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taze him

#21
Blisshead said:
I made no comment, I just wanted the reaction of the community.

What I think is this:

The officer could improve his ability to handle the situation some re: his verbal skills, but ultimatley she was resisting arrest.

Though I could not see it on the video, (and keep in mind it's easy to see things out of context on the video), it sounds like she slapped or took a swing at the assisting officer.

In this case, considering those two things, the tazer was warranted.
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Agreed. It probably could have been handled better, BUT...if she swung..zap away!
 
#24
cheezewiz said:
Agreed. It probably could have been handled better, BUT...if she swung..zap away!
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Agreed here. If someone swings at an Officer, zap away. That particular officer seemed like he was having a rough day and was quite tired of the bull****. I'd be too, if I had to deal with people like that all day.
Of course we don't know why he wanted her out of the car, perhaps she had prior arrests for concealed weapons or whatever, so it really was a judgement call.
If it had been me, I'd have pulled her out of the car physically and handcuffed her instead of using the tazer to zap her ass out of the car.
Bliss, I didn't mean to assume you were looking at the hilarity of it all. It's hard for me to look at any tazer victim as "funny".
 
#26
AuG said:
Agreed here. If someone swings at an Officer, zap away. That particular officer seemed like he was having a rough day and was quite tired of the bull****. I'd be too, if I had to deal with people like that all day.
Of course we don't know why he wanted her out of the car, perhaps she had prior arrests for concealed weapons or whatever, so it really was a judgement call.
If it had been me, I'd have pulled her out of the car physically and handcuffed her instead of using the tazer to zap her ass out of the car.
Bliss, I didn't mean to assume you were looking at the hilarity of it all. It's hard for me to look at any tazer victim as "funny".
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That makes perfect sense. However, sometimes, even with a female, especially a "biggun" like the lady in the video, pulling someone physically out of a car can get a bit complicated, and it's a good way to get hurt. I specifically recall stopping a drunk woman in broad daylight once. She kept on going after I put on the lights and siren. She wasn't fleeing, didn't speed up, etc., but just didn't stop. She was traveling on a State Highway, and we ended up about 3 miles out of town before she finally pulled over. To make a long story short, she wouldn't get out of the car despite whatever tactics I used, so in I reached, got one hand around her waist, and one on her upper arm, and out of the car she came. Of course then, her drunk butt decided the fight was on. It took me a few seconds to realize I was having a wrestling match with a fat 40 some year old woman ( I was in my late 20s and in good shape at the time....) RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF A TRAFFIC LANE OF A STATE HIGHWAY. We could have both been roadkill in a matter of seconds. At this point, the adrenalin kicked in, and I managed to drag her off to the side of the road and get her cuffed up.

So anyway...my point being, I think a tazer should be used as a last resort, BUT...there is certainly a time to use one to remove someone from a vehicle that WOULD be appropriate.
 
#28
cheezewiz said:
It took me a few seconds to realize I was having a wrestling match with a fat 40 some year old woman ( I was in my late 20s and in good shape at the time....) RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF A TRAFFIC LANE OF A STATE HIGHWAY. We could have both been roadkill in a matter of seconds.
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So this is how you met Jive....

:D:hiding::ninja:
 
#30
AuG said:
Agreed here. If someone swings at an Officer, zap away. That particular officer seemed like he was having a rough day and was quite tired of the bull****. I'd be too, if I had to deal with people like that all day.
Of course we don't know why he wanted her out of the car, perhaps she had prior arrests for concealed weapons or whatever, so it really was a judgement call.
If it had been me, I'd have pulled her out of the car physically and handcuffed her instead of using the tazer to zap her ass out of the car.
Bliss, I didn't mean to assume you were looking at the hilarity of it all. It's hard for me to look at any tazer victim as "funny".
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Towards the end the officer said that she had a suspended license. Obviously they aren't going to let her drive away so they wanted her out of the car.

Vorago said:
You have to big cops there, a woman of the phone, why not just pull her out?

It's not the first time I've seen this kind of overdisplay of power.
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She wasn't going to come out of her own free will. Then it becomes a choice of what physical method to use. Like cheeze said, there's a risk in climbing in the vehicle with her to pull her out. I personally wouldn't risk bodily harm to myself to avoid tasering someone. I didn't see any overdisplay of power.

Also, I've been tasered before (by my father) and that woman was being a whining baby at the end when she wouldn't stop moaning and going on. The darts hurt a little bit, I suppose, but the bulk of the pain ends when the voltage drops back to zero.

I think that this is the one I got it from, the M26.

