Taser-Pa-Looza!!

Why are police so obsessed with using tasers inappropriately right now?


An 82-year-old woman was tasered last week by the Chicago police. She was schizophrenic, and wielding a hammer threateningly. But still, she was 5'1'' 160 lbs, and 82. I think that a police officer could have taken her down without the use of something as dangerous as a taser. Yet they did. She had to go to the hospital.

This brings back recent memories of the foreign man tasered to death for the crime of not speaking English in a Vancouver airport in late October. The security forces were confused, and tasered him out of sheer befuddlement, perhaps feeling threatened by his foreign language?

And don't forget the famous case of Andrew "Don't Tase Me, Bro" Meyer whose begging for mercy while being tasered at a John Kerry speech created an internet in-joke, and the strangely underreported story of the UCLA student who was tasered for not showing his ID at a school library.

Since they are so dangerous, tasers are supposed to be used only for situations where near-deadly force is needed.

Ask yourself: Were the police in any of these situations really in need of near-deadly force? A tiny old lady with a hammer? A man who simply did not speak English? A disobedient political zealot whose greatest threat was his immature handling of public speaking? A student who left his ID elsewhere?

IF arresting these people was neccessary, which is more than dubious in some cases, couldn't they have used the old-fashioned "get them to the ground and put handcuffs on them" method? Are modern police officers getting too out of shape to do that? Too overzealous in their use of power?

It seems they may just be impatient. Impatient at the refusal of a person to immediately subordinate themselves to the officer, to immediately and flawlessly give up. Don't have time to talk to them, or just don't feel like them giving you lip? Just zap the f*ckers. That'll teach those squirming things called "citizens" a real lesson.


Police: Please only use tasers if deadly force is really needed. Not when you get lazy or fed up with people resisting you.



And anyway, tasers have been around for something like a decade now. Why the sudden obsession with them?