Like SofaKing pointed out,

"Mallory ... was a suspect in an unprovoked assault 15 minutes earlier."

It's Mallory's fault that Mallory is dead. If the officer had a lethal weapon drawn, and Mallory began to resist... we reach the same conclusion.. and it's all due to Mallory's actions. He was a criminal and he fought the law. The officer didn't realize the baggy shirt rule, which was his mistake.


Baggy Shirt Rule: a baggy shirt and a skinny body are the best defense against a taser.

hmmm. everyone says the cop is wrong, while ignoring the blatantly obvious - He thought that she was River Tam.

There is no such thing as excessive force against such a lethal weapon.

That is how it should be done. I am in awe.

See, THIS is why we should ban all lethal weapons, and make any open-hand slap a misdemeanor.

>> ^JiggaJonson:
I contend that we need to seriously reconsider the use of tasers by our police force. They should be used under the guidelines that a lethal weapon would; the taser would be a last resort and the lethal weapon would be THE last resort.

I agree with the sentiment of your statement. The service I work for classifies the taser as an intermediate weapon on the same level as OC spray or a baton. These weapons are only justified when someone is displaying active aggression (punching, kicking spitting aggressive behaviour). Many Services in the U.S (I am in Canada) seem to allow their officers to use the taser as a substitute for touching or in some cases just talking to someone. Defies common sense and as has been mentioned... adds fuel to the fire of people not wanting officers to have tasers at all.

The problem comes when you speak about lethal weapon status and 'last resort' type situations. The Taser cannot be counted on to work when it is fired. The probes are far too unreliable. Lethal force can only rationally be justified when death or grievous bodily harm are imminent. The only response you can count on in those situations is a sidearm. The Taser can be used though if other officers have a contained suspect under 'lethal coverage'.

The long and short of it is that the Taser is a great tool for police officers and should be used properly and responsibly for the purpose it was designed for... to save lives. Officers who do not should be held accountable. Services that allow their members to Taser passively defensive subjects should get their asses sued off.

I contend that we need to seriously reconsider the use of tasers by our police force. They should be used under the guidelines that a lethal weapon would; the taser would be a last resort and the lethal weapon would be THE last resort.

Right now, based on a seeming spike in incidents, police are using them on a whim. I think their intention is not to injure anyone (their chief concern is not injuring themselves) but people who get tasered are sometimes injured fatally:

"As of March 7 [2007], Amnesty International lists 220 people who have died since June of 2001 in the United States after Tasers were used on them, said Mona Cadena, San Francisco deputy director for the western region of that organization."
from: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/04/01/news/top_stories/23_36_183_31_07.txt

I'm sure, besides death, other injuries occur (I have a huge fear i'll face plant and break off my front teeth if i'm ever tasered - unlikely but probably as unlikely as a 14 year old getting it in the brain) So why do police seem to use tasers with increasing regularity?

I was a fiend before I became a teen
I melted microphone instead of cones of ice cream
Music orientated so when hip-hop was originated
Fitted like pieces of puzzles, complicated
cause I grabbed the mic and try to say, yes y'all!
They tried to take it, and say that I'm too small
Cool, cause I don't get upset
I kick a hole in the speaker, pull the plug, then I jet
Back to the lab ...without a mic to grab
So then I add all the rhymes I had
One after the other one, then I make another one
To dis the opposite then ask if the brothers done
I get a craving like I fiend for nicotine
But I don't need a cigarette, know what I mean?
I'm raging, ripping up the stage and
Don't it sound amazing cause every rhyme is made and
Thought of, cuz its sort of...an addiction,
Magnatized by the mixing
Vocals, vocabulary, your verses, you're stuck in
The mic is a drano, volcanoes erupting,
Rhymes overflowing, gradually growing
Everything is written in the cold, so it can coin-
Cide, my thoughts to guide,
48 tracks to slide
The invincible, microphone fiend rakim
Spread the word, cause I'm in
E-f-f-e-c-t
A smooth operator operating correctly,
But back to the problem, I gotta habit,
You cant solve it, silly rabbit
The prescription is a hypertone thats thorough when
I fiend for a microphone like heroin
Soon as the bass kicks, I need a fix
Gimme a stage and a mic and a mix
And Ill put you in a mood or is it a state of
Unawareness? beware, its the reanamator!
A menace to a microphone, a lethal weapon
An assasinator, if the people ain't stepping
You see a part of me that you never seen
When I'm fiending for a microphone, Im the microphone fiend...

