How about, when a person tells the police that they do not wish to speak with them, the police leave the person alone and leave. Darn it, I keep forgetting that the Constitution is just a piece of paper.

That would depend upon the circumstances of the contact. Did the officers have a duty to pursue, as in "hot pursuit"? Was she obstructing? Was there a warrant involved? You get the picture.

There are a myriad of variables to be considered every second of every shift.

Don't get me wrong, I can't stand bad cops, and I refused to be one, but that doesn't mean I'm going bite my tongue when I believe people are being prematurely judgmental about a situation.

All I'm saying is this - before you decide someone is good or bad, wait until you have all the information about the situation. The media played up the "victim" angle, but we heard little but the official details about the LE end of the story. That means we only have 50% of the story.

Would you buy a house having only seen the outside of it? I doubt it.

[edit on 7/20/08 by Sleuth]

And the shame is that in todays world when we get LE's side of the story, we still don't have the truth. Cover ups or withholding facts seem to be the rule, not the exception.

How do you know this? Do you have evidence of this? Would you please cite your source for this information?

It takes time to investigate excessive force complaints. There's not going to be an immediate comment on LE's side of this encounter. IA has to conduct its interviews, etc.

I'm not advocating beating up invalids. I'm advocating a level-headed approach to finding out exactly what happened and who's to blame before the stones start flying.

Hi I mJust remember one time in harvard square I was looking at a cop and he looked at me dead serious and said we arrest people for thinking like that. I was taken aback and taught a lifelong lesson in less than 5 seconds.

I live in Dayton. This stuff happens everyday. The police are insane in Ohio.

The fact that this women had cancer and diabetis is not really relevant at all. None of those conditions factor in when judging a situation and deciding how to respond to it. The fact that she was "legally blind" is more relevant, but can be hard for an officer to realize. I would bet that the police who tazered her saw only a big women lashing out at him. Her age is not really something to get hung up in either. 50 is not that old at all.

When that is said, it does of course worry me how many reports are surfacing about excessive force in the US, and an increase seems to be the case after the tazer was introduced. I don't know if tazing was excessive force in this incident, because honestly the news article in the original post is not very good and I am not left with a lot of insight into what actually happened. It seems like it MAY have been excessive force (in my opinion the tazer is dangerous in any case), but I feel there is some truth to what Sleuth said as well. The individual incidents are not the most important here though... The discussion should be about the trend in general.



Why? Why is it hard? I don't get why it's hard to realize that bad apples get recruited into the police force. You only generalize and stigmatize if you choose to do so. I really don't get why it's so hard to not let an individual asshole control your view of the police in general.



Are you serious? That is pretty radical rhetoric, or a very dangerous idea if you are being spesific. It is in my experience that the acts of the police force in any nation usually reflect the level of authoritarian behavior from those they are there to protect or control. This is the case in both general trend over longer time, and when the police responds to a situation on the spot.

If you have ever been involved in for example a riot or similar situation of civic dissent you will quickly see the trend. The more authoritarian, violent and chaotic the people in the riot act, the more authoritarian the police gets. When the police feels threatened, find it hard to control a situation or find themselves caught in a chaotic situation, they make more bad calls and act more violently. This is because they are human. Most people without special training will mirror this behavior. Advocating the use of deadly force against the police is pure stupidity in my opinion. There are probably hypothetic situations where taking up arms to defend civilians against police and military can be justified, but then the # should really have hit the fan. The police is needed to enforce laws, and laws are needed to control authoritarian behavior from all parts of a society. It is sad to see the enforcers of law not being held accountable, or raising themselves above the law, or using excessive force, but this should not be combated with large scale violent resistance. Individual cases of excessive force does not warrant "shooting back". If you believe the police force in the US has reached a higher level of betrayal of those they are there to protect, then that is a different discussion I guess. And naturally this reponse is only relevant if you actually meant "shooting back" litterarily.

Aye. It i dangerous and obviously too easy to use.

