I tried finding more information about this, but failed.

I'm curious why the commentator said "it's about time" when the man was tasered. He must have some history with the law or something?

However, I find it hard to justify a group of police officers walking up to a person sitting peacefully and tasering him as the first action.

Was that MarineGunrock holding the camera?

It honestly looks like the cast of Reno 911.

"police taser sitting man" got me to a blog of someone who says they called police and asked about the story:

http://theflashscoop.tumblr.com/post/163105431/excessive-use-of-force-in-folsom

"The officers were called to the scene by a neighbor. The man who was tased apparently spent the entire morning on his front lawn screaming racially charged remarks at the top of his lungs. Among the things he yelled were: “White Power!” and “Heil Hitler!” The officer was not sure what ethnicity the man was, but he informed me that his name appeared to be of hispanic origin. He was not a black man, contrary to some reports.

The first officers arrived on the scene. These were a mixture of different races (black, white, and hispanic). The man on the porch screamed racial slurs at them. Furthermore, he screamed “Shoot me motherfuckers!”, “I bet if I had a gun you would shoot me, maybe I should go get my gun!”, and other variations on this theme.

The officers identified this as a mental health issue but also realized that he seemed imbalanced enough that he might be dangerous. They called a negotiator to the scene to try to subdue him. The negotiator tried to talk him into calming down for 15 minutes to no avail. The commanding officer on the scene then decided that it was in the interest of the public’s welfare and the man’s own welfare to take him into custody and get him medical attention.

The man on the porch was advised ahead of time that he would be tased. Finally, we got what we saw on the video. Immediately after the tasing, the man was transferred to the hospital where he was treated for minor injuries. The police then transferred him to a mental institution. The entire incident lasted 17 minutes.

Finally, according to Folsom Police, the taser was set at a non-lethal level. According to Folsom Police, officers are tased several times in training, and that, in their opinion, there was no excessive use of force in this incident."

>> ^vairetube:
Finally, according to Folsom Police, the taser was set at a non-lethal level. According to Folsom Police, officers are tased several times in training, and that, in their opinion, there was no excessive use of force in this incident."


So the taser was set on stun? I wasn't aware there was any other setting.

I appreciate you looking all that up though. I still think this was excessive, it seems he could have been easily tackled. It's like bashing someone over the head with a nightstick because they refused to lay down.

>> ^vairetube:
"the taser was set at a non-lethal level"

Yeah, I agree entr0py - I thought the whole point of a taser was its non-lethality. It's sort of like bragging that your kitchen knives cut meat. Although I suppose a setting of 3 is much more potentially non-lethal than 9.

Still, how does announcing in advance that he will be tasered make it reasonable? Despite his rhetoric, at the very least he appears to be physically non-aggressive at this point in the confrontation. Shouldn't police action at any given time reflect the current situation and not what he shouted 5 minutes ago?

The talking and laughing of the couple who captured this on video make me LOL.

"We're headed in, set tasers to stun."
"Aye captain!"

The follow up is the guy escaped by making a laser from a light bulb and metal slat from his jail bed.

I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here...

I've watched it a couple of times and read Vair's post. I have to say i completely disagreed...

I think police tend to automatically get looked down on around here, and I'm not so sure this isn't an example of god police work. For starters he isn't sitting peacefully. He is actually threatening the officers... the idea that somehow if they had tackled him there would have been lessened chance for injury to the officers or 'gentleman' seems very silly to me. We also don't know that this was 'the first' thing they tried. In fact that seems like a pretty unrealistic assumption to me.

They didn't all 9 of them just show up walk up to him and taser him. For that many to be there they likely were at it for some time. He was actively threatening them according to article, and even if you could be confident he didn't have a gun it sure seems likely he is going to fight.

Anyway. Blah... yeah I actually disagree (if you didn't get that by now) and think this is more likely an example of a taser being used appropriately.

Fascists. If he really had a knife, they would have found out when they tried to handcuff him.

I'm not appalled by the tasering or the number of cops, I'm appalled by the Jackboots that the guy on the left and the morbidly obese officer are wearing.

