Letters to the Editor
blunderdog
Published Letters: 494 Editor's Choice: 10
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Fear "Non-Lethal" Force
[Read the article: Taser nation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't think this is a free speech issue.
The guy was speaking, sure, but four cops were pulling him out of the room and he was resisting. The only real "problem" here is that the cops abused their powers when they tasered him.
I think this is far more indicative of the increased use of "non-lethal" (or, more appropriately called "less-lethal") force by the police.
The simpleminded view of protecting and serving the public safety holds that, ethically, it is only appropriate and justified to use force at the MINIMUM level to achieve the security objectives. If someone has a knife and is standing alone, surrounded by police at a radius of 20 feet, he shouldn't be shot--he's not a "threat." If someone is unarmed and being held down by the police, he shouldn't be tasered--he's not a threat.
If someone has a firearm in a roomful of people, BY ALL MEANS lay down lead on the guy when it appears he may hurt someone.
So what's this got to do with "non-lethal" weapons?
Basically, the police these days are very well armed with a wide array of weapons of varying degrees of lethality. They know that they aren't statistically likely to kill someone with a taser, or pepper spray, or bean-bag cannons, or a goo-gun.
Because of that, the moral reasoning (or perhaps the fear of consequences for the psychopaths) which still needs to be rigorously applied when using firearms and batons gets confused.
"Well, if I only had my gun on me, I'd have to talk this guy down or we'd all have to overpower him to get him out of here, but hey, I've got this nifty gadget that won't _really_ hurt him, so I'll try that."
That's the "problem."
As a bit of an odd anecdote--I worked for a magazine not long ago, and it received tons of unsolicited DVDs submitted for review. Most of them were ignored by the editors (for good reason--does anyone want to review a DVD entitled, "Street Fights: New Orleans"?), so I took a lot of them home to check them out.
I was positively shocked by a lot the police activity I saw on these videos.
My absolute favorite moment, in terms of being such a perfect crystallization of what I perceive to be a serious problem, was some aftermath of a bar-brawl.
About ten cops had shown up in front of the bar and dragged away the brawlers. There was a crowd of spectators yelling at the police about the arrests. Just yelling--there was no apparent threat of harm against the police. One woman, perhaps a friend of one of the arrested parties had walked after the last two police to leave, getting about 20 feet away from the crowd of patrons, and she was screaming at the cops about something.
A cop not involved in the subdual of the brawlers was walking past this woman, and when she screamed again, he paused, pulled out his pepper spray, and sprayed her in the face with a 1-second blast at a range of about 3 feet. Then he kept walking.
Amazing.
It was a perfect demonstration of the arbitrary and completely unjustifiable use of force which may be far more prevalent than we'll ever know.
If you're not afraid of the cops, you probably should be. _Some_ of their conceptions of justifiable violence seems at odds with both their purported goals and basic human common sense.
I agree completely with a few of the right-wing trolls here that this is definitely not a result of Dubya Bush. It was the Clinton administration that killed 80 people in Waco for no real reason. And while I liked Clinton a great deal as President, I didn't care much for a lot of the folks he delegated.
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The Disaster We're Waiting For...
[Read the article: Is Star Simpson's "fake bomb" just an art jacket?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...is when TSA cops open fire on a person of interest because they're acting suspiciously or wearing a "hoax-bomb" and end up killing a few innocent bystanders.
A friend of mine went to see the Elder Bush speak when he was in high-school. He was at the speech, about 40 yards from the President, when he turned to a friend of his and said, "Hand me the telescopic sight!"
He was whisked off within 20 seconds by Secret Service agents, who sat him in a room with no door for 4 hours and sweated him. Quite justifiably.
If that approach was used to such great effect in '91, why can't we use it today?
For what it's worth--the student did screw up, and she definitely deserved to be investigated and detained until it was established that she wasn't any kind of threat.
Still, I'm not real happy about cops (of any stripe) pulling submachine guns on citizens without a pretty compelling reason. Of course opinions will differ, but a circuit board with LEDs and a handful of clay on an adolescent woman doesn't say "bomb" to ME.
As is evident from the comments here, there are lots of folks who WANT to live in that world. I'd encourage them to try out some other totalitarian states, rather than transform the USA into one. My love for America is founded on my passion about our freedoms, not on how well-armed our police are.