We have ways of making you talk

The Toronto Star reports that the officer involved here has pleaded guilty to uttering threats. How about armed assault? Abuse of authority? People swept up by the Toronto Police at the G8/G20 were charged with more serious crimes for a whole lot less. If soap bubbles can be considered assault, then how is this revolting threat of torture with a deadly weapon not aggravated assault?
We keep being told that Tasers are supposed to be a non-lethal alternative to guns, but again and again, we see stories of them being used as compliance weapons or torture tools.
As for the officer in question, he will be sentenced in June. Until then, he is on paid suspension and departmental disciplinary measures will not be decided until after the sentencing. As far as I'm concerned, the conviction should see him automatically dismissed from the police force and barred from doing any kind of security work.
The one bright spot I see in this case is that this gross misconduct came to light because another officer who was reviewing the in-car videos on another matter reported the offending officer to the department's professional standards branch, which handed the file over to the courts. Its about time the police started putting professional standards and proper respect for the law ahead of the unofficial thin-blue-line omerta that allows so much abuse to go on.
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Stunned and stunning report

The Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP has released a report in which it rules that the use of a taser by RCMP officers against a bed-ridden 82-year-old man who was infirm enough to require an oxygen tank was entirely justified. No, really. Apparently three mounties in body armor can't be relied upon to disarm an knife-wielding octogenarian invalid. That whirring sound you hear is Sam Steele spinning in his grave.

"When in trouble or in doubt,

Run in circles, scream and shout"

Two thoughts on this video clip:

First, I see this kind of behavior every week. At my office, where some people need to work on their interpersonal skills and at the pool where I take my kids for swimming lessons, there is a bank of vending machines that sell canned coffee and soft drinks, bottles of cold green tea, water, sports drinks and, everyone's favorite -- ice cream. The room is stuffy and overheated and I'm there for a couple of hours along with all the other parents and the little brothers and sisters of the kids who are in the pool. I take my ipod and sit facing the ice cream machine and watch a succession of toddlers completely and utterly misplace their feces (occasionally this literally happens, but the diaper-throwing story is one for another day). I'm talking about two-, three- and four-year-old kids who see the ice cream machine and upon being denied a frosty treat, go straight to defcon 5 and launch the mother of all tantrums. 

The duration record so far this year is held by a three-year-old girl who, being told she could not have a second ice cream, launched into a 35-minute fit of floor-pounding, screeching, purple-faced rage that culminated in running across the room and repeatedly kicking her mother (the kid, not me) before actually falling asleep/passing out from lack of air mid tantrum. 

The intensity record was set by a three-year old boy who after jumping up and down hollering for a few minutes, ran straight into a concrete pillar in the center of the room and bloodied his nose, which seemed to calm him down a bit. 

For the record, my kids, while they might occasionally whine, never threw tantrums when they were little. In fact, with one notable exception when I had to take my son outside and explain that no, he could not go to karaoke in the bar adjoining the restaurant and crying at the table wasn't going to get him anywhere, they have always been extremely well behaved where ever we go. 

Second, the woman in the video is in the airport in Hong Kong. Its a good thing she's in a country that respects human rights as much as China. Imagine what might have happened if she had carried on like this in certain other places.

I guess the RCMP now has a '00' section

This outrageous ruling just gave the mounties the licence to kill anyone who loses their temper, no questions asked. It's funny no one ever dies of hysteria when the cops aren't involved. I have family friends who are in the RCMP - I don't think of them as killers, but these four don't pause for an instant to try to calm the man, they just kill him. 

Watch the whole video -- I insist-- and remember that the man had been there for TEN HOURS without getting any help to find his way out of the customs section and into the arrivals lobby. Watch it all, and tell me that the officers involved acted in a reasonable way and that the man deserved to die. Tell me they had any reason to fear for their lives or were defending themselves. Because if you can tell me that, you are watching a different video than I am.

The four horsemen arrive at 6:12, at 6:40 they taser Robert Dziekanski for the first time, by about 9:30 he seems to be dead, and the Mounties never even try artificial resuscitation, in fact they don't even seem to be in any rush to try to get medical help for the man they have just murdered. 

 

I hope someday the 4 officers, the crown attorney and the judge involved all in their turn travel to some far off foreign land like China or Uruguay or, oh, I dunno, maybe even Poland, on a holiday or a business trip. I hope they get lost in the airport. I hope that what with the jet lag, and the lack of sleep and the confusion and frustration and the fact that nobody speaks English that they just flat out lose it after a few hours and throw down their suitcases and start shouting. And I hope it doesn't cost them their lives, because these fuckers should live with this poor bastard's needless death haunting their consciences every waking moment for a long, long, painful time.

Shock first and ask questions later



Imagine you're a small town cop in the heartland of America. You're responding to a report about a teen walking on the expressway overpass - a driver was worried the kid might get hit by a car or something. You arrive to find the 16-year-old lying on the shoulder of the highway 30 feet below the overpass. Do you:


1. Call an ambulance
2. Render first aid
3. Order him to get up and taser him 19 times when he fails to comply because its hard to stand up with a broken spine.



Seriously, what kind of IQ/psychiatric screening process does one have to fail to be issued a taser as a cop these days? I'm sure the big strong cops with their nightsticks, pepper spray, heavy flashlights, pistols and body armor (and likely a trunk full of rifles and shotguns) were scared that the teenager might have been on drugs or something since he was raving incoherently- as you might if you fell off a bridge and broke your back - but surely it would have occurred to most people after the second or third jolt that something was amiss with the young miscreant



Click the link on the sidebar for a list of taser-related atrocities. And remember not to lose your temper in an airport, or question the authority of a campus cop, or fail to spring to attention when ordered to do so by someone in uniform, or be a loud drunk, or the wrong color.....



Hat tips to the General and Corrente and Pam's House Blend