Cops Tase Barely Conscious Boy With Broken Back 19 Times For Non-Compliance

[angelatc]

Tazed 19 times? First of all, that's flat out impossible. Tasers are only good for 2 shocks at most. Were these officers carrying 9 tasers on their belt or something? ROFL. I work for a PD with a huge budget, and they can't even give us all tasers, so I doubt these two officers in the OZARK PD were carrying 9 tasers with them. If the article can't even get that right, I highly doubt the accuracy of the rest of the story.


Second, how were the officers supposed to know the "boy" had a broken back? If you are trying to take someone into custody, and they are writhing around resisting you, while at the same time saying they are going to kill you, what exactly are you supposed to do, give them milk and cookies?

The boy deserves a darwin award and should be fortunate he was only tazed and not shot.

You must have a very small penis.

 

[JosephTheLibertarian]

NEWS FOOTAGE channel KY3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo6UwNu7QJ0

 

[angelatc]

But common sense is something people seem to lack these days...

Oh the irony....

 

[JosephTheLibertarian]

You must have a very small penis.

want to see mine?

 

[Join The Paul Side]

And you think "obey me or suffer" is something that should be done to Americans?

And you haven't addressed the whole point of the posts -- the idea that a taser can only discharge once or at most twice before exhaustion is unmitigated crap.

He's a cop. Of course that's what he thinks.

He believes 50,000 volts isn't enough to kill somebody. While this may be true, he doesn't have the foresight or intelligence to think that maybe.....just maybe......successive strikes of 50,000 volts just might do the trick.

 

[LibertyOfOne]

Before Tasers, we used handguns, which ARE supposed to be lethal. Take your pick, something that has a 0.0001% chance to kill you or something that has a 99% chance to kill you.

Why can't you people grasp the concept that Tasers are a great thing and save more lives than they harm?

You want a personal experience I had?

About 2 years ago, a man was charging at me with a hunting knife telling me he was going to kill me. If I didn't have my taser, I would have unholstered my gun, shot him in the chest, and killed him.

But because of the Taser I had, I unholsted my taser, deployed it on the man, and while he was incapaciated, subdued him.


The Taser SAVED his life.

Of course the media is not going to report on Tasers saving people's lives, because it happens hundreds of times per day. Why report on something that is frequent and normal? It would be like the News reporting that the sky is blue and that the grass is green.

No, they only report on Tasers killing people, because it doesn't happen often. If the sky was purple and the grass was red, they news would report on it.

In the majority of cases the taser is used as a form of pain compliance and not as a form of self defense. The taser was sold to the public as a new form of self defense so officers would not need to use the gun as often. But these days simply disobeying some crap order can get you on the floor with a fucking taser. Now in the case you cited it perfrectly fine to kill the man with a gun in self defense. Homeowners are allowed to do it, so I don't see why cops can't. I really don't see any use for the damn things because their general non leathality greatly incourges more use of the device for minor non violent offenses.

 

[angelatc]

want to see mine?

On the internet the answer to that question is always "Absolutely!"

 

[angelatc]

He's a cop. Of course that's what he thinks.

He believes 50,000 volts isn't enough to kill somebody. While this may be true, he doesn't have the foresight or intelligence to think that maybe.....just maybe......successive strikes of 50,000 volts just might do the trick.

Even if it doesn't have the capability of killing him, this is a kid lying on the ground with a broken back. If they had started kicking him the reaction would be the same. It's simply inhumane to inflict pain on the seriously wounded. Even if the wounded is insulting you.

"Protect and Serve" is supposed to mean us, not themselves

 

[JosephTheLibertarian]

this has just not been his week....

 

[Kalifornia]

it never ceases to amaze me how far the cops and badge sniffers will go to explain the unexplainable.

there simply is no universe in which I find the tasing of an unarmed injured kid 19 times to be acceptable behavior. Period.

 

[Kalifornia]

Was this young man in the interrogation room? No, he was being apprehended and taken into custody. The taser was NOT being used for interrogation.

Torture is also torture when used to obtain compliance.

 

[Kalifornia]

Tasers are the best thing since sliced bread. Out of all the "taser death" cases, none were ruled that the taser caused the death, only that the taser was a contributing factor. Of all the cases, the "victim" had a pre-existing condition of some sort, whether it's them being loaded up with enough drugs to be fatal, or some kind of weird medical condition that 99.999999% of people don't have.


