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.
Some lessons are more costly than others.
18 months ago, prompted in part by a couple of incidents in my neck of the woods, I wrote the following:
The police use of Tasers is just simply out of control in this country. Seriously. My dad was a cop, and a lot of my family's friends growing up were cops. They've got a tough job. I know that the use of Tasers have protected the lives of officers. But this is insane. It is no longer just the odd asshole who happens to make the Greatest Hits of Police Abuse on YouTube. It has now become commonplace for the police to grab their Taser anytime someone doesn't immediately do what they're told. Time to get rid of the things, nationwide.
Well, one of the incidents has now been settled:
City pays off man injured in Taser use
The man injured after falling 15 feet from a highway overpass when police shocked him with two Tasers has reached a cash settlement with the city of Columbia.The city Finance Department agreed last month to pay $300,000 to 46-year-old Phillip McDuffy to settle a claim he made out of court. About $66,450 of that settlement will go to the Family Support Payment Center to cover back child support that McDuffy owes.
***
City Finance Director Lori Fleming said that avoiding a potentially lengthy and expensive jury trial merited the outlay of taxpayer dollars.
“We obviously believe it is in the best interest of the city in the long run,” Fleming said.
Another incident, which happened in a nearby town and resulted in the death of a young man who was tased multiple times in front of his home (and family) after being pulled over for speeding, was settled earlier this year for $2.4 million.
Pain, suffering, loss of a family member - none of these can really be compensated with a cash settlement. Let alone the damage done to our civil liberties. But beyond that, in simple terms of whether Tasers are cost effective additions to police work: do you have any idea how many cops $2.7 million would fund for a year here in rural Missouri? That's a lot more manpower on the street, now lost.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to my blog.)
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Atheism is DEAD!
First of all: Nostradamus demolishes "atheism"
____________________________________________________
wait, wait...
I forgot something...
you little shits even talk about me....
GOATS ON FIRE....
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/goats_on_fire.php#comments
LIBERATION!
Sing from the rooftops:
"Atheism is dead!"
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/goats_on_fire.php#comments
How could I resist?
Sorry, I just had to tweak your links a bit there, Anon.
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Just as well
His links all lead in circles to other sites where he's posted the same thing, and he never seems to actually make any kind of case for his ideas.
Tasers make me edgy
. . . because they do sometimes factor into unnecessary death. The basic idea of them seems sound and almost all of the time they accomplish the desired end. Yet the basic idea still involves concentrating a large amount of energy on a human target in a manner similar to bullets and cudgels.
You'd think that if we could invent Silly String and make a killing we could invent Tangle Foot and avoid some. Even if we could you know what would happen. Somewhere, somehow, someone gets killed and Tangle Foot is involved.
And so it goes. I guess the big question is really, "How do you stop a knucklehead"?
Speaking of great comments...
I bet you'll love this one, Jim!
Some guy with the handle RMH says:
I know you'd love to see more tax money going towards those wonderful security cameras, Jim...you know it's for your own good, right? Don't you feel safer already?
As far as the rest of the comments go, all I can say is 'wow'. You got some real fine Americans there. I can tell from their comments that they are truly enlightened folks, yearning for freedom, justice, and equality for all. I would like to pretend that it's much better in California, but I hate lying to myself.
To tell the truth, I'm not all that much better myself. Even though most of the commenters are probably employed and don't owe $60,000 in child support, I am disgusted by them, just as they are disgusted by the victim. Because of their small-minded bigotry, their obvious tribalism, their unthinking support of authority, their racism and hatefulness, I view them as barely human and completely unworthy of the freedoms they have. The difference is, I don't want to see them tased or thrown off of an overpass, or otherwise abused. Although I would see great justice, and perhaps a learning opportunity, if they all had the chance to be tased and abused by unaccountable authority figures at their worst moments, I still wouldn't really wish it on them.
I guess I'm just another bleeding heart.
Welcome
Welcome to my world, Neil. And people wonder why I stopped writing for that paper . . .
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Problems with Power?
Before you delegate or support the delegation of power to a select few, and before you advocate limits on it, perhaps you should learn a bit about it.
My impression is that you have shied away from it all your life. Probably due to parents who thought having power meant having a good credit rating and going to the same church as three out of their five town councilmen.
Power is not like strength. Any idiot can be strong. Visit any prison. Power is what charms a child out of a pout. It also is what deters, or stops, the highwayman, the assailant and the foolish.
You seem threatened by the notion that regular people can have power. Please review American history as a cathartic to your fear.
Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do?
I'll bet in most of those cases, the cops received little or no punishment. And I'll bet not one single cop in any of those departments would have anything bad to say about the guys who used the tasers.
There was a case here a few years back where a cop actually telephoned a known drug dealer to warn him he was about to be raided. At his trial, about a hundred cops showed up in uniform to demonstrate solidarity. A columnist observing them standing en masse on the courthouse steps described them (if I remember correctly) as "a gang of blue-uniformed thugs."
I can sympathize with the difficult dynamic of relating to the public, given their profession. But it must be said that sometimes even people in uniform, in an otherwise respectable profession, really are brainless, gutless bullies.
Shameful
The police get a potentially extremely useful new tool to protect themselves and, if used properly, subdue a perp and diffuse a situation, and they just can't help but completely abuse it.
Clearly a significant amount of additional training and protocols, including disciplinary policies for misuse, need to go in place before these are distributed and used within a police force.
Eliminate abuse, not tasers
Tasers were intended to be a non-lethal alternative to existing lethal weapons, and that's how (and only how) they should be used: in situations where you'd otherwise use a gun. Obviously a taser can still be lethal (and this is a fact that needs to be impressed upon those who carry them), but it should at least be less lethal. The important thing is to not let that fact lower your threshold for using it, which is what's happening.
Granted.
I understand, Nemo, and when we got a new Chief here recently, he imposed new and much stricter standards for Taser use. So, yeah, maybe there is the possibility for improvement.
But my point all along when I write about these things out is that while there is a rational place for Tasers, they are widely abused and poorly understood and should be withdrawn from the market until much better protocols (or some kind of technological fix) are in place. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Maybe - but it sure beats tasing some 10 year old kid, as happened down in Arkansas recently. And I just heard from a friend about a cop who used his Taser as a 'joke' on a waiter at a Waffle House.
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Death by Taser
The company that makes them has finally admitted they can kill.
http://articles.mcall.com/2009-10-20/news/4461073_1_tasers-electronic-co...
The monetary aspect
One of the problems is that the money these cities pay out generally comes from an insurance company. You would think that getting hit with a payout would result in raised rates for the city but they often part of a multi-city insurance pool.
Since it doesn't come out of the city's general budget it's not like it's money that they could have used to do other things.
A city here locally has to pay out $49 million to a pair of women who were hit (and paralyzed) while jogging on the side of a coastal road. The city insurance rates were not affected.
One of the reasons for these types of lawsuits is to cause the offending party to feel the sting and do something to cause this to not happen again. These insurance pools remove the punitive aspect.
Point taken.
However, that's not always the case. If you read the link to the Columbia Tribune piece about settling with McDuffy, the $300,000 is coming out of the City coffers. And if you take a look at the comments you'll see our local slope-headed-stump-jumpers are frothing mad about it.
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.