Invalid Link Removed
 
#31
Geoff St. Germaine said:
Also, I've been tasered before (by my father) .....
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Sounds like a great relationship you've got going with your Pop there. :D


I didn't watch the entire video, what with all the advice the lady was giving the officer on how to do his job, so I fast forwarded to just before the incident and watched it a few times to determine if it was an abuse of power. I don't think it was, and again it was a judgement call on the Officer's part.
Cheeze, sorry you had to wrestle with an obese woman in her forties while in the middle of a State Highway. That doesn't sound fun.
 
#33
AuG said:
Sounds like a great relationship you've got going with your Pop there. :D


I didn't watch the entire video, what with all the advice the lady was giving the officer on how to do his job, so I fast forwarded to just before the incident and watched it a few times to determine if it was an abuse of power. I don't think it was, and again it was a judgement call on the Officer's part.
Cheeze, sorry you had to wrestle with an obese woman in her forties while in the middle of a State Highway. That doesn't sound fun.
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I know, I wasn't eating my brussel sprouts and then bam.... 50 000 volts to the back. :eek: ;)

As to the immobilization. I don't remember there being any after the voltage shut off. There's the fact that you've been dropped to the ground, but as far as not being able to move my arms (as this lady was claiming), I don't recall anything to that extent.
 
#34
I've seen lots of people, including fellow officers being trained, get tazed, and I think any immobilization is more psychological than physical. To a man, every officer that's taken a 5 second stun said it was the worst pain he has ever experienced in his life. Now I'm talking about an actual "Tazer" brand device. The old stun gun type devices weren't near as painful, or near as effective. The one Geoff took the shot with is the real deal. It's also been related to me that being tazed through the projectiles is much more painful than a contact stun.
 
#35
I'd love to get Cheezewiz's opinion on this - But sometimes NOT using a tazer can be cruel. A person who I am quite close with was arrested a while back. This person is bi polar, she was off her meds and extremely intoxicated and was experiencing what her psychiatrist called an alcohol induced psychotic episode. She remembered nothing the next day. The police came to her house to investigate claims from a neighbor that she had driven home while intoxicated. The police knocked on her door, and she was not cooperative. The policeman called for back ups and it took 6 police officers to get her out of her apartment, into hand cuffs, and into the back of the police car. The next day she was bruised severely from head to toe. I talked to some of the neighbors and they told me that several police officers had to beat the hell out of her with billy clubs for quite some time to subdue her. She never gave in, they had to beat her down. She was messed up the next day, she couldn't get out of bed for 2 days. I mean, she was severely bruised. The same people that described the beating she received to me mentioned that at least one cop had a tazer out and wanted to use it, but the other cops (the "lead" cop who she'd been taunting with names while resisting arrest) …kept insisting that they NOT use the tazere. I'm told that they kept telling her "don't make us use the taker" several times and kept beating her trying to get her to submit. If they would have just tazed her, they would have been able to take her right into custody and she wouldn't have been so injured the next day.

Is there any way to justify what they did? Any reason NOT to taze somebody? It really seems to me that the cops just wanted to beat her. I'm sure they didn't recognize that maybe this person was mentally ill. I think they took the insults she was flinging about personally, and they were mad about her lack of cooperation, and they just wanted to beat her. She was told by somebody that she would probably have a pretty good case against that police department if she wanted to pursue it, but she doesn't.

I think that a situation like hers is just as bad as a cop who is too quick to use the tazer, but I'd love to hear a law enforcement professional weigh in on this.

On a lighter note - here’s a link to a tazer video that is favorite with the guys I work with:
 
#36
Matthew Bryson said:
I think that a situation like hers is just as bad as a cop who is too quick to use the tazer, but I'd love to hear a law enforcement professional weigh in on this.
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I agree. This would have been a text book case for using a tazer. Of course, I don't know the facts of the case, and certainly wasn't there, but I can't see any reason it would have been better to use nightsticks than a tazer.

Excessive force is one of my pet peeves. I mean, I'm NOT going to judge the merits of most cases just by what I read, especially in a media report, and my initial response to media stories about this is usually, "Yeah....sure you know what happened Mr. Reporter...and the witnesses are a REAL reliable bunch", but....when excessive force is used for real, NOTHING gives cops a worse name quicker, and deservedly so.
 
#37
If more cops tazed more arrogant POS people like the one in that video, there's be a lot less lip during traffic stops, thats for sure. I can't believe the dumbass was still on her phone while the cop is saying get out or I'll taze you for the third time. What a complete idiot. She deserves every single volt she got and twice more.
 

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