You know what? Can the Taser cause someone to die? Yeah, but so can drinking coffee, eating yogurt, taking a bath, climbing a ladder, driving a car, etc. Should we ban all those as well?


The people calling for the end of tasers is no different than the crowd of people who want to ban guns.

As part of training, I had to get hit with a taser AND take pepper spray directly to the eyes. I'll take the taser any day. Especially over getting shot with a gun.

The problem is the use of the taser where use of the gun would not be authorized. Same thing for pepper spray. These tools were supposed to be designed to increase the safety of the subjects, not to make cops lives easier.

 

[Join The Paul Side]

it never ceases to amaze me how far the cops and badge sniffers will go to explain the unexplainable.

there simply is no universe in which I find the tasing of an unarmed injured kid 19 times to be acceptable behavior. Period.

50,000 volts x 19 strikes + broken back from 30 ft. fall = This kid being lucky just to be alive.

 

[Kalifornia]

I don't know enough about this story to say exactly what really happened but I can bet that the officers didn't know the kid had a broken back. Also, is there video of this somewhere, I'd be intersted in seeing it.

I tend to be suspicious of police brutality stories because the media ALWAYS makes them out to be worse than they are. They paint innocent cops that had to use force as violent criminals and cops that did do something wrong as the second coming of Hitler (oops, did I Godwin this thread?).

Based on this attitude, your name is very fitting. Bravo.

 

[Kalifornia]

If someone is telling me they are going to kill me, obviously they are not injured that badly and can afford to ride the lightning.

I don't know about you, but if I was injured and needed medical attention, and officers were arresting me, I would say that I needed medical attention, not that I was going to kill the officers.

But common sense is something people seem to lack these days...

You have NO business being a cop if you worry about what a suspect says as opposed to what they do.

 

[mkeller]

CopThatSupportsRonPaul, you seem to be laboring under the delusion that this kid was some hardened criminal or fugitive, when even the cops were given no such indication. All they knew was that someone was walking on the overpass, and someone called them to ask them to check it out. In other words, the original caller most likely called precisely because they were concerned with this kid's safety.

While walking on the overpass is dangerous, it's hardly a capital crime, and it's hardly probable cause for a no-holds-barred arrest. While cops do need to always be on their guard for unexpected threats, there was no more reason to suspect that this kid was a violent criminal than there was to suspect any other random teenager in America.

Considering the kid was clearly injured after a 30-foot drop, the cops entering the scene had no legitimate reason to arrest him in the first place. Rather, their job was to call a paramedic...but instead, they decided to apprehend him - when up to this point, his only known crime was falling off an overpass and getting badly hurt.

Now, according to the cops, the kid was mumbling things like, "kill cops" while he was squirming in agony on the ground (personally, I'd be thinking the same thing if I just fell off an overpass and broke my back and the cops had the audacity to try and arrest me for it). In my mind, there are only four remotely plausible reasons for this:

1. He was already a disturbed individual who mumbles things to himself.
2. Falling and breaking his back put the kid into a delirious state of shock, so he started mumbling his inner thoughts - and he might have legitimately been very upset with these particular cops, for various reasons
3. The cops lied about the order of events, and they actually did something first to the kid that would provoke hatred and death threats...like, for instance, if they apprehended him on top of the bridge, he mouthed off, they tazed him for it, and he fell off and broke his back.
4. The cops lied about him saying anything of the sort at all.

In any case, death threats kind of lose their menace when they're vaguely mumbled by a sixteen-year-old kid who's squirming around on the ground after a 30-foot drop onto pavement. Even when a capable person makes a credible death threat to another person, they're supposed to be apprehended in as routine and nonviolent a manner as possible. When an apparently unarmed suspect is threatening to kill someone, responsible cops will back off and assess the situation for a moment before rushing in and getting gun-happy or tazer-happy. By themselves, such threats are never an excuse for brutal force, even if the suspect is completely uninjured. Until a weapon enters the picture or the suspect is physically beating the shit out of the cops, tazers should never be used. They're a weapon of second-last resort when apprehending the most difficult and violent suspects, not a compliance weapon. (In other words, there's absolutely nothing wrong with cops or anyone else having tazers. There is something wrong with cops overusing them without justification and/or blatantly assaulting people with them.)

