Today's TASER Travesty

A twofer:

1. A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer actually got on a stand and testified that he was in mortal fear for his and his fellow officers' safety when they TASED a Polish man holding a stapler five times in the international arrivals area at the Vancouver, Canada airport in October 2007, causing his death.

Canadian Public Enemy No. 1

"Const. Gerry Rundel told the public inquiry into the death of Dziekanski that the stapler the Polish man was holding could have been used as a weapon against the officers or members of the public." (Emphasis mine)

"Could" being the operative word there. Just about anything could be used as a weapon, however unlikely that scenario would be.

Were the members of the public present at the scene concerned about being stapled to death? Nope:

"However, several other civilian witnesses who watched Dziekanski before police arrived have testified they were not afraid of him."

That sure puts a lot of (staple) holes into that theory, doesn't it?


2. The Carmel, Indiana Police Department and Carmel Clay Schools are being sued by the parents of an 14-year-old, 5 feet tall and 90 pound autistic boy whom they allege the cops TASED twice, shocking him unconscious, after the boy's school called 911 when he began having one of his outbursts.

Stupidly, the school called in the cops instead of following a previously devised plan agreed to between school officials and the boys' parents to handle the boy's outbursts, which included simply stepping away and letting him calm himself down, techniques that had proven successful in the past.

"'When a child like (the Bells' son) starts to have emotional problems, the (individual procedure) is supposed to be followed,' Frazier said. 'It has specific steps that are to be taken in order to keep the child from melting totally down.'"

So this wasn't a sudden and frightening new incident, but a phenomenon that had been anticipated and planned for. Until that plan was thrown out of the window by the school's calling the police and relying on responding officer Matthew Kinkade to solve the issue quite neatly.

"The Police Department has an autism response team, but it was not dispatched."

So why even have one, then? I guess the TASER was just a lot more convenient.

Noblesville, Indiana Police Lieutenant Bruce Barnes, a TASER instructor, helpfully tells us in the article that they can make people twitch pretty much any time they want to:

"'We can use it when we tell someone to do something, they refuse, lesser-force options are not available and they are a credible threat to you.'" (Emphasis mine)

So calling in other officers specifically trained in handling these types of cases, or even radioing for backup to help restrain the boy or push him into a room by himself to cool off just didn't seem to be in the cards that day, and Officer Kinkade additionally somehow felt that the pint-sized middle school student was a "credible threat" to him, so giving him the juice was perfectly justified, according to the good lieutenant.



Anyone else see what's wrong with these two pictures?