.

I think this would be a good training video for rookie cops of what not to do. If the guy doesn't sign the ticket, doesn't appear in court, doesn't pay the fine, then his liscense should be suspended. Then if he is pulled over again, he could be arrested, and that type of action would be required.

I totally agree. When I got a ticket for a California stop the officer said 'step out of the car' my passenger was a black man, we both stepped out. When I went to the station with the ticket an officer said 'I don't give a ticket for a rolling stop, he might have seen the black man in your car and given you a ticket for that reason. I don't really believe that in this day and age. I signed the ticket and my insurance went up.......OH MY OH DEAR