Cops Taser Old Man For Sitting In Wrong Seat At Baseball Game(video)

With every day that goes by, I get sicker and sicker of the authorities' abuse of power. If tasing a 63 year old man for sitting in the wrong seat at a baseball game is considered "protecting and serving" the public, then perhaps the public needs to start protecting and serving themselves. Police only have the right to use this kind of force within reasonable limits. Is it reasonable to repeatedly taser a 63 year old man, whos only"crime" is sitting in the wrong seat, at a practically empty stadium considered to be a reasonable use of force? I don't think so, and most people would agree with me. We have seen way too many cases of this, nation wide. The police seem to have a shoot first, ask questions later attitude these days. Sooner or later out eyes will open, and we will no longer allow this sort of outrageous abuse of power to occur. Stand up people, because the next time this happens, it may be your grandma at the wrong end of some cops taser.

reply to post by 3DPrisoner


Why were they empty? They could have been cleared like the ones that were when they were about to taser him, or it could be that the A's cannot fill up their seats to save their life.

You don't know, so you have no right to assume the worst.

Cultivated passivity.

It's what we live. For so long we have been conditioned to stand around and watch, thankful that it's 'him' and not 'us,' The trouble is that SOMEONE has to be the 'him' the poor unlucky schmuck.

I bet if a few of those guys there KNEW, without a doubt, that others would 'have their back' they would have done something about it. No one wants to be the first one in line....unless it's for an IPhone, or government cheese.

The video made me furious, but I realized that if I were there, I probably wouldn't have done anything either. I would cringe when he got tazed, shift in my chair, utter an 'ew, that sucks.' and get back to slurping on my pop.

I don't feel like a coward when I think of myself, but I fear that perhaps I am.

reply to post by joe82


the "wrong seat" is another way of saying this is somebody else's seat.

The kind of person who *willfully* does that is a douche bag. And if it was my seat he was sitting on, I would want him removed one way or another. I don't imagine any situation where I would be in this guy's position, because I treat cops with respect and the expectation to get respect back from them.

Still, I hope I never find myself in a situation where I need to rightfully confront a police officer and risk being tased.

-rrr

reply to post by imitator


Okay, say other than the taser they physically grab the man in an attempt to move him when he is unwilling. He is going to get MORE combative than he was in the first place. The man is old, but by no means frail. In his state he very easily wouldve become violent towards the officer. By taking the taser he probably ended up with at most, drunk and disorderly and resisting arrest. Should they have used other means, giving the man an oppurtunity to resist further, he could very easily have ended up with assualt charges, and potentially real prison time.

My advice to you, get tasered. You'll realize the intoxicated gentleman probably didnt remember it twenty minutes after it happened, BUT it allowed the officers to easily restrain him, and remove him from causing further problems.

Originally posted by Bushido Kanji
reply to post by 3DPrisoner

 

Why were they empty? They could have been cleared like the ones that were when they were about to taser him, or it could be that the A's cannot fill up their seats to save their life.

You don't know, so you have no right to assume the worst.

Ok sounds cool to me. But as I said, let us just put your own grandfather in those seats and see if such wishy washy reasoning will continue to issue forth.

I've seen some bad things on cop abuse here at ATS and have sympathized with the cops to an extent but this just has to be the worst I've seen yet.

To stand there and just blast the guy because you can is inexcusable in my opinion and each of them deserve an excessive force investigation at the very least.

I've seen good cops called out to calm down some rowdy teenagers playing basketball and wind up shooting hoops with them and thereby completely diffusing the situation. These goons only tried force. They only applied force too against a senior citizen of all people.

[edit on 7-8-2009 by 3DPrisoner]

reply to post by Bushido Kanji


I want you to watch this video, but this time do it with your eyes open. Then tell me that you cannot plainly see, that the stadium was practically empty. Look at the upper, lower decks, and box, then tell me what you see.

reply to post by BFFritz


So in other words it's ok to tazer someone if they might assault you? Pain compliance perhaps?

[edit on 7/8/2009 by PsykoOps]

First, thank you very much for this post!

Welcome to the POLICE STATE.

It seems many of you are finally figuring out what is going on here in our formally free country.

This is how it works now, the Police (PIGS) punish you now on the spot by tasing you, no matter if you have MAYBE done something wrong, no matter how minor. You will be punished, innocent or guilty, no trial or jury, instant punishment from the Cops!

Get used to it, cause it may happen to you or I anytime. No matter your age, physical condition, gender etc. It happens numerous times a day now in Amerika.

Now go back and watch your "American Idle" program and SHUT-UP!

Don't cops have anything else better to do?

Perhaps go catch drug dealers? Oh wait, I forgot it's a business and they are bribed.

Again, just because a few cops abuse their power or act unlawful doesn't constitute ALL cops being "pigs" or having the false belief that they are above the law.

Out of the 47,000 cops in this country, I would say less than 1% abuse their power. But of course, you see it once and you are convinced that they all do it.

Thank you for brainwashing the ignorant, media.

reply to post by PsykoOps


"Pain compliance" is what is going on here. Instant punishment, no trial or jury, no rights period.

reply to post by PsykoOps


Its a judgement call that neither of us are in a position to make.

We grant the police the authority to make those calls.


Is everyone failing to understand that cops are humans also? Their main objective for the day is to go home to their families at the end of it. Thank God for their services, and try to see things through their eyes in cases like this.

In your mind, how should that situation have played out? Realistically.

How sad. Back in my day (when the dino's roamed) if there were empty seats closer to viewing a tree grow we would just move on down there no big deal.

Using a taser is just wrong this man was not causing a problem to anyone and being old I understand that he is most likely from the old school not the after 9/11 crowd.

If this is what our AMERICAN SOCIETY is coming to then I think we need to fire all weather in government and/or all the way down to those that think they have this kind of control over it's citizens and we need to start over again to bring this Country back to the high standards and the pride we all had many decades ago.

Actually every citizen should be proud of who they are and there Countries these boundries and the hatred of another has to stop....no one is better then anyone else.

Shame, it is a real shame that the time has come to something like this.

reply to post by BFFritz


Realisticly cops wouldn't even bother with a guy who sits in a wrong seat. If they do they wouldn't even take out a tazer untill fists are flying because it's an alternative to deadly force. Not a compliance tool.

Out of 47,000 cops only 1% use their abuse their power I wonder where you came up with those figures at? It' seems like there are 47,000 cops in the city I live in alone. And as far as only 1% abusing their power, that is an absolute falsehood. Within a 3 year time frame, I have seen at least 12 police officers abuse their power with my own eyes. So I beg to differ with you. I cosider the police to be like the good ol' boy network, if you're in, you're in, if you're not they could'nt give a ****. I think it's a little ironic that they still use the term peace officer...if you ask me, they should start calling them Gestapo.

Just wanted to post this regarding the attendance at the Oakland Athletics games.

Source

The A's are 30th — dead last — in attendance among major league teams.

So theres a good chance that there were tons of empty seats at this game.

Squatting in better seats at a game that is not sold out is a time honored American tradition if you ask me...

reply to post by BFFritz

You said :
Is everyone failing to understand that cops are humans also?

Here's the problem -

The Milgram experiment

... was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. Milgram first described his research in 1963 in an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.

The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the question: "Was it that Eichmann and his accomplices in the Holocaust had mutual intent, in at least with regard to the goals of the Holocaust?" In other words, "Was there a mutual sense of morality among those involved?"

Milgram's testing revealed that it could have been that the millions of accomplices were merely following orders, despite violating their deepest moral beliefs. Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience," writing:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

Italics mine.

Source : Wikipedia