Excellent update – thank you.

Can tasers be used for pain compliance or should they be deployed only in defense by an officer facing an immediate threat?

I know the right answer.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2009/12/ninth-circuit-upholds-ruling-limiting.php

Why didn’t they just shoot this dangerous individual in the knees so to get him to the ground.

Jailing a ten-yr old for several days….. anyone in this story is mental. Lock THEM up for several years.

You’re right, of course. Tomorrow’s children will indeed be battle tested at this rate. Hopefully they will live a life highly skeptical of abusive government authority. Perhaps they will hand their own children a better society than we have created for them.

On a related story from a few months ago, I wrote:

Why not fit loud school students with shock belts so that administrators can keep order in the classroom?

If corporal punishment is allowed in schools, why not allow the taser instead?

I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.

We used to live two houses down from a house that was crammed with foster kids. The oldest one was a 13 year old kid, understandably maladjusted, but with the sweetest personality. Since he was the oldest kid there, the foster parents would send him to a pizzeria several miles away to get an extra large pizza, EVERY NIGHT. It was ridiculous. Everyone knew they were too lazy to do any cooking themselves and they liked pizza for being cheap. (The pizza at this place was awful.)

There was a gang of bullies that hung out at this pizzeria. Every time he showed up they beat the living crap out of him. He was covered with bruises all the time. I was there once in a while and whenever I saw him he was being picked on, mocked, pushed, punched, whatever. One day he was lying on the ground face up, with an older kid kneeling on top of him punching him in the face over and over again. Everyone else was cheering.

My mother slammed the brakes and pulled over, got out of the car, and screamed at them all, chasing them everywhere, threatening to call the police. They scattered and the little foster kid got up and slowly figured out a way to keep his smashed glasses from falling off his face. (They were a few prescriptions out of date, but that’s another story.) He stumbled ten feet over, picked up a torn, crumpled box, carefully flipped it over, and walked back home- struggling to hold together the saddest excuse for a destroyed pizza we had ever seen in our lives.

I also think it’s because some police–as well as other people– have become lazy in regard to using their brains, good judgment, common sense to think through the best way to handle troublesome situations. Why spend time talking to a child and trying to calm him down when you can just zap him with a taser? After all…this is the electronic age.”