Following up on the 11th Circuit decision that a mere three taser jolts of a hand-cuffed, sobbing, non-violent man sitting on the ground on the side of the road, was not an unconstitutional excessive use of force, comes this video of the incident.
As the title to this post suggests, my favorite line in the video is when the officer says, “I’m a’fixin’ to tase you.” For many, including apparently Chief Judge Edmonton, this was fair warning. It’s not so much about the tasing, as it is about being warned that the tasing is a’comin’. He even counted to three for the guy. What more could you want?
As I watched this video, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it all sounded so familiar. Then it dawned on me. It was like a dogowner who’s wayward dachshund ate his newspaper, smacking the dog in the face with it over and over to teach the dumb critter a lesson to not mess with his master’s paper.
Might the officer, who but for the tasing never lost his cool, have considered that a man sobbing on the side of the road has bigger problems than a speeding ticket?
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I don’t think that the officer lost his cool even during the tasing. I think he was wrong, wrong, wrong to do it, mind you, but . . .
Both in retrospect and without the advantage of hindsight: he should have either helped the guy chill out or just waited for enough help to carry him over to the car, and if he felt it was the right move to threaten a tasing, he should have been bluffing, and admitted it (at least to himself) once the guy didn’t get up.
And once the first electroclubbing didn’t work, trying it again was the wrong thing to do, clearly. (One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, after all.)
“Might the officer, who but for the tasing never lost his cool, have considered that a man sobbing on the side of the road has bigger problems than a speeding ticket?”
Probably not; he probably can’t afford to spend a lot of effort thinking about stuff like that. That road patrol stuff — particularly out in the boonies, with help not always nearby — is going to be pretty boring most of the time, punctuated with occasional bits of horror.
Pinky swear: I’m not going to go all quasi-Orwell and chant, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
But I don’t have to rush to the scene of an accident and decide whether or not to pull most of a kid out of a car, either.
The worst thing out of all of this isn’t that a guy who was already sliding down the razor blade of life got some zaps to speed him further down; the worst thing out of this is that the court stamped it with its seal of approval, and this — and worse — is going to happen more often, not less, because of it.
I have more fun thinking about guys getting rolled for their Rolexes, myself.
“It was like a dogowner who’s wayward dachshund ate his newspaper, smacking the dog in the face with it over and over to teach the dumb critter a lesson to not mess with his master’s paper.”
If the cop had tased a dog for not obeying he might have caught more hell.
“Might the officer, who but for the tasing never lost his cool, have considered that a man sobbing on the side of the road has bigger problems than a speeding ticket?”
Empathy for fellow human beings unfortunately is not often high on the list of police skills being taught or promoted. Evidently that is so for some judges too.
There was absolutely no need to employ the Taser.
So true about the dog. Interesting how that happens.
If I understand the rules, cops are allowed to shoot dogs with impunity, but not tase them. With people, it’s generally the other way around.
In Alaska, though, to listen to some people (not pointing fingers at present company), they’re allowed to zap their stepkids and keep the job.
Actually, Radley Balko at Reason noticed this dog empathy superiority effect with regard to no-knock warrant raids. When a dog gets shot as in the Calvo situation, the media gives it more coverage (although that case did involve a mayor) than when it is just the innocent occupant of the wrong house.
Radley didn’t send you over here to pimp for him, did he? I keep telling him that he’s getting me agitated.