Sticks and Stones May . . . Result in a Tasering: Colorado Police Taser Unruly 10-Year-Old Boy Because Using Pepper Spray Would Have Endangered Officer

We recently saw how a taser was used on a ten-year-old girl who refused to take a bath in Arkansas, here. Now, police in Pueblo, Colorado have tasered a 10-year-old boy who threw a stick at an officer and was holding a pipe. Captain Jeff Teschner defended his deputies by saying that the use of pepper spray would have put the officers in danger with an unruly ten-year-old boy.

Teschner insisted that “They couldn’t get close enough to deploy pepper spray without putting themselves in danger.”

I missed this part of Mr. Rogers’ lessons on handling unruly ten-year-olds. First you speak with them and, if they do not listen, you hit them with 50,000 volts.

What is amazing is that they then jailed the 10-year-old from Monday to Thursday. It is not clear if or when he was released.

The police were supported by the boy’s foster father, Daniel Bilby, who noted that “[a] two-foot piece of pipe can do a lot of damage, I don’t care who is swinging it. If they go and try and tackle him and try and take it away from him, even if he doesn’t hurt them, they’re probably going to hurt him a lot worse than the tazer did. I think what they did was right. I’m completely behind what they did.”

I’m sorry, I am sympathetic to the officers’ concern, but the boy was cornered. With at least two officers, I fail to see why it is necessary to shoot the boy with a taser — an event that not only causes severe pain but a lasting emotional impact on a kid. We have seen officers using extraordinary and commendable restraint in such cases, here. My concern is how this powerful device has become a weapon of choice for some officers who have made taserings commonplace. including in the use against children (here).

For the full story, click here.

Kudos: Digby blog