Quote:
Originally Posted by Redo 
What exactly justifies tasering? "A national law enforcement organization recommended Wednesday that police use Taser stun guns only on people who actively resist officers and for only five seconds at a time."
"The recommendations suggest that only one officer use a Taser on a suspect at any one time and that only a five-second charge be used before police re-evaluate the situation." - news source
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There's no doubt "non-lethal" technologies like tasering has saved lives compared to lethal forms, but is there any doubt non-lethal forms escalate in use because they're non-lethal? Look at the recent history of torture (and on that note the danger of using shifting "law" as a measure of right/wrong). And I'm not sure citing a 2005 article of a recommendation from the Police Executive Research Forum and quoting the manufacturer "no deaths have been directly caused by the device alone" (while
news of another dying since this thread was started has come to light) and that "long-term studies into the effectiveness of Tasers are needed" proves much. If I was a cop I'd not want broken fingers or worse happening all the time while I was apprehending people, but every action has a risk and none if this needed to happen. The campus cops never had to escalate the situation. Anyone think of turning off the mic if he was such a bother?

Or am I too old school? [Note: Mic was cut, my bad, and then first cop immediately moved on him for what?]. Or did the Presidents "Virginia Tech" reference mean the "talker" had super secret larger plans of death and destruction?
Is there any other outcome of this than the campus/internal affairs will investigate, and of course by their structured rules of engagement from the police perspective, find the cops innocent of wrongdoing and justified. Then the campus will pay through the nose for this "innocent and justified" action against someone who's not a cop and whose rights were violated independent of "proper police action"? I say make 'em pay big and have the schools president (who has since talked in such absolutes) status suffer appropriately.
Police are suppose to escalate violence one step to end it. A lot of theory and laws are based on this. Say all you want, effectively talking in a [dead] mic to tasering isn't one step. I assume many of you are for
tasering UCLA students for being in a library too?
When did Americans get so weak that they're scared of everything and cheerlead all actions which could potentially stop all imagined worse case scenarios? It's like we're living in
24 and functioning on the lowest common denominator. Did the world really change that much in the last half a decade? Man, we live in such strange, sad times. Everyone pick up a copy of Barry Glassner's
The Culture of Fear and then lets talk.