From both Balko and Turley, Tucumcari, New Mexico Police Chief Roger Hatcher did what he had to do. He just had to. It brought him no pleasure. It was for the her own good.
Hatcher shot a taser dart into the head of a 14 year old girl who just wouldn’t stay still.
Hatcher said be believed he had no other option.The problem begins not with Hatcher, but with the mother of this 14 year old, Stacy Akin, who brought her daughter to the police because they were having an argument over a cellphone. When they arrived at the police station, the daughter walked away, prompting Hatcher to go and find her. When he did, he chased the young woman and ran from him. According to Hatcher, this left him with no choice but to shoot.
“There’s a lot of issues,” Hatcher said. “She committed a delinquent act. She was running from police across traffic without looking.”
Hatcher said he chased her, ordered her to stop and “then did what I had to do.”
The stories are unclear as to what this 14 year old girl did that was so terrible, so out of control, that it compelled her mother to bring her to the police. The mother somehow had enough control to get her in the car and take her to the station. One might anticipate that when the heat of the argument subsided, the mother still planned to serve her dinner (buy it at McDonalds?) that evening. So what deed of delinquency demanded detention? No one’s saying.
Mothers (and fathers), we understand that children can be difficult. We appreciate that some are more difficult than others, and that it be frustrating, tiring and wearing. No one said parenting would be easy. But shifting the burden to the cops to straighten out your kid probably isn’t the best way to deal with your frustration. Especially if you love your child, or even kinda like her. The police really aren’t well suited for substitute parenting. It’s not that they don’t love children, but that they don’t love yours.
Now, a thought for Chief Roger Hatcher. If you want to be a celebrity, try America’s got talent. Shooting 14 year old girls in the head with a taser guarantees you at least two things. Lots of people will quickly learn your name and you will be branded by this singular act of idiocy for life. Consider plan B. Let the kid run and, eventually, she will stop. Problem solved. A kid running really isn’t nearly as horrific a crime as you believe.
As for the much-maligned Taser, there remains a police policy problem that seems highly under-recognized. The constant theme of policy approving of the use of a Taser when there’s no justification for the use of force at all misses a big-picture problem; just because you have a Taser doesn’t mean you have to use it. It has become abundantly clear that the use of force is being left to the discretion of police on a totally ad hoc basis, and that discretion, particularly with the use of Tasers, is terribly lacking.
It’s bad enough that a mother was so incapable of handling her child that she felt the police would provide a better option than a stern talk. At least Stacy Akin didn’t spank her daughter first, thereby subjecting both mother and daughter to prosecution and potential tasing.
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Perhaps a shade too subtle a point for Chief Hatcher to recognize is that running from police just because they want to talk with you is not a crime, not a delinquent act. She had every right to do that.
Crossing a street other than at a crosswalk or with a traffic light might, I suppose be some ticketing offense, but I’m not aware of any jurisdiction in which it’s a basis for even chasing someone.
It’s not just that it was too much force for the occasion – any force is to much to use against someone exercising the constitutional right to run away from a cop who has no right to detain her.
I suspect that Hatcher, acting at the behest of Mom, had authority to chase her. Tase her is another story. But your final point, that any force is too much to use, really is the message. There is a recurring theme in police use of force that demonstrates a failure to realize that the world at large does not subject itself to being the target of police force simply because they don’t jump when a cop says so. Cops think otherwise, explaining why they can chase, tackle, beat, tase or shoot when we do not comply with their whims.
We saw the movie Transformers last night (I don’t recommend it, but hubby is a rocket scientist and adores robots), and there were lots of instances of gratuitous taser use, including some comedy. I started getting the sinking feeling that perhaps Taser International had paid for ‘product placement’ in this film. But that’s just my opinion.
What is to be done?
Even though we’re unlikely to persuade cops that tasers aren’t (a) non-lethal, (b) harmless (c) painless or (d) a convenient way to make it back in time for donuts, we may well convince them that it they are used in lieu of either intelligence or discretion, their name will be smeared across the internet in perpetuity. It’s not much, but it’s the best I can think of for the moment.
As for Transformers, I saw it and it gave me a headached. Too much flashing metal for me to follow.
The dashcam video from Chief Hatcher’s cruiser has been released. The chief’s statement that she was running away across traffic, and she just had to be tasered for her own safety doesn’t add up. There’s no traffic.
As an aside, Scott, I tried 6 different blog titles for my blog on this subject, and none of them were as good as yours. I thought Slackoisie like myself were supposed to be better at the internet.
[Ed. Note: Here’s Jeff’s post on the case, and it’s a good one. Give it a read and hope your child doesn’t run into (or away from) the Big Guy when in need of a little attitude adjustment.]
Wow, that video really clears it all up. Not a car in sight, and the 14 year old was just walking along, minding her own business, until the Sheriff starts chasing her into the road. Worse still, he ran maybe 20 paces before tasing her. No time wasted there.
Thanks about the title, Jeff, though my original thought was Spare the Taser, Spoil the Child, except I found that Turley already used that title so I had to come up with something else. I may not be particularly computer savvy, but I do like to have fun with titles.