...are the officers from the Brattleboro, Vermont Police Department that TASERED two non-violent hippie gardener protesters who refused to leave a vacant lot that they were planting greenery on. The officers had ordered the two to leave the privately-owned lot, which is slated to become part of an expanded gas station, and the pair refused to go as directed. Here's the video of part of the incident, so you can decide for yourself whether that level of force was warranted.
As we've discussed here previously, a TASER is not a "safe" way to subdue suspects, nor was it ever designed to be used as a "compliance" tool to force people to do whatever cops tell them to. The TASER company itself markets the product as "less than lethal", not "safe to use on everyone", as it is quite dangerous, just not as dangerous as firearms (hence the "less than lethal" nomenclature), and it definitely should not be used willy-nilly, as apparently was the case with the hippies.
Still don't believe that the TASER is dangerous? Here's a case from just yesterday, in which a 27-year-old suspect died after being TASED by police. The suspect was allegedly stinking drunk and fighting with police (translation: someone who probably should have been TASED) when he collapsed and was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Getting back to the hippies, here's what one of the "authorities" had to say about the incident:
"Acting Town Manager Barbara Sondag said the department has been directed to review its policies concerning Taser use, adding protesters refusing to move "was somewhat new to the officers.""
Fascinating. Someone declines to snap to as soon as the brownshirts say jump, and it short-circuits them. One can only imagine the officers standing there dumbstruck, furrowing their brows in a vain attempt to understand the situation. "We told them to move, and they didn't move!! Now what? How about we just pick them up, handcuff them, and remove them? The hell with that, let's just shock them!! That'll light a fire under their asses!!"
Fortunately, some of the residents of Brattleboro understand what just happened in their town:
"'By upping the ante, it discourages people from speaking their mind,' agreed Peter Hawkins, who filmed the use of the Tasers.
"If you don't do what we say, we will Taser you," said West Brattleboro resident Phil Stimmel. "That's not appropriate."
With no danger to officers or the public, "why Taser anybody?" asked Brattleboro resident Gerry Benjamin.
"I can't conceive of why we would have to Taser peaceful protesters," said George Reed-Savory of Brattleboro, adding the police department should develop policies that insure it never happens again."
The guy in charge of the local office of Amnesty International agrees with my analysis of the situation:
"'But he said across the country, Tasers are being used "simply to get someone to comply with a police order" when there is not threat of violence "and certainly no need to use lethal force.'"
That's how I see it. These hippies could very easily be you or I protesting somewhere inconvenient to the powers that be, or not moving fast enough for an officer's taste, or telling off a city council member or county executive who then orders the cops to remove you "with extreme prejudice", or even doing something dumb, but not necessarily criminal or dangerous to society. Remember the chucklehead officer who managed to shoot the intoxicated man sitting in a tree, because he couldn't take 5 seconds to make sure he had drawn his TASER instead of his service weapon?
Painful, intimidating, dangerous weapon + an overbearing, authoritarian government + lazy police = a lot more of these types of situations occurring. Watch for them.
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It doesn't take an overbearing, authoritative government -- just a mildly clueless one. It's fairly easy for governmental authorities to defer to the police on force matters . . . until and unless they get hit in the pocketbook. And that's rare, even in far more abusive cases -- or potentially abusive ones.
Take Mike Sauro in Minneapolis -- I'm not sure that he decided to "tune up" a 21-year-old college student back in 1992, but a jury did; they awarded his victim $700K (the city refused to settle for about half that), and Sauro's still an MPD officer -- he was never prosecuted. (He quite possibly could have beaten the rap; the standards of proof in a criminal case are higher than in a civil one.) Hell, he wasn't even investigated by IA -- the city was worried that the investigation could be used in the lawsuit . . . which they lost, anyway.
No question -- that had already happened after a botched raid (wrong house; oops!) led by Sauro, in which two old folks were burned alive in a fire started by a "less than lethal" flash bang grenade.
Tasers have utterly legitimate uses -- but it's easy for cops who are irritated with somebody (quite possibly legitimately -- after all, most [not, by any means all, people cops arrest have done bad things) to tell themselves that they're "special people" and instead of risking damaging their own backs (and the risks of that while lifting an unresisting, limp person are huge), try a little "pain compliance", and if they'd rather stand back and make somebody twitch like a frog on a wire rather than go in, handcuff and lift, and if they've decided to "take care of business", that's the obvious choice, rather than pepper spray, say.
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