Question is, is this better or worse than just giving him a severe beating?

We citizens have laws, we pay other citizens to police ourselves. I am neither compassionate nor shocked. The alternative is to have allowed a drunk to continue on the road, as a threat to others and himself. This was a wonderful use of technology to lessen the risk to the officer, to the offender, and to the rest of us. The drunk man in the video is completely at fault for his irresponsible actions. Whatever happens to him as the result of a tazing is his fault and his alone, directly as a result of his willful choices to become inebriated. The officer's choices were limited. The suspect refused to comply. The suspect assaulted the officer. At this point, the officer could have lawfully done many things, but remained fairly composed and as a result, the suspect complied and was arrested for his offenses.

Here here, tooley! Zap him again.

I understand the need to subdue the subject, but I think the question is how many shocks the average person can take before it becomes permanently damaging or even lethal? I believe people with arrythmias have died from TASER shots.

Totally a Ronnie Dobbs moment here.

Police state.

I kind of feel sorry for the cop and almost wish the cop gave him a severe beating instead.

theo47, why are you worried about how many shocks that man could take? He kept trying to get up again afterwards, didn't he? Would you have rather seen how many batons to the head he could take? Mace to the face? Or possibly bullets to the chest? And only one of those alternatives is as safe for the officer as a taser. There aren't all that many ways to subdue somebody who isn't cooperative.

This was totally called for. There was a video that I saw where a lady got repeatedly tasered in Florida thast was just SICK. She was begging and screaming and crying and might have shit her pants. Those cops need to be locked up. In this case however, the idiot kept trying to be smart with the cop until the final tasering, and then the cop stopped zapping him. It was brutal, but buddy totally had it coming.

garsh: my point exactly. I wonder if a beating is worse than a tasering? Hmm.

Definitely better than bullets, of course.

Try not to be an idiot, OK?
I was simply wondering how many times a TASER is supposed to be used before it becomes dangerous, not whether it should be used or not.

i like how he's getting up, gets tased, falls to the ground, and the cop says, "GET ON THE GROUND!" and the suspect says, "NO!"

"I was simply wondering how many times a TASER is supposed to be used before it becomes dangerous"
Your point is valid, but the question is irrelevant because the taser should be used as many times as it must to coerce the subject into compliance. Of course, there are always cases where the taser won't ever succeed in that task, so more invasive measures are required to achieve that end (e.g., beanbags, rubber bullets, pepper spray, and finally samurai sword followed by dragging from the back of the squad car).

this reminded me of silence of the lambs

"get the hose again"

Eh..i think a shock to the ground then jumping on top of him would be a better solution. I would personally press charges against the officer...any one of those times that the man fell from a raised position is extremely dangerous. It looked like the officer was dealing with a rabid animal, not a human. A simple zap, jump on subject, call for backup would have been fine.

"It looked like the officer was dealing with a rabid animal, not a human."
Given the way the belligerent suspect got physical with and verbally attacked the officer and then continually defied his commands to stay down, I agree with you 100%.

djsunkid: Yeah, I saw when that video of the woman in her car being tazered, and it was disgusting. In that case, the women wasn't being physical with the officer, and it could been brought to a conclusion without the use of force.

In this case, the guy was clearly drunk, and when placed under arrest, was physically fighting the officer, and trying to stumble himself away. I think the officer could have been more patient with the repeated use of it, since someone who is drunk and has just been tazered might not be able to fully comprehend what is going on and not instantly respond to your orders.

I'm concerned as to whether tazering someone is better than pushing them to the ground, which I think officer could have done in this case. I imagine it's certainly safer for the officer, but is it safer for the person being tazered? There have only been fairly adhoc studies on how safe tazers are, and there have been cases where it has killed people, in particular those high on cocaine.

The biggest issue with the taser is it is causing the police to use force, in some cases deadly, in cases where they may not have originally. In this case, it may have been the safer option, but there are many examples of them being used inappropriately.

Taser = humane.

samnmax, you referring to this one? http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=7667

Interesting that in both vids they say they "can't" put their arms where the cops ask them to. I wonder if they're too stunned to move? Hmm...

This guy gets it by cop. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FRnh9f1NnU

As someone with both a pacemaker and formally an ICD (now a wearable defibrillator) I doubt that the taser would do much damage to the heart judging merely by the position of the probes which are rarely more than skin deep and therefore nowhere near any of the internal organs. Now how electricity behaves in the body (presumably merely going between the probes) is another question, as I have heard of many tales of ICD's delivering shocks to other people who are in contact with the "shockee".

Now THIS is justified taser use. The cop even compromised when the man insisted he could not move his arms.

Bah, natural selection should have pegged this morron off a long time ago. Too much government interference, living in a nanny state has allowed the population of mental midgets to flourish.

Replace all Taser's with their service 9mm's. Allow a police officer to command a combative opponent to the ground 3 times, then open fire.


No more retards!

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The duration of this video has been updated from unknown to 2:16 - length declared by bareboards2.