Lethal Force
Guy is drunk. Cops show up and guy gets in his car. Cops tell him to stop. Then Tazer him. While being tazed, the engine revs and car lurches forward. Cop puts six rounds into the drunk as his car lurching is seen as aggressive. I’m no expert but I can imagine that the engine revving was caused by muscle spasms from being tazed. And I can’t imagine that someone in the act of being tazed is a threat to anything other than upholstery.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:56 am
I have been a cop for over 15 years now. I have been following your blog for some time now, and appreciate it on many different levels. I have noticed quite a few anti-law enforcement posts, and I understand why people feel frustrated with the police much of the time. Most of the time, I don’t feel the need to comment, due to the fact that I understand people need to vent.
What I don’t understand, however, is making derogatory assumptions based on ignorance and guesses.
The only clear conclusion a reasonable person can take from the article is that a shooting occurred, and that it is being investigated. In today’s day and age, if what the officer did is deemed to be unjustified, I am certain that he will lose his job and be prosecuted.
Not having been there, “looking through the sights” as it were, who are you to judge this officer? You haven’t heard his side of the story, you haven’t reviewed the in-car video recording of the incident, you haven’t interviewed witnesses who were at the scene. Yet based on an newspaper article alone, you not only decide that the officer is guilty of mis-using lethal force, you choose to publish your un-informed opinion.
That is enough to get me to comment…
I have read a large number of what seem to be anti-Taser posts. I’ll try to give you a short primer on how the Taser works, so you won’t have to guess how it works in the future.
Basically, the Taser has two different effects on people. When both probes hit the target effectively, and with enough of a spread, it causes what they call neuro-muscular incapacitation. That is when the person’s muscles all lock up, they stiffen and are unable to do anything while the ride lasts. The normal cycle for a police Taser is 5 seconds, but if the probes are still in place and the person still resists, the officer can pull the trigger again and let it go for another 5 seconds. There is a computer chip in the Taser that records all firings, and is downloaded after each incident in order to prevent abuse.
The other effect the Taser has (other than the neuro-muscular incapacitation) is pain compliance. If only one probe effectively hits, or if the Taser is used in a drive stun mode (pushing the end of the Taser into someone without probe use, or after the probes have been fired), then it is simply causing the person pain. It doesn’t completely shut the person down or cause the muscles to lock up. People can fight through this.
“Misses” are very common. One probe can make good contact and the other can hit a belt, for example. The probes are basically fish hook type things on the end of weighted cylinders that are fired from compressed nitrogen tubes. They are generally effective, but not the most accurate things ever devised.
This is a very simplistic explanation of how it works. I went through a 16 hour course and an “exposure” to become an instructor. Hopefully this three paragraph synopsis will give you a better understanding than you had before.
Having said all that, the point I really wanted to make is that making monday morning type judgements on how a particular officer performed under combat stress in a life or death situation really isn’t fair. Especially when you have an uninformed opinion about critical parts of what went on.
Our legal system will judge this incident. They will take in all of the available evidence and decide if what the officer did holds up to the “Reasonable Officer” standard.
I am fairly certain that if you ever were involved in a situation where you ended up shooting someone, you wouldn’t want the police chief giving interviews the next day giving a negative opinion on what you did based on what he read in the papers.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Me being anti-law-enforcement will come as quite a shock to my retired police officer dad, who reads this site.
I have several issues with tasers. one of which is they seem to be over used and they are not non-lethal. And it seems that weekly we find out something new and bizarre about how tasers interact with people, such as this case.
Seems to me a muscle spasm could have caused the car to lurch if his foot was on the accelerator.
I am not ‘blaming’ the cop. Just saying that it appears taser-use could have caused this guy’s death, no matter how unintentional.
Sorry if it comes across as anti-law enforcement. That is not my intent.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:31 am
This was murder. The car lurched into a fence. Killing him did not save a single innocent person from nothing.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:33 am
And all that crap about legal process…. Every cop involved in the investigation will do his or her very best to whitewash it, and suppress and destroy evidence.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:34 am
i wouldn’t call it murder.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:35 am
I am not ‘blaming’ the cop.
You should bre blaming the cop, Uncle. What was his justification for the use of lethal force? Whose life was he saving or whose great bodily harm was he preventing?
June 15th, 2009 at 11:37 am
All right, I don’t want to do what I’m accusing the cop of doing. I don’t like human beings being sent to prison or to death row anymore than I like them being shot down on the street.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:38 am
NOt sure the justification as I was not there and the account in the article is lacking in detail. But it does state that it’s against policy to taser someone operating a vehicle.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:57 am
I guess I’m not all that good about shutting up, after all. The question, in my mind, is why shoot him? The Taser is a distraction. Let’s say he was not tased. Let’s just say he was perfectly sober and he tried to run away from a DUI arrest but his only avenue of escape was a fence that he could not, and did not, go through. It’s the cop’s state of mind that’s important, I think.
June 15th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Tanner, save your apologetic diatribe and condescension. We know how the technology works, and we understand that most police departments allow the deployment of this less-lethal (not less-than-lethal, as cretins like you think) device in situations where it is not warranted. So your little quip about an officer being fired and charged for misuse is rediculous; the officer will be found to have followed all procedures, even though the procedures themselves are of questionable legality.
That said, while I would generally agree that we don’t know all the facts here, the problem is that we never will. The blue wall is already up, and the LEO NATO doctrine is in effect, as your post has so wonderfully demonstrated.
