More taser abuse.
I'm sure there will be those saying the guys should have just obeyed and so on. True enough. You should obey the police when being questioned. But does disobeying deserve a death sentence?
When will the question be asked, does a suspect's behavior warrant deadly force? Using the taser needs to be seen in that context, as this latest event shows. The following occurred in Oxford, here in the Dayton/Cincinnati area:
A man died Thursday, five days after police subdued him with stunning device outside a bar near Miami University, a hospital spokesman said.
Kevin Piskura, 24, of Chicago, died shortly after 5 p.m. at University Hospital in Cincinnati hospital, said spokesman Don Crouse.
Police said Oxford officer Geoff Robinson used the device early Saturday morning as he tried to break up a fight.
The Butler County offices of the sheriff and prosecutor are investigating the officer's actions.
"We still request that people refrain from rash judgment and wait until the independent investigation of this event is complete, lest tragedy lead to more tragedy," the Piskura family said in a statement released by the hospital.
Piskura, a 2006 Miami graduate, argued with police after a friend was escorted from a bar, police said. The officer drew his Taser stun gun and told Piskura to stop, and when he did not, police said, the officer used the device and hit Piskura in the chest.
Video from a camera attached to the stunning device shows Piskura getting shocked for about 10 seconds as he rolls around on a sidewalk.
Robinson, 27, has been placed on paid leave pending the outcome of the investigation, Oxford police spokesman Jim Squance said.
Robinson is a Miami University graduate and has been an Oxford police officer for two years. He had taken a refresher course on using a stun gun a week before the incident, police said.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Your Daily Taser
Friday, November 23, 2007
Taser abuse getting out of hand
It's becoming more and more apparent that the use of tasers by law enforcement personnel is getting out of hand.
I should note that our friend Pierre Tristam has been writing about this for a while now. His first of many pieces on the subject involved a 16 year old boy who was "tased" (I guess that's a new verb that's entered our lexicon now) in his classroom when he refused to get up and leave.
The latest and equally outrageous example is highlighted by Digby, with a long and detailed comment thread. It needs to be read to be believed. Of course this follows another widely publicized taser incident in Canada.
Ironically what makes tasers attractive to law enforcement is their non-lethality, and it is precisely the non-lethality that makes them dangerous. It makes them a little too quickly deployed, perhaps. A police officer wrote in Digby's thread, responding to the video of a motorist who was tased for an apparent failure to comply:
I've had similar incidents in my career where the subject refused to cooperate and turned to leave before we were done. In each case, I explained quickly and briefly the options and consequences of their leaving without completing the detention - warrant for arrest, incarceration, huge fines, etc. At worst, I'd have to have a warrant issued for them to be stopped farther down the road, including escalation of force. But in no case was I warranted to use deadly force in preventing them from leaving.
In my opinion, law enforcement has been issued tazers and told by the tazer companies and department leaders they aren't "deadly force", and now their use has become a replacement for good police training.
I think we'll see tazers eventually taken out of general use, but I doubt we'll ever see wide-spread adequate police training.
What we're seeing with the increased use of tasers by police is a shifting attitude towards control and compliance. The strict obedience by the subject to the slightest command by the officer is the primary objective; anything less than full and complete compliance justifies, apparently, the use of force. You see this in the commentary that surrounds videos like that of the tasing of Andrew Mayer at the University of Florida (the famous, "don't tase me, bro")--well, he deserved it, he should have simply complied. The commentary suggests that ANY failure to comply with an officer's requests is worthy of the use of force.
This attitude is not only squarely at odds with our constitutional rights, but it also betrays a laziness. Instead of using patience, instead of talking and working with the subject, instead of viewing the subject as a rational being, the officer simply applies force. It's easier than thinking. We seem to have moved as a society from a value of individual rights and individual worth to a value of conformity and control. Technology in the form of tasers has given the state the ability to enforce an almost absolute level of compliance--total, abject, and unweilding compliance, in the face of even the most basic requests. This isn't just a police matter any longer. It's a question of what kind of society we want to have.
Sorry, Pierre. I was a little slow to come around. But you're absolutely right. Tasers are helping to pave the way to an increasingly authoritarian society.
