Fighting Against the Current: Tasing as Deadly Force
August 3, 2008 5 Comments
On Wednesday, July 30th, the AfroSpear came together and launched a Day of Blogging for Justice on the subject of tasering. See a partial list of the participating blogs here.
The Taser is touted as a non-lethal device that subdues an attacker or an uncooperative person by sending an electric current into the body and seizing the muscles. However, as many of my blogging colleagues point out, law enforcement’s improper use of the taser has led to the deaths of many African-Americans in a very short period of time. Law enforcement officers have tased pregnant women, elder men, disabled people. They have pinned young people down and tased them repeatedly. These officers are using tasers as an instrument of sadism rather than a method of non-lethal force to bring someone under control.
On the Tasered While Black website, AfroSpear blogger African American Political Pundit identifies 13 cases where African-Americans receiving unjustifiably brutal treatment at the hands of law enforcement armed with tasers. In my opinion, that’s 13 cases too many. Why is it that the media felt it necessary to justify tasing a young black male nine times over the span of 30 minutes – tasing him to death — by stating he was a “convicted drug dealer” in the story (Case #4)? Why was another black man tased in his sleep because he forgot to cut off the silent security alarm in his own home (Case #9)?
Nezua also has covered use of the taser’s usage in Eugene as part of his MTV Street Team work. See Tasing Eugene and Brutal Questions (along with the corresponding YouTube video of what happened during the tasing incident).
I’ll say it plainly — I don’t trust police officers, especially police officers with pent-up frustrations. I’ve seen many tapes where police officers “subdue” a difficult suspect by having huge groups of uniformed men whale and beat on one person long after the point of keeping them in control. That’s not responsible law enforcement. That’s a bunch of power-obsessed and frustrated people getting some revenge in for having to do their jobs.
The United Nations has already identified taser usage as a form of torture, citing them as devices that cause “extreme pain” and that “can lead to death.” The Taser corporation argues that it has been cleared in the cases where its device has led to a person’s death. However, we have to think of how frequently any police officer faces criminal charges or successful lawsuits without clear evidence that the particular officer was unhinged or something extremely and identifiably off-base happened during police conduct. In our colorblind gender-blind ability-blind sexuality-blind age-blind society, any of those reasons can be written off easily as oversensitivity.
There are some things we can ask for, according to some of my AfroSpear colleagues. We can ask law enforcement to place tasers higher on their use of force continuum so they aren’t abused at protests or common traffic stops. We can ask Taser International to manufacture Tasers to law enforcement that cannot fire more than a set number of times within a short time interval, or for an instrument with a lower amount of voltage (than 50,000 volts). We could increase surveillance of police officers so that they won’t be inclined to use and abuse their power when confronting citizens and non-citizens.
But what would the solution to this problem look like to you?
About problem chylde
I think we should stop hyping the trade name and corporate name “taser” and calling this what it is: shock, electrocution and execution.
The verb “tase” doesn’t even appear in the dictionary, so we’re using white corporate slang when we use “tase” as a verb, as a euphemistic alternative for “shock” and “electrocuted.”
Meanwhile, by the dictionary definition of electrocute, which comes etymologically from the combination of the words “electric” and “execute”, anyone who dies as a result of having been “electrocuted” has been “exocuted.”
This is why I insist that there is an epidemic of pretrial, extrajudicial electrocution and execution occurring. These electrocutions occur before any judge or jury has authorized them, and in a way that no judge or jury would ever authorize before the fact, if the facts were known. And so, police execute members of the public and then offer post-facto justifications when, in any case, the dead cannot be brought back to life.
The problem is that police are making an end run around the Constitutional requirement of trial by jury and are electrocuting and executing members of the public on the streets and in the police department facilities, so that these people will NEVER have an opportuniity to bring their cases before a jury of their peers.
I actually disagree because of the way Google works. If we keep using the terms “taser,” “tasing,” “tased,” etc., it will come up earlier in the results along with Taser International. The variations are more common usage than “extra-judicial electrocution” — though there’s nothing stopping the use of both terms when referring to the police electrocuting someone to death with a taser.
I just don’t see the need to replace one term with another while spotlighting awareness, personally.
My blog (I think you’ll like it) is at the URL Excited-Delirium.com (don’t forget the dash!!) in order to turn Taser’s creative excuse against them. If you Google the phrase, my blog is on page 2. Please click the search results link to help drive it back onto page 1 of Google.
If you want to see something funny, then do a WhoIs query on ExcitedDelirium.com (no dash!!) and you’ll see that the registered owner is a Mr. Brave. Mr. Brave is Taser’s lawyer. Any questions about ‘who is’ behind ‘excited delirium’ ?
My blog has more than 500 posts that shred the pro-taser arguments. If you wish to arm yourself for a debate, then you’ll find my blog very useful.
Peace.
First and foremost when people dies as a result of a properly applied police technique it is deadly force that is being used. Tasers use must be designated as deadly force so that they can no longer get away with shrugging off the murder of citizens with the excuse that what killed them was not deadly force. Pretending that tasers are not deadly force is an outrage against common sense.
Secondly, and as always, officers are taught the proper techniques, but the ongoing training necessary for the proper use of force is rarely done. Were it not for the uniforms you would not be able to tell the difference between officers and a random gang of bullies beating their victim. Their job is to subdue a perp with minimum necessary use of force, not to beat them into submission. How in the hell can we still be seeing Rodney King style beatings on the streets. They are selecting police candidates on the basis of a very strange set of criteria if they expect anyone to continue to believe the myth of “to serve and protect”. Criminy!
Thank you, Excited-Delirium! Will definitely check your spot out.
thebewilderness, I agree with you. We need more stringent regulations for hiring police officers and we need to end the classification of Tasers as non-lethal weapons. It’s sad when people are as afraid of the alleged peacekeepers as they are of the disruptors of the peace.