After 12, I'm worse that a gremlin
Feed me hip-hop and I start trembling
The thrill of suspense is intense, your horrified
But this ain't the cinemas of tales from the darkside,
By any means neccesary, this is what has to be done
Make way cause here I come....
My dj cuts material....
Grand imperial.
It's a must that I bust any mic youre hand to me,
Its inherited, its runs in the family
I wrote the rhyme that broke the bulls back,
If that dont slow em up, I carry a full pack.
Now I dont want to have to let off, you should of kept off
You didnt keep the stage warm, step off!
Ladies and gentleman, youre about to see
A pasttime hobby about to be
Take it to the maximum, I cant relax see, im
Hype as a hyperchrondriac cause the rap be one-
Hell of a antidote, something you cant smoke
More than dope, you're trying to move away but you cant, you're broke
More than cracked up, you should have backed up
For those who act up need to be more than smacked up
Any entertainer, I got a torture chamber
One on one and Im the remainder!
So close your eyes and hold your breath,
And I'm a hitcha wit the blow of death
Before you go, you'll remember you seen
The fiend of a microphone, I'm the microphone fiend

It is quite ironic and tragic that 1989 protests delayed political reforms indefinitely. The failure to negotiate with protesters peacefully in the first 5 weeks was an excuse to remove the moderate elements of the communist party from power, putting a halt to any hope of political reform following the then recent economic reforms.

I wonder what these protesters think now, knowing that their noble but misguided efforts ended up doing more harm than good in the long run. All they accomplished was to remind the government to invest in non-lethal weapons and riot control training.

>> ^Jaace:
"tasers save lives" is only true if the police were going to use a gun instead or perhaps their "whomping" stick OR if this guy was armed. They could have easily broken the glass in the back seat and NOT tasered this guy as he was CLEARLY not a threat and no one would have been injured. This is an outrage.
I don't think ALL cops are like this, but the few that are need to have their badges taken away irrevocably.


Very true. Police Services all use some sort of "force continuum". A subject displaying some sort of resistance, authorizes the officer to use one level of force higher then that being displayed by the subject. Every Service is different, but what this guy was displaying would be considered (by the Service I work for) passive resistance and verbal non compliance. This would not allow me to use a taser or any other non lethal weapon. Only when a subject becomes actively aggressive (punching, kicking, spitting) can a weapon like the taser or the baton be utilized. I cannot understand, nor would I work for any Service that allows it's officers to use weapons on passively defensive people. It's pathetic and gives a useful weapon like the taser a bad reputation.

>> ^mrk871:
>> ^zor:
>> ^jerryku:
Re: the Uzi story, automatic Uzis are legal in the US? o_O

Yes, you can get them but you have to pay a $200 tax on the transfer first.


That's a relief then. There's not many people can get hold of $200, and anyone who does have that amount of money is pretty responsible.
Imagine if you just needed to have a small amount of money and you could get hold of a lethal weapon!
There'd be absolute madness. You'd have people killing each other over domestic matters.
You'd have angry teenagers going out and mowing down their classmates. I'm glad that disenfranchised teenagers aren't given that opportunity and probably end up growing up more balanced in the end and look back on those days with a whimsical smile instead of some kind of nightmare scenario where they kill loads of others and then themselves or get shot by the police. I know, you think it's unbelievable that depressed kids would do that kind of thing, but you just wait until they allow everyone to have guns.
I honestly think that's what would happen.
Of course it's a relief that not all cops carry guns too, because if they did you'd probably have people going out committing suicide-by-cop, and trigger happy cops who shoot innocent civilians because of some perceived threat.
It sounds crazy, I know, but I believe that's what would happen in a world where guns are so freely available.
Thank goodness that you must have $200 to get an Uzi. And thankfully there's no crazies who can.


