"A Time To Fire The Taser?"

[Quackers]

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/870771...eace-to-mean-streets-but-antics-worry-his-mum

We already have out Batman

 

[Ayn Rand]

No. They didn't. People took justice into their own hands and tracked down those who aggressed against them on their own. You really need to get some knowledge about history.

Really? Britain has had the Magna Carta, law courts, judges, magistrates, a relatively independent judiciary, laws, solicitors, contracts, jury trials and much more for more than a thousand years. People in London or anywhere else in Britain were not free to take the law into their own hands and would have found themselves detained by the local bailiff and hauled in front of a magistrate if they had tried to do so.

 

[Yeekim]

a suspect in two hit-and-run crashes who had drugs in her system

has been in a vegetative state since

Poetic justice?
EDIT: I just discovered that "hit-and-run" doesn't necessarily imply human casualty in English, so I was likely too harsh.

 

[Abegweit]

Really? Britain has had the Magna Carta, law courts, judges, magistrates, a relatively independent judiciary, laws, solicitors, contracts, jury trials and much more for more than a thousand years. People in London or anywhere else in Britain were not free to take the law into their own hands and would have found themselves detained by the local bailiff and hauled in front of a magistrate if they had tried to do so.

In re-reading what I said, I clearly over-simplified, talking in terms that I have thought for a long time but which are totally alien to our statist world and thus no one would understand. For that I apologize. A thousand years ago there were no solicitors or juries. Two thousand years ago, long before the existence of the English state, the Common Law already existed, a heritage we have received from the Germanic tribes of the time.

No one has ever been free to take the law into their own hands. However, before the state confiscated it, people had the right to design the legal system. It was built by cooperative action between judges and freemen. Men chose the law which would govern them and freely-chosen judges executed it. Those judges who made good decisions were cited by later judges when they made their own own decisions. This is called "precedent" and was valuable long before the state hijacked the legal system.

So the question naturally arises: how do freemen construct a legal system? Before the Norman Conquest (ever notice how many legal terms are French ), the answer was that each freeman chose to join a sort of legal cooperative - called a hundred - which would regulate disputes between members. The hundreds, in turn, negotiated with each other to resolve disputes their members and the others.

The purpose here is to resolve the question of jurisdiction. Statism also needs to determine who has jurisdiction over a particular case. Statists resolve it by geography or by war. In a free society, it is resolved by choosing which cooperative you want to be a member of.

Before the state hijacking of the legal system, it was unthinkable for a man to not be a member of a cooperative. To not be a member was to be outside the law, to have no protection of the law, to have no legal rights whatsoever. In statist jurisprudence, there is the concept of the "criminal". This is a person who has been denounced by the sovereign and who will be punished by the sovereign. In the early days of criminal law, this basically meant that the state would steal all his property. Today, however, it means that the state will use his actions as an excuse to steal from taxpayers.

The English word is not criminal (it's French) but rather "outlaw". Before the infestation of crime, this referred to a man who had renounced the protection of the Law. He would have refused to accept the verdict of a judge or, less likely, refused to join a Hundred of his choice. Such a man had no protection under the Law. His property and, indeed, his very life could be taken by anyone without reprisal. The only question would be whether person who confiscated his property needed to pay some portion of it to the guy who got a verdict in his favour. There were rules about this.

In short, it is possible to develop law without coercion. It is possible to enforce law without coercion. The state is an unnecessary evil.

 

[woody60707]

I don't understand why police don't use the Mace first. if that doesn't work then they should legally be allowed to taser people to death.

 

[kramerfan86]

I don't understand why police don't use the Mace first. if that doesn't work then they should legally be allowed to taser people to death.

Taser has better range and mace isnt that effective when aiming at someone's backside is about the only thing I can think of. In many of these taser situations I dont think its the use itself that is the problem, its that cops are making errors that create taser necessary situations by not properly restraining or subduing suspects when they have the chance. That to me is the root of the problem more than the tool itself.

 

[Skwink]

I don't understand why police don't use the Mace first. if that doesn't work then they should legally be allowed to taser people to death.

I'd guess that's it's too hard to get mace into someone's eye when they're running away from you.

 

[woody60707]

Taser has better range and mace isnt that effective when aiming at someone's backside is about the only thing I can think of. In many of these taser situations I dont think its the use itself that is the problem, its that cops are making errors that create taser necessary situations by not properly restraining or subduing suspects when they have the chance. That to me is the root of the problem more than the tool itself.

I'd guess that's it's too hard to get mace into someone's eye when they're running away from you.

So then the taser was the correct next step then.

 

[Crezth]

So then the taser was the correct next step then.

Technically shooting them is a correct step if you antagonize them properly, it really almost entirely has to do with how the police handle the situation. And this cop failed utterly.

 

[Old Hippy]

And I would like to point out both the big "taser" comments civfanatics has had lately have been on idiots who resisted or ran, hardly innocent victims who were just sitting on the sidewalk or something. I hardly have pity for fools who put the ball in the police's court.

i will just remind you of the 86 year old disabled grandmother who took up a threatening posture while in bed....

