Sunday, December 8, 2013
Don't tase me, Bro!
In Texas, civil rights groups are challenging the authority of police officers and school security personnel to use non-lethal weapons in schools. Keeping schools safe and orderly may be difficult, but those goals are frustrated when permissible measures include ones that are themselves unsafe. In 2004, Amnesty International raised concerns that "electro-shock weapons are particularly open to abuse by unscrupulous officials," and it may have been right. Earlier this year, an elderly Alzheimer's patient died after being tased by a police officer; and, there's this...
Since 2001, more than 500 people have died after having been tased.
Reported by The Police News, the article begins:
After a November altercation between a law enforcement officer and a high school student left the student in a coma, civil rights groups are urging the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement to ban the use of non-lethal weapons like Tasers and pepper spray on school grounds.
Last month, Sheriff's Deputy Randy McMillan, who was a school resource officer at the time, used a Taser on Noe Nino de Rivera, 17, while trying to break up a fight at Cedar Creek High School in Bastrop County, Texas. After receiving the shock from the stun gun, the teenager fell to the ground and suffered a traumatic brain injury, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The teen remains in a medically induced coma.
Now, seven civil rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, are fighting back against the use of non-lethal weapons on students. In a letter sent to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement on Wednesday, the groups called on the commission to implement standards barring the practice, according to a statement released by the Texas ACLU.
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- Women allege forcible strip searches violated their civil rights
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https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/civil_rights/2013/12/dont-tase-me-bro.html
Comments
From Google:
In the period between 2001 and early 2012, the stun-gun Taser devices used by law enforcement across America have claimed the lives of 500 people.
Amnesty International, the worldwide advocacy group that condemns torture and human rights violations, delivered the news this week with a report released Wednesday. In it, they reveal that the recent death of a Georgia man who died as a result of a Taser blast puts the body count brought on by the device at 500 in barely a decades’ time.
Despite being branded as a non-lethal alternative to firearms, hundreds of Americans have died from Taser blasts.
On Monday this week, law enforcement responded to a call of a drunk and disorderly person in Houston County, Georgia. When they arrived at a bar, the man in question, 43 year old Johnnie Kamahi Warren, was already on the ground. According to the local Dothan Eagle, a sheriff’s deputy still deployed blasts from a Taser gun on the man. Twice. He died moments later and now the officer who fired those shots is being investigated, all while on paid administrative leave.
Warren is number 500 on the list of Taser-related casualties, and Amnesty International says that number is too high to warrant a wake-up call this late in the game.
"Of the hundreds who have died following police use of Tasers in the United States, dozens and possibly scores of deaths can be traced to unnecessary force being used," Susan Lee, Americas program director at Amnesty International, writes in a press release. "This is unacceptable, and stricter guidelines for their use are now imperative."
Over the last decade, hundreds of others like Warren have died either directly or as a result of Taser blasts. Law enforcement continues to use the tools, however, and many feel that often that’s a decision that could be avoided.
In a 2008 report titled USA: Stun weapons in law enforcement, it was revealed that 90 percent of the Taser casualty cases studied involved a victim that was unarmed. Droves of Americans are left dead by Taser blasts every year and in many cases it is revealed that they posed little threat to the officers responsible.
One victim that was executed in 2009 by Taser was only 15 years old. Another person twice that age was victimized that same year by Tasers, but it took 19 blasts from trigger-happy cops to kill that man.
Another recent victim, Billy Walters III, was shot by Tasers in a separate Georgia incident. He was intoxicated when cops arrived, and although he repeatedly told them “I give up,” they acted by firing several blasts into the man.
Posted by: Liberty1st | Dec 9, 2013 9:14:45 AM
Don't confuse the issues Bro. Tasers are lethal weapons.
Posted by: Liberty1st | Dec 8, 2013 10:44:41 AM