$200 is the tax. The firearm themselves run upwards of $10,000 when available.

>> ^zor:
>> ^jerryku:
Re: the Uzi story, automatic Uzis are legal in the US? o_O

Yes, you can get them but you have to pay a $200 tax on the transfer first.



That's a relief then. There's not many people can get hold of $200, and anyone who does have that amount of money is pretty responsible.

Imagine if you just needed to have a small amount of money and you could get hold of a lethal weapon!

There'd be absolute madness. You'd have people killing each other over domestic matters.
You'd have angry teenagers going out and mowing down their classmates. I'm glad that disenfranchised teenagers aren't given that opportunity and probably end up growing up more balanced in the end and look back on those days with a whimsical smile instead of some kind of nightmare scenario where they kill loads of others and then themselves or get shot by the police. I know, you think it's unbelievable that depressed kids would do that kind of thing, but you just wait until they allow everyone to have guns.
I honestly think that's what would happen.
Of course it's a relief that not all cops carry guns too, because if they did you'd probably have people going out committing suicide-by-cop, and trigger happy cops who shoot innocent civilians because of some perceived threat.
It sounds crazy, I know, but I believe that's what would happen in a world where guns are so freely available.

Thank goodness that you must have $200 to get an Uzi. And thankfully there's no crazies who can.

>> ^HollywoodBob:
>>Well excuse the shit out of us for expecting people who are armed with lethal weapons and professionally trained to inflict massive amounts of damage with hand to hand combat, to have a little more restraint than Joe Shlub on the street.


I accept that, but PRESUMING they do is liable to get your ass handed to you as we've seen in this clip. This is what I was trying to get at with my "only human" bit. Everyone snaps, even those in positions of authority. The popular term is "Going postal".

To think otherwise is borderline delusional, and just wishful thinking.

And of course the cop should pay for his actions. I'm not saying otherwise.


And in case anyone was wondering: Apparently the reason she was there in the first place was because she stole a car.

>> ^JohnnyMackers:
EDIT: And "Cops being held to a higher standard". Yeah, right. Because they are all paragons of justice who aren't just there to enforce the law and pick up a paycheck for doing a job. Go on expecting robotic perfection from them though. Whatever floats your boat.


Well excuse the shit out of us for expecting people who are armed with lethal weapons and professionally trained to inflict massive amounts of damage with hand to hand combat, to have a little more restraint than Joe Shlub on the street.

I showed this video to my friend and my neighbor, both cops with 20+ years between them. They're response? They both said there's nothing that girl could have said to warrant the officers reaction. Police are trained to ignore all verbal attacks, threaten them physically it's your ass, but nothing you say should provoke them.

And you're right one psycho asshole cop doesn't make them all bad. When they get paid leave, and at worse lose their job for what would put ordinary people in prison, all the while their department backs them up and often defends their actions regardless of how obviously out of line and illegal they are, that makes them more bad than good.

Just once I'd like to see one of these videos where after the cop assaults a civilian and gets them restrained, for his partner to turn around and cuff the son-of-a-bitch, and them to immediately fire his ass and try him for 2nd degree battery. After seeing that a few times, we all might start seeing cops in a more positive light. Heck we might start assuming cops are there to protect and serve, not oppress and abuse.

How was he rude? The guy was more annoying than Joe Pesci in Lethal Weapon 2.

WHAT? No Lethal Weapon?

Really, they need to try a few different ways of saying it.

"I'll have your shiny, shieldy thing and your pew, pew, bang, bang stick"

Those are lethal weapons.