Today's TASER Travesty

An 82-year-old Canadian man lying in a hospital bed while attached to oxygen and other various hoses and tubes becomes delusional, which apparently happens on occasion when he can't get enough air. Frightened and believing that someone is attacking him, he pulls out a knife (A table knife from lunch? What else is he going to have?) and starts waving it around. The Mounties are called, and three fine strapping officers show up. How do they handle the situation?

They TASER the man three times in rapid succession.

Why was this necessary? The man's not going anywhere. He can't even get out of the darn bed. Who is he threatening? Let him wave his knife around for the ten minutes or so it's going to take for him to run out of energy and go back to sleep, then take it away from him. There was just no other way the "professional" officers could handle this than by shocking the living crap out of a sick old man?

"'We could not deploy our … pepper spray, because we could potentially contaminate the entire hospital.'"

Please be quiet, sir. You're embarrassing yourself.

"'I was laying on the bed by then and the corporal came in, or the sergeant, I forget which it was, and said to the guys, 'OK, get him because we got more important work to do on the street tonight,' Lasser said."

Oh. That makes sense, then. Priorities, you know. Time's a-wasting.

A TASER is designed to be a defensive weapon of "less than lethal" (NOT non-lethal) force for individuals to defend themselves and others from dangerous threats. It is not designed to be a compliance tool for people who decline to snap to at every barked order from a cop, nor is it supposed to be used on elderly bedridden people who don't know what they are doing, I would venture to guess.

Shame as well on the weenie medical staff who decided to call the cops because they were unable to handle this situation on their own.