Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
"The big shock came when I got fired."
More fun with Tasers! (Actually, a different but related device.):
Corrections sergeant shocks kids with stun gun during prison visit
It was "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day" at the Franklin Correctional Institution, and Sgt. Walter Schmidt wanted to give the kids an idea of what their parents do.
So he took out a handheld stun device and zapped them with 50,000 volts of electricity.
* * *
"It wasn't intended to be malicious, but educational," Schmidt said. "The big shock came when I got fired."
Um, yeah, given that you thought it was a good idea to zap kids, I can see how you might not have seen such a disciplinary action coming. Thankfully, your boss saw the matter in a different light, pointing out that not only did your actions violate policy but opened the department up to lawsuits.
"It wasn't intended to be malicious, but educational." Sheesh. You could say the same thing about beating the kids with a nightstick, or shooting them with a gun, since those are also things that happen in a prison. The real truth is that you, like many people in such positions, don't consider the use of Tasers and such stun devices to be that big a deal, and so are willing to use them quickly.
Yeah, I'd say that *is* educational. But maybe not in the way you intended.
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi.)
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And this guy just thought it was funny
Former-Sgt. Schmidt must be related to this guy on some sick level.
What an idiot!
Doesn't he know that to get away with shocking or burning kids, he has to burn them in the shape of a cross! Then he can claim religious intolerance if anyone doesn't like it.
Sheesh.
Why didn't he just anally rape them?
That happens a lot in prison too, and would probably have served as a better lesson. Besides, after he got in trouble he could have used the excuse that "they were asking for it" with their short skirts and tank tops and pants hanging below their hips with their underwear showing and stuff.
If Only ...
If he'd had that same idea, but turned it around so that he handed the stun gun to one or more of the kids, and they'd shocked HIM repeatedly, I could see the educational benefit of it.
Being such a wonderful human being, I have a sharply limited experience of jails, but I once got to tour a county jail as part of a Grand Jury outing. I was amazed at what blatant a-holes some of the guards were, right out in front of us.
I always think of things like this, not in the sense of any one incident, but in the sense of a statistical universe of possibility you set up in any particular system. Given certain conditions, and a large enough sample, some things WILL happen. Give tasers to cops, and both 8-year-olds and 80-year-olds WILL get zapped.
Every new device or technique comes with education in its use, and I always hope it's enough, but you almost never hear of any penalties for misuse. Not to cops.
And obviously, here's an example of it. Nobody ever told this guy: "If you zap kids with this for fun, you'll be suspended for a month without pay AT LEAST, and if you're enough of an idiot, you'll go to prison for a few years for assault."
As it is, maybe he'll lose his job, but I doubt if anything more serious will happen. And that bugs me, too, because I can never keep from asking "How serious would this be if a non-cop did it?" God help you for zapping the neighbor's kid with a taser -- when the prosecutor was done with you, and the media, and your neighbors, you'd feel like a herd of elephants had break-danced over you.
Also: If it's true, as the guy says, that the parents said "Sure" when he asked them if it was okay to shock their kids ... well, some of them sound like idiots too. I can only estimate a proper response from remembering how I felt the few times someone threatened one of my dogs, but it seems to me a slightly improved answer might have been "If you even touch my son with that thing, nothing on this earth will save you from what I'll do."