From my observational standpoint, non-deadly weapons are more dangerous than the typical service gun or deadly firearm. Simply because they are used more often. They are easy to use with less thought behind the act because they are non-deadly. There is a reason why the use of rubber bullets is effectivly illegal for law enforcement in a lot of nations. Rubber bullets hurts like hell, are very dangerous and often escalate a dangerous situation to the worse. A tazer is like the rubber bullet but for use in more isolated situations where there are a very limited number of threats to incapasitate.


The police force needs to be regulated and policed more effectivly. Bad apples, authoritarian elements, fascistoid individuals, people with anger management issues..etc. All of these should be filtered out of the police by independant organs. We need the police, and the police are usually doing an amazing job, but it becomes more and more apperant that something needs to be done about the bad elements that often is allowed to flourish in the police, wielding batons, tazers and handguns.



...

I guess something is seriously wrong when this is how citizens view the police. You just made it very clear why the police acts over-authoritarian from time to time. It's a dangerous job, and a lot of civilians just makes it that much harder.





[edit on 20-7-2008 by me_ofef_seraph]

I beleive cops everywhere in america are very abusive and use their power in the wrong manner, alot are very corrupt

This story is just terrible. It just goes to show that the country we are living in is no longer free, and it is time for some of us to stand up and take action. Whether we die or not...I'd rather die than live in a fascist state.

Ok, so instead of using the Taser, the police grapple with this 300 Lb woman, and unitentionally hurt her worse when they take her down. Which would you rather see? I was trained not to "fight" with people, but to "contain" them. Get control and cuff them. Once the decision has been made to arrest, is the cop supposed to just smack her in the mouth? The taser is an intermediate use of force. Cops are NOT paid to go one on one with anybody that wants to fight. They are paid to control the situation, investigate, and take the appropriate measures. As soon as they put their hands on her, she would have been screaming that they were killing her. Contrary to what some of y'all seem to believe, most cops don't look for a reason to arrest someone. She apparently gave them cause. Thank God she didn't have a knife. The police represent society. An attack on a Police Officer is an attack on society. In my opinion, with an aggressive person, the taser is safer for both the perp and the cop.

How utterly sad. But there is always two sides to every story.

Is there video proof that the woman initiated violent contact ? If not it's the cops word against hers, a lot of officers have made it almost impossiple for people to have faith in them & believe them anymore.



I'm not in law enforcement and don't face the dangers that they do, however my mind tells me that electrocuting someone is NOT using a level of force appropriate to someone trying to hit you. If someone attempted to hit me and i as a civilan electrocuted them i'd be in some deep legal s*** !


I'm sorry but i don't think that using a tazer on someone is one step higher than that person trying to hit you.


If you rarely use that level of force that is one step higher than you must not be a cop in Chicago, because they sure do & then some.


And there in lies the problem a lot of cops don't even try to bring the situation under control as quickly as possible, using the least amount of force ever since they were issued tazers, instead the seem to use the tazers to bring the situation under control.


I know there are good cops out there, unfortunately they do nothing to help identify the bad ones and have them removed from the force, which makes them just as guilty. The laws apply to everyone and in my opinion when an officer takes an oath to uphold the law he should be held to them more strictly.

Unless the warrant was issued for her then she didn't have to talk to the officers at all.


Even if there was a warrant issued for her she doesn't have to speak to them without an attorney.


Just because they are cops doesn't mean that she's going to give up information about her child, there are very few parents out there that would do that, it's against human nature and the parental instinct to protect their child. Maybe when they saw that she wasn't going to willingly cooperate with them they should've just called it a day & tried a different way.


Maybe the police force should pay a little more attention to the constitution and people's constitutional rights.

I don't care if she was blind or not. It appears that she could have been subdued without the use of a taser, and IMO was just plain cowardly. Unless she was holding some type of weapon, they should have been able to detain her without that type of force, even if she did take a swing. I guess one needs to ask, what is the protocol to justify this type of force?
In Denver, we've had cops shoot a disabled kid, and also an old man who was simply holding a soda can. Do these cops actually have an authoritarian complex, or have they become loose cannons because of past experience? Do they become so involved in the chase that their sense of good judgement completely vanishes? This is the type of thing that needs to be addressed, why is this happening?

