You thoughts on tasers:

Some people get hit with tasers and end up in the hospital, some die.

Most don't though.

Should we ban the use, is it that more education needed, more regulations, etc?

They are an invitation for 'Contempt of Cop'

If all they had was their true firearm, they would behave a lot differently. Actual police work might have to be performed. Now, they'll just tase you if their bored.

They give a cop a right to punish you if they happen to not like you for any reason. The fuckers shouldn't be the judge, jury and executioner.

handguns etc etc, the taser is just another tool we use and its a damn good tool...

I would rather be batoned or punched. Put in a restraint hold. Would those cops have shot that 14yo girl instead, no. Would they have shot that amuptee in a wheelchair? no. What about the mother/daughter in texas?should have put bullets in their head i guess. It relieves YOU from doing your job!!!!!

leave you messed up. At least cops have to be tased before they can use them. At least here in MS. The baton is a whole different deal.

a SAFER alternative to a gun. Not as a LESS SAFE alternative to what they are being used for - subduing criminals that would not have had a gun used on them in the first place.

i am not going to try to transision to my taser when faced with a threat of death or serious injury.

unless you're physically unable

I shoved a cop into a plate glass window for macing a teenage girl. Yea they areested me. My day in court? I said to the judge; "if this police officer cannot subdue a 19yo girl without the use of pepper spray, then he should not be a police officer". The judge agreed, dropped the charges and the cop was sued into oblivion by the girls parents.

unless you can show documents to back this one up i call bullshit....

and it actually started a riot. There were at least 10 troopers called, all the sherrifs in the area. It lasted a few hours, at least 50 arrested. 1997 or 1998 it was winter.

by a .40 cal Glock.

If we ban tasers then cops will just go back to shooting people with firearms.

before using guns, evidently DO NOT THINK when using tazers, yet they can and do kill.

They should be either banned or the circumstances of their use regulated as are the circumstances when cops can use their guns.

I own and legally carry a gun - Tazers make me nervous.

mark

The same report as firing a traditional gun. This would make an officer think twice before using a potentially lethal weapon. Too many times you see the officer in a taser event use it out of laziness or power abuse.

i have to write a use of force report, and you do realise that in a fight theres a chance that i could kill you with one punch same as the chance i could die from one punch and thats why we use tasers as its inherently safer for all concerned than rolling around the ground.

They just need to think a bit about using them, and ponder their use afterward. It should not be done so casually.

The ones who would probably be trigger happy anyway, are even more so now that they can pull the trigger and not kill you. (Usually anyway)

Everyone would agree that shooting someone with bullets should be the absolutely last resort, but shooting someone with 50,000 volts should be the absolutely next to last resort. It should NOT be the first response if someone argues with a cop, or merely cop paranoia because they ask someone to step out of a vehicle and they happen to be much bigger than the cop is.

If a person is refusing to comply and or hostile, the police need another option besides 1)Guns or 2)harsh language.
The taser and the club are tools to deal with people who are a serious problem, but not a deadly threat.

They would have used nothing at all, because the incident did not really require a harsh response?

I know cops who will never be physically right again because they didn't go to weapons fast enough. I am very comfortable with cops tasering people more often than is necessary. Of course it should be minimized. And I am positive that there are cops who just like lighting people up. Those cops should be removed or whatever.
I would much prefer people on occasion getting lit up more often than is necessary, compared to a cop being beaten down and executed with his own gun. Or stabbed to death out on a country road. Or kicked until his shoulder dislocates and tears to the point of permanent damage.
I am sorry it is not a perfect world.
When the cops want to talk to me I am the most compliant guy in the world even if I am sure they are dead wrong. They will probably not be tasering me. They can answer for any complaints I have later in court.

i got to say honestly that im sure that there is a percentage of people i have been in physical fights with that without my tools and backup they would have overwhelmed me and then possibly killed me, so i got a vested interest in being able to get home after my shift.

People who refuse to comply face the prospect of being put to death in situations where lethal force is not warranted.

I'd rather be tasered than beaten with a baton.

When they do, they city is often sued and has to pay out. Nor are they supposed to punch. I don't know the protocol on tackling. Every cop on TV tackles but I've yet to see it in real life. I've seen a group of cops overwhelm a suspect but I've never seen a cop take on an unruly suspect one on one.

apart from winning that is, i think you need to go back online and you will see a lot of video from cruisers of cops fighting one on one, some of them end tragically which is why if you start to fight me i got to realise that im in a fight for my life and i have to win. But im interested about where you heard cops are not allowed to punch.

Somebody is refusing orders from a police officer and the officer is trying to get things under control. It is not an issue of the officer trying to put somebody to death.
If he accidently runs over a badguy while trying to catch him nobody calls it an execution. And nobody tries to ban police cars.

If tasers were removed, impact weapons related deaths would take their place.


If the badguys would just do as the officers ask they probably wouldn't get tasered or clobbered.

and it seemed, for the most part, to work out okay. Tasers were marketed as a non-lethal alternative to strong arm force. Unfortunately, it turns out that tasers are lethal. Unfortunately, coroners offices are being sued by the taser manufactureres if they (the coroners) determine that a death is caused by taser so it is difficult to assess how many deaths have occurred.