*brief

This video has been flagged as being less than 1 minute in length - declared brief by calvados.

According to Folsom Police, officers are tased several times in training, and that, in their opinion, there was no excessive use of force in this incident."

That's like comparing be groped by your lover and being groped by a stranger on the subway. One's harmless, one might be very harmful.

>> ^alizarin:
According to Folsom Police, officers are tased several times in training, and that, in their opinion, there was no excessive use of force in this incident."
That's like comparing be groped by your lover and being groped by a stranger on the subway. One's harmless, one might be very harmful.


Uh..no it's not.

You have two officers holding you up by your arms, a third behind you with a tazer. You get no warning, all of a sudden you're hit by the prongs, and electrocuted for 5-10 seconds, they don't go easy.

On the plus side, they shove a poptart in your back pocket which you get to enjoy after.

>> ^T-man:
The follow up is the guy escaped by making a laser from a light bulb and metal slat from his jail bed.


You forgot the crystal matrix from his implanted subdermal transmitter.

>> ^obscenesimian:
I'm not appalled by the tasering or the number of cops, I'm appalled by the Jackboots that the guy on the left and the morbidly obese officer are wearing.


Jackboots are worn by cops on bikes for protection duh......

The obese one with the boots looks like a policewoman to me!

^She still needs the "standing up after taking a knee" training apparently

[redacted]

I'm upvoting, not for the posting of this video and the usual over the top, sensationalistic heading, but the discussion here including the backstory.

Again with the watching a tiny snippet of an event and judging purely based on that.

Complete bullshit.

Also realize that something like tackling the guy in submission could have resulted in police brutality charges. Also, since they had determined that the guy was likely mentally ill, handling him may have resulted in him becoming physically violent towards the officers. In this case, the police gave the man fair warning and only used the taser as a quick and safe takedown.

I'm honestly rather disappointed in the general attitude towards cops on the sift. It's a tough job and they do it for the benefit of the rest of society. Sure there are those cops that abuse their authority and power, but those are a very small minority. (You can find people in almost every career in life that abuse their position.)

I'm downvoting this because I don't consider something like that to be siftworthy, doubly so because of the context of it.

(Thanks vairetube, for giving the info.)

>> ^vairetube:
...take him into custody and get him medical attention.

"Come on, old man, let's go to the hospital."
"But I feel fine--"
TASERED!

The tags should be changed. We have no way to know from context whether this was provoked or not, you're drawing conclusions from a few seconds of video. I only upvoted because the audio is hilarious.

If I could I'd add this to *lies and *controversy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of cops. These days, the tazer is being used like a tranquilizer gun on a game-reserve, except they're treating every common citizen like s/he's a wild tiger.

Invocations (controversy, lies) cannot be called by KnivesOut because KnivesOut is not privileged - sorry.

>> ^KnivesOut:
The tags should be changed. We have no way to know from context whether this was provoked or not, you're drawing conclusions from a few seconds of video. I only upvoted because the audio is hilarious.
If I could I'd add this to lies and controversy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of cops. These days, the tazer is being used like a tranquilizer gun on a game-reserve, except they're treating every common citizen like s/he's a wild tiger.

I'll concede that unprovoked was a bit much for the tags, but I do believe he's being as peaceful as a person can be when they approach him yelling "Taser taser taser!".

I also added it to Controversy, but Lies? There are no actual facts in this video that are wrong, except if you mean the description or title, in which case, see my earlier point.

^ He may appear peaceful at that very moment, but you are watching SECONDS of a much longer event.

STOP taking a small snippet of video and thinking you know everything of an event.

Man... hurray for f*cking mob journalism these days, no one bothers to find out what f*cking happened, they like making rash anti authority claims based on tiny, blurry, out of context videos.

f*ck that.

No i agree with spoco here. For all you know from that video he is laying peacefully because he ran out of ammo and got tired from the weight of the weapons he was carrying and is therefore taking a break. Ridiculous? probably... we don't have any indication one way or the other.