Today's TASER Travesty

Tucumcari, New Mexico Police Chief Roger Hatcher is on paid administrative leave while an independent investigative firm attempts to discern just why Hatcher felt it necessary to TASER a 14-year-old girl named Kailee Martinez in the head, causing significant injury:

"One of the probes lodged in Martinez’ head and was later surgically removed. The surgery left her with multiple staples and stitches"

Chief Hatcher's explanation for his actions seems a bit weak, at least to a layman:

"Hatcher said he found the 14-year-old girl, after she had a fight with her mother, walking near a city park. When she ran from him, he said he shot her with his Taser because he didn’t know where she was going and she had run into the street without looking."

Well, then that settles that. Obviously it's quite proper and appropriate to use a TASER to teach a young girl a lesson about properly crossing the street at a designated crosswalk. She won't be making that mistake again anytime soon, we'll wager.

The girl's attorney, Donald Schutte, hammers home the point that we've been attempting to make here for quite some time - that the TASER is in fact a "less than lethal" defensive weapon, not a convenient compliance tool for wrangling sullen teenagers:

'"Obviously she’s going to have some pretty significant medical expenses and we’ll be looking for the city to be paying for those,' Schutte said. 'We don’t have anything personal against either the chief or the police department. We just want to know whether or not this was an appropriate use of what’s essentially a weapon on a child.'"

Sounds like a very reasonable position for the girl's legal counsel to take.

We look forward to learning the private independent investigative company's findings in this incident. We also genuinely praise the city of Tucumcari for using such a resource, and wish that every municipality was as conscientious about ensuring such impartiality when serious allegations against their police departments are reported.