Spoiler :

Lonnie Tinsley claims that he called 911 after he went to check on his grandmother, whom he found in her bed, "connected to a portable oxygen concentrator with a long hose." She is "in marginal health, [and] takes several prescribed medications daily," and "was unable to tell him exactly when she had taken her meds," so, Tinsley says, he called 911 "to ask for an emergency medical technician to come to her apartment to evaluate her."
In response, "as many as ten El Reno police" officers "pushed their way through the door," according to the complaint.
The grandma, Lona Varner, "told them to get out of her apartment."
The remarkable complaint continues: "Instead, the apparent leader of the police [defendant Thomas Duran] instructed another policeman to 'Taser her!' He stated in his report that the 86 year-old plaintiff 'took a more aggressive posture in her bed,' and that he was fearful for his safety and the safety of others.
"Lonnie Tinsley told them, 'Don't taze my Granny!' to which they responded that they would Taser him; instead, they pulled him out of her apartment, took him down to the floor, handcuffed him and placed him in the back of a police car.
"The police then proceeded to approach Ms. Varner in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she began to suffer oxygen deprivation.
"The police then fired a Taser at her and only one wire struck her, in the left arm; the police then fired a second Taser, striking her to the right and left of the midline of her upper chest and applied high voltage, causing burns to her chest, extreme pain and to pass out.
"The police then grabbed Ms. Varner by her forearms and jerked hands together, causing her soft flesh to tear and bleed on her bed; they then handcuffed her.
"The police freed Lonnie Tinsley from his incarceration in the back of the police car and permitted him to accompany the ambulance with his grandmother."
Tinsley says the cops capped it all off by having his grandmother "placed in the psychiatric ward at the direction of the El Reno police; she was held there for six days and released."

 

[kramerfan86]

I didnt see that one, obviously those cops need to be fired.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I didnt see that one, obviously those cops need to be fired.

They need to be tried for assault, at the very least.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Just commenting about this case, the cop isn't even running and can keep up with her. There's not even a need to tackle her. Sure, I can see the use of a taser where it can be used instead of a gun for safety, but when it gets used because it takes less effort than running and grabbing (not even tackling) a handcuffed woman, we're in bad shape fellers.

 

[Takhisis]

Does being handcuffed mean you can't run as fast as without the cuffs?

 

[woody60707]

i will just remind you of the 86 year old disabled grandmother who took up a threatening posture while in bed....

Spoiler :

Lonnie Tinsley claims that he called 911 after he went to check on his grandmother, whom he found in her bed, "connected to a portable oxygen concentrator with a long hose." She is "in marginal health, [and] takes several prescribed medications daily," and "was unable to tell him exactly when she had taken her meds," so, Tinsley says, he called 911 "to ask for an emergency medical technician to come to her apartment to evaluate her."
In response, "as many as ten El Reno police" officers "pushed their way through the door," according to the complaint.
The grandma, Lona Varner, "told them to get out of her apartment."
The remarkable complaint continues: "Instead, the apparent leader of the police [defendant Thomas Duran] instructed another policeman to 'Taser her!' He stated in his report that the 86 year-old plaintiff 'took a more aggressive posture in her bed,' and that he was fearful for his safety and the safety of others.
"Lonnie Tinsley told them, 'Don't taze my Granny!' to which they responded that they would Taser him; instead, they pulled him out of her apartment, took him down to the floor, handcuffed him and placed him in the back of a police car.
"The police then proceeded to approach Ms. Varner in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she began to suffer oxygen deprivation.
"The police then fired a Taser at her and only one wire struck her, in the left arm; the police then fired a second Taser, striking her to the right and left of the midline of her upper chest and applied high voltage, causing burns to her chest, extreme pain and to pass out.
"The police then grabbed Ms. Varner by her forearms and jerked hands together, causing her soft flesh to tear and bleed on her bed; they then handcuffed her.
"The police freed Lonnie Tinsley from his incarceration in the back of the police car and permitted him to accompany the ambulance with his grandmother."
Tinsley says the cops capped it all off by having his grandmother "placed in the psychiatric ward at the direction of the El Reno police; she was held there for six days and released."

http://www.scribd.com/doc/33557136/Dallas-Org-El-Reno-Police-Report-on-Lona-Varner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAu0qSfz1gY&feature=relmfu
This is the police versions of events. The EMS report and the 911 call are consistent with the police report as far as they can be. If you just take the 9/11 call the guy personally made, he's leaving out and changing some key facts in a misleading way.

He didn't call 911 to just have a EMT "evaluate her". He called 911 because she was actively suicidal. In general, having a police officer respond to a call of a person actively attempting suicide seems reasonable. Then at the end of the story, the guy says the cops capped it all off by put her in the psychiatric ward for 6 days. She wasn't put in the psychiatric ward out of spite, she was place there because she tried to kill her self.

And before anyone flammes me, I'm not defending the cops. I'm just saying that likely the guys story is mostly BS. We don't live in a some zero-sum BushWorld where just because one guy is wrong makes the other guy right.

 

[Old Hippy]

This is the police versions of events. The EMS report and the 911 call are consistent with the police report as far as they can be. If you just take the 9/11 call the guy personally made, he's leaving out and changing some key facts in a misleading way.

He didn't call 911 to just have a EMT "evaluate her". He called 911 because she was actively suicidal. .

My came from the court reported site and I draw your attention to

He stated in his report that the 86 year-old plaintiff 'took a more aggressive posture in her bed,' and that he was fearful for his safety and the safety of others.

But I especially love...

'Don't taze my Granny!'

I don't actually blame the police .... i blame the culture these none lethal responses encourage
somethings really lacking in their training

 

[cegman]

So whoever the crazy person is who thinks "police" didn't exist before 18-- well
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police#Roman_Empire