It doesn't matter how few or how many have died. Cops should only have the option to use lethal force in very limited circumstances. Oh, and by the way, in this country, bad guys are not definitively determined to be bad guys until convicted in a court of law.

or who pulls a knife on me or starts to swing a baseball bat at me, or do you think i have to wait for a court to decide before i can treat them as a bad guy. lol

Pepper spray has killed people. Nightsticks have killed people.Falling down has killed people. Everything.

If the cops can't use anything that ever kills anybody then they can't use anything at all. They all get zapped with the taser during training and they don't die.
I've tangled with electric fence that contains 2000lb animals. It really sucks, but it doesn't kill me, or the cows, or the other people who every once in a while get zapped by it.Except for that one toddler the other year who crawled into the electric fence and was killed. It was a fluke, not the norm.
Perps dying from tasers and pepper spray and blackjacks are flukes, not the norm.

Still better than the cops begging the perp to stop yelling and hitting his girlfriend.

how it works around here. My brother (who has never used his taser, once a cop now a state trooper) has been tased three times. He knows it hurts. I have seen the video of him being tased. It was when he was in the trooper academy. He has used his gun before and the man did die. It was very warranted and the tase wouldn't have been an option in this case (a hostage situation where the guy already killed someone and had a gun to another's head), but he also had to use his baton once to save himself. The guy suffered head trauma. The taser would have been a better option in this case. He didn't have that option at the time. I have seen where it has been abused grossly. There has to be a way for the tasers to do what they are intended to do without the abuse of it. Not sure what that is though.

It still does not negate the fact that tasers are lethal force.

That is like saying their baton is a lethal force. It can be lethal, but most of the times, it isn't. More than likely, tasers will not be lethal. Unlike guns, which are more likely to be lethal.

What do you suggest? Really, though. Cops are often in situations that can be deadly. They need something besides their own strength. What do you suggest to be a better option?

I do think that there should be more regulations on tase guns. But I don't think they should do away with them. While some cops have abused them grossly, they have possibly saved cops' lives many times, while leaving the gun still in the holster.

They should only be used when lethal force is warranted.

when lethal force is warranted i am going to try to kill you im not trying to disable you, thats the whole point of deploying lethal force..

Tasers were marketed as a non-lethal alternative in situations where lethal force is NOT warranted.

It turns out, though, that tasers ARE lethal. Ergo, they should be banned.

pepper spray etc etc, when people get into violent confrontations theres always a chance that someone is going to die, how many people do you think have accidently killed someone during a barfight etc etc.

Police abuse them and they will never stop until they are take away.

They love these things, it's like nightstick 2000. They get to beat someone up, something I've found most cops love to do, and they don't even have to get their uniform dirty.

I'm surprised I didn't piss myself.

Tasers should be a ONE TIME device.

i could not do anything, the one time thing sounds good but there are times like with a baton when someone still dosent give the fight up and they do need to be hit again. We got to remember that in a fight generally there are no rules and a lot of times its a fight for life...

I'm 6' 220lbs, and 48 years old. I thought I could at least sink to my knees and handle myself with dignity. Dignity be damned, I fell like a tree. If not for the wrestling pad I was on, I'd have cracked my head wide open. and it wasn't just "over", I felt like shit for a couple of hours. The worst for me was the next day though. My muscles tensed so tightly that I was sore the next day like your calf gets after a good midnight cramp.

One time. Then an escalation of force is needed. Something non-lethal.

gave me complete confidence to deploy it and know by doing so the fight would be over. Ive only had to use it more than once a couple of times usually with someone way over the horizon on dope and batshit crazy, but i think it is an awesome tool to have in my arsenal.

right?


:sarcasm:

time, like everything, they are abused. If I were a cop, I'd like to have that option. It is better than lethal force, if used when it is warranted. That is also iffy. I have never been in a cop's shoes, so I can't say when they should feel threatened. But I do know that some of the times tasers are used, it seems unjustified.

More education, less use...and investigate the firm that makes these and lies about them.

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not as likely to go through the BG and hit me.

out the window simply because some view it as less dangerous than using guns but ohhh so much more effective when not wishing to use your brain....which is where too many police now find themselves...so much easier than having to use the brain and they know at least with the laser they won't get in trouble that using a gun could ensure happens to them...

Bottom line is..police are as human as you and I..they are supposed to be able to deal with situations that we so called common people have not a clue to act in....sure..sure..hows that working for us in believing that is soo true inside our countries many many policing agencies...

It's called the Braidwood Inquiry, concerning this incident:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dzieka%C5%84ski_Taser_incident

Already, some Québec police forces have discontinued use of the Taser.

There's also a major scandal regarding the voltage that the Taser puts out. Apparently, it's sometimes very much larger than advertised. A major lab study sponsored by investigative journalists uncovered this fact.

Also, Canadians have been astounded at the claims of Taser International's representatives that the weapon is completely benign.

America needs to have this level of skepticism.

Portable instruments of torture

Because they are so many scenarios. How is a cop suppose to know about a heart condition that the suspect might not know about themselves?

But I have seen a lot of events where they were improperly used. More training about using them would be my vote. Because I still think they are better then a bullet or baton.