Cop Tasers Girl on her Knees with Hands Up

Officer Anthony Plummer was charged with using the Taser on Celeste Thomas, 26, while she was on her knees with her hands in the air. Policy dictates a Taser should only be used if a suspect is resisting arrest or has assaulted the officer, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported Monday.

"A preliminary review shows he is not in compliance with our standards and he is being investigated for unnecessary and excessive use of force," Police Chief Thomas Streicher said.

Plummer's police powers were revoked during the internal investigation, the Enquirer said.

He has had use-of-force complaints against him several times, resulting in a suspension and two reprimands. He was once fired from the force, but was reinstated after an appeal.

Thomas is a daughter of City Councilman Cecil Thomas, a former police officer who heads the council's law and safety committee.

Psychology of Torturing Institutions

First and foremost, governmental institutions (i.e. the military [and civilian police]) are founded on the notion of a strict hierarchy: there is a chain of command that operates on the concept of blind obedience to a superior commander and an overall ideology. When the superior claims that insubordination of any command will jeopardize lives or disparage an ideology, it makes sense that an inferior officer would go to great lengths to carry out a command even at the expense of his civilian principles. This pressure is coupled by inadequate training of officers by the institutions in such areas as lawful interrogation- as is the case in the U.S.- to ensure complete compliance (“Enduring Abuse” 90).

Furthermore, an institution installs an individual in a large, homogeneous group by requiring uniforms and standardized codes of conduct resulting in de-individuation, which consequently diminishes the likelihood of rebellion and increases predisposition to inhumane or “evil” activity (as demonstrated by Dr. Zimbardo’s “De-Individuation Study”). Both concepts of hierarchy and de-individuation facilitate the individuals strong desire to conform since conformity elicits praise from superiors, satisfaction in the idea of upholding a certain “moral” code (however immoral one must act to do so), and feelings of acceptance among peers (Zimbardo 4/9/1999). In general, institutions use torture to “increase the illusion of the invulnerability of the regime” (Spitz 5/17/1989); hence, not only do torturing institutions exercise psychological control over their constituents, but torture itself is used for the institution to psychologically bully the rest of the world.

Source : torture.stanford.edu ...

The Milgram Experiment

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.

Source : Wikipedia