Canada'com's Katie Mercer reports that Vancouver police twice tased a 16-year-old girl as she held her newborn baby. The police claim they had no choice, as the girl might have "smothered" her baby in her attempts to resist a social worker's appropriation of it.
She looks pretty dangerous to me. Shoulda called the SWAT team, too.
[Thanks, Takuan!]
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Because, /once again/, the police have used TASERs in a situation in which they unquestionably would have used a firearm, and in which deadly force would be justified.
Does anyone still claim to adhere to that guideline, though? I think that ship sailed a long time ago.
@1 Apology not accepted.
Loose the TASERS. Equip them with LASERS or MASERS or PHASERS or RAZORS.
Make them wear BLAZERS.
And SLACKS.
It's kind of irritating to read BoingBoing's account of events - they tasered a young mother holding her child! - and reading the newspaper's account of events, in which the cops explain that they were genuinely afraid that she was going to kill her baby by smothering it.
I've seen this happen a lot on the Internet. Usually it goes something like "The police had to use an elephant gun to bring down a citizen of Toronto named Ralph! Is this _justice?_ Is this _humanity?_" Then you read the article and find out that Ralph was a rampaging elephant who'd been born in the Toronto zoo.
Why elide details in an attempt to make your case? We're just going to find out anyways, and then we'll feel manipulated - assuming, of course, that we bother to read the original article.
It's quite frustrating.
-Darren MacLennan
The easy way to solve this problem? Make tasers the same class of weapons to police as a firearm. Don't have a "less than lethal" category, but rather put all of those into a general "police sidearm" category. Any use of a taser should be justified as if a firearm had been discharged. Personally, I am actually a fan of taser and their use, mainly because they do in fact save lives, especially against violent criminals. If a cop has to choose between shooting a criminal and tasering them, choosing the taser will always be the better choice. However, the way that tasers are being used now is like as if they think their squirting a water cannon or something. Just like how you don't shoot someone multiple times once their down, or you don't shoot a woman with her baby (unless there is some SERIOUS justification), you don't use a taser in that same manner.
#5 - Hear hear! (or is it here here? Hear here? Here hear?) Make police justify them the same as they must justify the use of a firearm... Although, before tasers were around you still heard about quite a few incidents of unjustified firearm use.
"the cops explain that they were genuinely afraid that she was going to kill her baby by smothering it."
----
"The police claim they had no choice, as the girl might have "smothered" her baby."
You complain we "elide details," but we didn't elide the detail you said we did. What you're really complaining about is tone.
OK, in defense of BB, they provided a link to the original story - this, in my opinion, gives them license to slant the story any way they wish, because they are giving you the easy ability to read where they got the info from and develop your own take on it, pro or con. This is very unlike news/blog/things in general, which slant, distort, exaggerate, and even outright lie, but if you want the truth, you have to go googling on your own and good luck doing it, depending on how obfuscated/made up the whole story is. So BB gets a pass here.
In defense of the cops - er, well, I can't. Tasering seems a bit much. I would have punched her in the face repeatedly until she let go of the kid. No risk of injury to the baby in that case. Three hours of negotiations? We used to be trained in this manner: 1) Ask 'em. 2) Tell 'em. 3) Take 'em.
Hrmm, I meant #6, not #5. :)
It is a problem for societies to resolve. Tasers are nonlethal but because the are people are quicker to use them. Guns have lethality and severe trauma attatched to them and their use. So people of moderate empathy hesitate to use them. Tasers are thought to be safe and just really painful.
Personally I would rather be tased than shot or pepper sprayed. I have been hooked up to painful electrodes and had capsaisan in the eyes(granted lower levels than police force), I recovered fine.
Inquiries should be made the same as with a shooting but the lac of deadly force should be remembered.
I was pepper-sprayed as part of my training, and I was issued pepper spray and used it with wild abandon. It's fun stuff. Not appropriate in this case, though, because it gets on everything. It's hard to pepper-spray someone without getting it on yourself, for that matter. And Tasering can kill, it was just in the news the other night.
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/taser.death.nypd.2.826132.html
OK, so it was not the taser but the sudden stop that altered his social standing, but you get the idea.
A punch to the head, though. That's a tried-and-true method of compliance that is pretty safe unless you're Boom-Boom Mancini.
Except, Otralee, that people keep dying when they get tased. Police can't know about things like heart conditions, or other issues that might result in a taser bolt being quite lethal. Which is why tasers should be considered lethal weapons, because the police DON'T KNOW.
The sarcastic use of quotes around "smothering" suggests that the baby was never in danger of being damaged when, as the article notes, it was critically ill and born with life-threatening medical conditions. The tone doesn't just color the article; it openly questions whether the kid was in danger in the first place.
It's akin to saying "Polygamist put to death for "murdering" his niece". Well, he did. Was the kid in danger? I'd say yes.
Here, check this thread out:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=161847
Specifically, the first test. What would you do in these situations?
-Darren MacLennan
They don't really explain why they were taking the baby ... because she didn't check in with someone?
... and having to "earn it back", what the hell is up with that?
John Huff (Indigo Hound Productions, Clam Chowder, etc. etc. ) has been shot a time or two and recovered fine. SO, if that's the criteria for non-lethality, guns are not lethal weapons.
Guns and tasers both kill people. People survive being shot with both guns and tasers. If you are basing your categorization on individual anecdotes of survival, as seems to be the case in all such discussions, then both weapons are in the same category.
Hell, I'm a pretty big guy, you could probably shoot me in the head half-a-dozen times with a .22 short and I wouldn't die. Do we judge based on what one person can take or on what any person can reliably be expected to take? If the latter, it seems Wiggy's punch to the noggin is far more sane than firing tasers.