If it would have been unreasonable to use a baton, it is unreasonable to use a Taser, period. I hope your kids are confronted by police some day, become frightened and confused, and end up getting tortured with electro-shock until they soil themselves. Then later, you can hug them and comfort them and tell them how they should have done a better job listening to the officer, who was just trying to keep himself safe from the little darling.
Asshole.
June 15th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
The “lethal force” I was talking about were the six bullets, in case it was not clear.
And Uncle’s comment section is the politest I have seen and I hope it can stay that way.
June 15th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I am continually amazed by people who work in law enforcement who feel compelled to suggest that someone pointing to a cop making a bad decision or abusing their power is “anti-LEO”.
It’s an insultingly stupid affront to our intelligence, Tanner.
My brother’s a cop too. And you know what really irks him? People like you who seem to object to holding people with the color of authority to a higher standard.
The reality is nobody’s rushing to judgment–we’re merely observing that the optics on this don’t look too good. How that makes you “anti cop” escapes me.
There’s a pretty bright crowd here at SU; better save that nonsense for a spot where the bar is set a bit lower.
June 15th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I still don’t quite understand the story.
How did the taser strike the man inside the car? What were his words and deeds during car entry? Was an officer in the path of the car when the man entered it?
The story is incomplete as it stands, and may still be after the official police report.
As to being “anti-cop”, it is much easier to notice and comment on the few bad apples than it is to praise every good deed. But when only the bad apples get press, the good ones feel pressed to defend themselves.
(See the series of “Man with gun” posts that Uncle started for a similar idea…with regard to CCW-practitioners.)
June 15th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
I’d like Tanner’s response to this but being around officers I heard of plenty of shootings that happened due to a suspect driving toward an officer or civilians. In the news article it says, “The force of the impact caused the fence to buckle, knocking down a bystander.” If he felt like that persons life has become in jeopardy he is automatically authorized deadly force. Tanner is that correct? Uncle, I thought the same as Tanner about your thoughts on LEO’s but thanks for your clarification. I do not know that stats on taser deaths or use but like any other “Force” it does need a good amount discipline. Like it or not I do believe its a technology that needs to be kept and used. It saves suspects lives that may have been otherwise shot by an officer.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Much like misuse of firearms doesn’t mean they should be taken away from all of us, I don’t think misuse of tasers means we should deny them as tools to law enforcement.
I do think a more honest discussion about their nature and when they can and can’t be used would serve the LEO community well. They’re NOT non-lethal, they’re less than lethal, but that distinction often seems lost in the mix.
I guess this discussion means I’m anti cop too (how do you make an eye rolling emoticon?)
June 15th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Uncle-
I apologize for the anti-LEO remark. More accurately I should have said “posts that are critical of LEO’s uses of force”. I was being a little bit defensive there, I see that now.
I never said that your guess wasn’t possible, what I said was that your guess was uninformed. Could a good Taser hit cause a person behind the wheel of a car cause them to stiffen and hit the accelerator? It is possible it could have happened, but completely impossible to determine that as a fact from reading a newspaper article. In an instance where the Taser was fired through an open car window of a moving car, I would think that an effective two prong hit would be unlikely. But then again, I don’t have any of the evidence in front of me either, so I am hesitant to guess.
At the end of the day, this might be a bad shooting, I’m not asserting that it was a good or reasonable one. I am saying that you don’t have much evidence to base your opinion on, and that you have to put yourself in the officer’s shoes.
nk-
Kinda hard to “whitewash” in-car video, ain’t it? Most of the time now-a-days there is an audio recording to boot. But we shouldn’t let anything like waiting to see evidence with our own eyes get in the way of making comments.
M. Gallo-
Wow, a real life internet tough guy! I was almost too afraid to respond to your post because of all the big words you used. The unimaginative name calling was top notch, although I was a little disappointed that you failed to mention the words “pig” or “donut”. You also failed to make mention of my small penis that I am overcompensating for. Maybe you can add those to your checklist for next time.
Every police shooting in the county where I work is investigated by the police, and a warrant request listing the officer as a defendant is submitted to the prosecutor’s office. Sometimes it takes upwards of 9 months for the prosecutor’s office to decide whether to charge the officer or not. Officers getting charged happens regularly, the whole “Blue Wall” thing doesn’t exist in today’s day and age anymore. Do you think that the LA cop who kicked the perp in the head at the end of the televised chase a few months back is still working the streets? Video has completely changed the game. I am not saying that cops never use force excessively, it happens. It also gets prosecuted, as it should.
Sebastian-PGP-
I addressed my anti-LEO remark above already…
I wasn’t apologizing for anyone. I was objecting to making judgements based solely on facts from a newspaper article on a topic Uncle did not know much about. I whole-heartedly believe that cops should be held to a higher standard, but it should be a fair standard, not one based on guesses and misinformation.
As far as “saving my nonsense” goes, I appreciate that Uncle made a separate post on my quick Taser synopsis. I’m not posting on here to prove that I am the rightest person on the internet, I was just trying to add my two cents to the discussion. Obviously, Uncle thought I added something at least a little bit worthwhile to it.
Kujo-
There is no automatic authorization to use deadly force. Every situation is different, and society relies on the officer’s judgement (within certain guidelines) as far as when to use or not deadly force.
The Taser is just another tool on a policeman’s belt, like a pistol, handcuffs or baton. It is the least likely to be abused, however due to the accountability built into the data it keeps inside of it. My pistol doesn’t record the date, time and number of rounds fired, but my Taser does. If one of my prisoners complains of being abused by the Taser, it takes a few minutes to download the data to see if it matches up with my report.
Plus, they now have Tasers with video and audio attached to the actual unit. That gets downloaded as well.