Never liked Tasers
They went from being non lethal (though not entirely) options to compliance tools. A police officer was going to Tase a subdued subject except he drew his gun instead and shot the man. And his firearms training may have been falsified.
April 16th, 2015 at 5:23 pm
The Sheriff should be charged with manslaugher alongside Bates. Bates is a 73-year old man who bought his badge. Bought! With bribes to the Sheriff’s office. Bribes! If nothing else, how else is a 73-year old going to handle a situation requiring force without a machine? Could he run down and wrestle a suspect? Sooner or later, he was going to shoot somebody, with a Taser or a gun, in a situation that called for a wristlock.
April 16th, 2015 at 6:21 pm
73 year old out playing cop, and a guy ends up dead.
April 16th, 2015 at 7:17 pm
A 73 year old on a Violent Crimes Task Force?!??? The Sheriff should be removed from office and charged.
April 16th, 2015 at 7:35 pm
“Now sources say that Bates, 73, received no firearm or field training before being assigned to the county’s Violent Crimes Task Force and that supervisors actually falsified records to make it appear Bates had received the state-required training.
Looks like Tulsa might have to change its name to “Harrisville.”
April 18th, 2015 at 2:32 pm
Clearly the tazer needs to be redesigned to make it’s deployment, from “holster” to ready-for-use, significantly different from handguns.
At first I was thinking it should be shaped like the original StarTrek phaser, but now I think it should require two hands to unfold it after removal from it’s carry pouch.
A tazer does not require a speed draw in any practical situation, so it absolutely should not be similar to a real gun. Perhaps it should also have a blinking light faced toward the operator, and maybe some sort of noise maker like a buzzer that are active when gripped, to make it very clear to everyone what it is.
Frankly, I think it should not be carried by patrol officers as a normal piece of equipment. If media stories and online videos are representative of it’s typical use, it is misused more often than not.
Since it turns out to kill a measurable percentage of people, it should be moved to a restricted category of use. If there has to be a departmental review of every time it is fired, at a minimum, with complete documentation, this may rein in some of the yahoos. I’m not holding my breath, though.
April 18th, 2015 at 4:33 pm
The problem, Will, is that it has to be fun for the cops before it will get put into the field. It needs to be another “gun” that they can zap people with to scratch their sadistic itch.
If we really just wanted it as a less-lethal alternative, they wouldn’t be usable in drive-stun mode, and it would record the date and time of use in that mode just like using the cartridge (which it doesn’t.) And why doesn’t it? Because no cops wants a tracker on their personal torture device.