Of course if they'd decided not to use a taser, what are their other options?
Pepper spray - what happens when you hit a baby with pepper spray? That can't be good.
Physical violence - baby-crushing physical violence? It takes a lot to subdue even one small girl who doesn't want to be restrained without inflicting a serious injury on her.
Sounds like a taser was the best option to me. The presence of the baby was a problem, and since it seems they acted out of the belief that the baby was in serious danger, it can't be criticised unless you think the police are lying.
Although that's the default attitude of a lot of people online these days, which is terribly, terribly sad.
Anon @14: "Sarcastic" quotes? How can you tell that they're sarcastic? They look like ordinary quote marks to me. Like, you know, when you quote something?
#18: I did write my own little screed about how the quotation mark can be used, but let me have Wikipedia help out, as I'm lazy:
---Another important use of quotation marks is to indicate or call attention to ironic or apologetic words. Ironic quotation marks can also be called scare, sneer, shock, or distance quotes. Ironic quotation marks are sometimes gestured in oral speech using air quotes:
My brother claimed he was "too busy" to help me.
Quotation marks indicating ironic use of a term should be used with care. Without the intonational cues of speech, they can obscure the writer’s intended meaning. They can also be confused easily with direct quotations, so some style guides specify single quotation marks for this usage, and double quotation marks for verbatim speech.---
-Darren MacLennan
Say Hello to Taysey
Vancouver's newest Olympic mascot.
He promises an electrifying experience.
Every time.
Seriously. There should be enough happy mutants out there to make and mock up the costume and have it ready by 2010.
frank_in_virginia: It helps, immeasurably, to determine the correct tone, if you imagine the character of Dr. Perry Cox reciting my lines.
Well, she has facial piercings, so clearly she was a threat.
Hmm... I'd rather taser her than impregnate her. Just saying.
"I would have punched her in the face repeatedly until she let go of the kid."
...Problem there is that unless there's the chance she *would* drop the kid in a reflex action to try and block the blows. Granted, same thing might happen when she gets zapped with the taser, but not always. IIRC, only about 10% of those carrying weapons who are tasered drop the weapons before they drop themselves. The muscles don't relax that much.
Of course, the *real* question is whether or not the social buttinskis had a *legit* reason to come and take the kid. After what's happened in Texas over the past 20 years where child custody is concerned, it's *not* beyond the realm of doubt that the case worker is working from lack of clues and/or ulterior motives...
I wonder how the infant would have fared if her mom had moved at the wrong time and 50k volts had gone through her body.
It is hard to imagine that this situation could have not been defused if the cops had been a little more diplomatic.
"After three hours of trying to persuade the five-foot-one, 110-lb. teen to give up her baby, officers warned her she would be Tasered before touching her arm and upper back with the stun gun, ... The mom was seated at the time and officers were able to retrieve the baby, who has been critically ill since birth, from her lap, she said."
"three hours of trying to persuade the five-foot-one, 110-lb. teen to give up her baby ... who has been critically ill since birth"
I'm sorry, I really don't have much sympathy. There have been numerous cases where Tasers were used inappropriately, but preventing a sick baby from getting the help it needs is not one of those times.
mother baby
cops tasers
fear
who should be afraid?
the police claim to ursurp the mothers role of protecting the baby by tasing the mother
what other excuse could they possibly use.
the police could have talked her down. but it appears they were to arrogant and impatient to give her time. they forced the situation in spite of the safety of the baby.
the mother was holding onto her baby too long and the police passed a judgement on how she was holding onto her own baby. in reality it appears they needed an excuse to end the standoff.
who can criticise saving the baby.
everyone knows better about how to care for a baby than a young mother. right?
I have worked in corrections for twenty years, and can tell you tasers are always safer than physical force. We had an inmate in cuffs and leg irons on a gurney. He continued to struggle and all the officers did was keep him from falling off the gurney, but he managed to break his own neck. The officers would have been in trouble if the whole incident had not been on video. If the officers with the girl had subdued her physically and hurt her unintentionally everyone would yell brutality. Tasers can in rare instances kill or injure, but the chance is much greater when using physical force. If I resist arrest please taze me, don't use a baton.
hmmm..
http://www.geocities.com/insurrectionary_anarchists/polbrut.html
what ever happened to the ol' billy club?
What does the record of social services workers in Texas have to do with this case in Vancouver? Did all the Texan social workers move to Canada?
I'm no science expert but wouldn't flesh on flesh contact with someone being electrocuted also involve electrocution to the person touching?
i.e. wouldn't the baby effectively be tazered (even if to a lesser extent) in this situation?
Anyone have an answer to this?
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=368b83b5-2003-41f4-b0f8-1c3ce9e669b4
They didn't "shoot" mum with a tazer. They held her down, then touched it to her neck to make her let go of the baby.
Dad's grandma says mum, dad, and baby went everywhere together. Sounds like she's saying they could be a happy family. "Mentally ill" does not necessarily mean "stark raving mad". Maybe she's just depressed, you know, from being prevented from being together with dad and baby. That she had custody of the baby in daytime tells me that she's not a danger to the baby.
There's a custody hearing coming up. Worried of losing access, she didn't return the baby to foster care on Sunday. On Monday, Social Services called police to take the baby away by force.
Obeying police orders is one thing. But if the order is "give us your baby now", I'm not going to fault any mother or father who does not obey. If fact, I kind of expect all parents to fight for their child.
It sounds to me like the three of them are trying to form a family, but Social Services is doing it's best to split them apart. Why?