I do not believe in hunting season on cops, nor do i feel pleasure when they are shot, however i believe that you are analyzing this in the wrong way.


There is something definately wrong when the citizens view the police like this. But did you ever think that maybe it is the fact of the police acting so over authoritarian time after time after time in so many cases that made citizens start viewing them like this in the first place.

Since the war on drugs began the cops have become increasingly militant and us verses them in their mentality. They are bringing this on themselves with their attitude. No longer are they peace officers or public servants, they are increasingly becoming thugs and bullies with badges with official sanction for their abusive behavior. This has only gotten worse over the years and the reason is the federal government influence on police funding and training.

Militant door kicking rude abusive behavior is rewarded. Peaceful resolution of conflict is not even considered any longer. The government is responsible for this behavior and they are only making the divide larger with every new police power increase.

Obviously this seems excessive. If they had accidentally broken her arm trying to restrain her, that would also have been excessive...

I hate these stories as much as anyone, my track record of posts and threads speaks to that fact, but I have a theory -

When things get tough in this country (and they will), the elite will need as many buffers between themselves and the citizens as they can get, otherwise it's revolution time (ask France what that was like).

The cops are the biggest buffer between the men of means and the rest of us.

The citizens hate and fear the cops because stories like this are on the news every night. The cops hate and fear the citizens because of the nature of their job and the growing hostility they face every day when going out to (ostensibly) protect the people. Ask any cop or citizen, and most will tell you that the relationship between cops and citizens is adversarial at BEST, and downright hostile a good deal of the time.

As it is now, the elite (who control the media), have the cops and the citizens at each other's throat. Most cops make very little money - their place in society is much closer to the average person than it is to the elite, but the only way control of the country can be maintained is if they side with the elite - with the status quo.

United we stand, divided we fall.

The citizens aren't making it easy for the cops to do the right thing, and the cops sure aren't making it easy on us, when stories like this are the order of the day.

Something needs to change, or I suspect we will fall...

Just to clarify, I hate that so many cops act these days, I hate it. It's sick that the people who are supposed to protect us are so often corrupt, abusive, and mad with power. They're operating under the delusion that they're above the law because they are the law. A system like this can't last - not without something breaking.

So please, don't label me an apologist, or I'll be forced to link to the dozens of articles I've posted and commented on, venting about how wrong and twisted the law enforcement community can be these days in America.

I'm just trying to look at the bigger picture.

reply to post by chise61

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While in the lawful pursuit of their duties, she is obliged not to obstruct their investigation.


As long as the police ask no accusatory questions and she is not under arrest, she does not have to be Mirandized and, therefore, has no right to an attorney.


No one really expects a parent to rat out their kid.

As for giving up and trying another day, you are saying the police should be negligent in their duties. They had a warrant and with that warrant comes a responsibility, particularly once service of the warrant is in motion. They have information and an official sanction to take this person into custody.

The police cannot just say, "Oh, I don't feel like serving this warrant anymore because this woman is crabby. Let's get coffee and come back later." That gives Mom, et al, time to regroup and plan and further obstruct justice. Junior can get the heck out of Dodge; evidence can be moved or destroyed.

There are logical reasons behind how the police operate.


They do. The problem is that citizens often do not understand the laws which they are subject to and, consequently, emotions run out ahead of logic on the track to resolution.

The police are responsible for enforcing the law. They spend a lot of time in classrooms with their noses stuck in statute books so that they interpret and apply it properly on the street. Then citizens, with a basic TV or high school understanding of law, second-guess their every move. It's not an easy job to be pummeled from all sides.

The public should educate itself about the laws that apply to it. Life would be a whole lot easier for everyone if it did. No one ever seems to think about that though.

I live nearby and I know that Dayton is an infamous stereotypical rotten urban rathole. I don't even like to go to downtown. The suburbs are okay. I'm not at all surprised to learn the police are suspected of abuse.