Now, remember that until the kid allegedly made threats, there was no reason to arrest him that was not entirely overshadowed by his injuries. Upon hearing such threats, here's what a sensible and responsible cop would have thought:
"Well...I should keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't pull a weapon out of his ass, but there's no reason I even need to be in striking range of him in the first place. I don't particularly need to arrest him for anything while he's in this state, though I might apprehend him over his threat once he's treated. He needs to learn that he can't just throw around threats like that. Anyway, how about I call a paramedic and talk with this kid until he calms down?"

Instead, the cops on the scene thought,
"Oh, shit! He's partially conscious and mumbling threats! Clear and present danger! We've gotta taze this little bastard until he's half dead, because there's no other safe way to arrest him for falling off the overpass!" Once you get to the point where this line of thinking is acceptable to you, you need to realize that you've either become jaded beyond rationality or that the power has gotten to your head. In either case, it's time to turn in your badge and gun, for the good of the community you serve.

Cops need to remember that they are not above the law (except when the law is unjust of course), and they do not have the right to go around arresting whoever they want for any reason by any means necessary. Furthermore, the rest of us need to make them remember. There's a reason cops have a widespread reputation for being "bullies on the playground" who have exceeded their mandate to serve and protect. Their sense of authority often allows them to get away with things that nobody else can, mainly because the judicial system usually takes their word at face value...and they know it, resulting in the "Who do you think they're going to believe, me or you?" situations. The law itself is part of the problem of course, since "resisting arrest" is a crime in and of itself - this makes it not only extremely dangerous but also unfairly illegal to fight back against aggression by armed thugs with a badge, and it instantly gives false legitimacy to any violence cops engage in (resisting arrest must obviously add aggravation to any criminal charges, and it's a difficult balancing act, but I certainly do not like the idea that we are not allowed to defend ourselves from assault by a cop). The more we allow this to happen and the more unaccountable cops become, the more violent people the job will attract in the first place.

To be worthy of the badge, police need to ask themselves if the suspect's alleged offense really warrants a balls-to-the-walls violent arrest that could result in someone getting seriously injured or killed. They need to consider how far it's worth escalating a nonviolent situation in order to arrest their suspect. Even more importantly, they need to realize that they are in fact never justified in escalating the situation in the first place: Rather, they must use force only when provoked by violent action or the presence of a weapon (not by "disrespect" or other empty words)...and the force they use must be the least amount of force necessary to reasonably ensure their own safety and that of others (I say reasonably because nothing in life is 100% guaranteed).

This case in particular was an instance of cops escalating the process of arrest WAY beyond what their suspect's alleged offense warranted, and on top of that, it was done to a sixteen year old kid with a broken back...absolutely ridiculous. They were called in presumably to check on this kid's safety, and instead they almost killed him trying to arrest him. Common sense is indeed something people seem to lack these days.

(It also shouldn't surprise anyone here, but according to wikipedia and its numerous listed references, "[Psychopaths] are overrepresented in prison systems, politics, law enforcement agencies, law firms, and in the media." Go figure - I wonder what would attract such people to these positions of power or land them in prison? )

This is just an amazing post. I totally agree. CopThatSupportsRonPaul, could you comment on it?

 

[angelatc]

it never ceases to amaze me how far the cops and badge sniffers will go to explain the unexplainable.

there simply is no universe in which I find the tasing of an unarmed injured kid 19 times to be acceptable behavior. Period.

It's a form of psychosis. They're not scrambling to find an excuse because they sincerely believe that it was justified.

That's the truly frightening part.

 

[CopThatSupportsRonPaul]

These tools were supposed to be designed to increase the safety of the subjects, not to make cops lives easier.

No they weren't.

You have NO business being a cop if you worry about what a suspect says as opposed to what they do.

You have no clue what you are talking about.

 

[CopThatSupportsRonPaul]

You must have a very small penis.

Internet Rule #1:

When you fail to debate an argument successfully, revert to ad-hominem attacks.

 

[CopThatSupportsRonPaul]

Even if it doesn't have the capability of killing him, this is a kid lying on the ground with a broken back.

So the police are suddenly gods who can see everything and knew that this boy fell off a bridge and has a broken back?

If I came across a guy laying on the ground, saying he wanted to kill police, I wouldn't assume he just fell off a bridge, and neither would you and you know it.

Why can't you people grasp the simple concept that if you have a broken back, you should say so or be crying in pain, not shouting that you want to kill police? Are you guys really that thick or are you just trolling?