The fatal shooting of Walter Scott by a police officer in North Charleston, SC while he presented absolutely no threat to the officer has horrified a lot of people - justifiably. Digby writing at Salon has picked up on something in addition as deserving of attention:
....journalists have gone back and studied the officer’s record and found that he was previously investigated for taser abuse. And on even further investigation it was found that this jurisdiction is known as “Taser town”:
Until the eight shots heard ’round the world, cops in North Charleston, South Carolina, were primarily distinguished by their zesty use of Tasers.
As computed by a local newspaper in 2006, cops there used Tasers 201 times in an 18-month period, averaging once every 40 hours in one six-month stretch and disproportionately upon African Americans.
The Charleston Post & Courier did the tally after the death of a mentally ill man named Kip Black, who was tasered six times on one occasion and nine times on another. Black died immediately after the second jolting, though the coroner set the cause of death as cocaine-fueled “excited delirium syndrome.”
Digby makes the not unreasonable inference that one reason Scott may have run was because he fully expected to be tasered. Further:
It’s important to note that Taser International has spent large sums convincing local coroners that this syndrome (which primarily seems to kill people in police custody) makes it the victim’s responsibility if they have the bad luck to die from being shot full of electricity with a taser. It’s not just illegal drugs in the system which can allegedly cause it. Adrenaline can as well. So if a person fails to remain calm in face of an arrest and finds the feeling of 50,000 volts going through their system to be stressful they have no one to blame but themselves if they die.
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This diary from Shaun King is a horrible example of how taser abuse has come to be regarded as no big deal, a way for police to demonstrate to a victim that they are completely powerless and had better damn well do whatever the officers want. And even then, that may not be enough. As King relates from the Washington Post report:
A mentally ill woman who died after a stun gun was used on her at the Fairfax County jail in February was restrained with handcuffs behind her back, leg shackles and a mask when a sheriff’s deputy shocked her four times, incident reports obtained by The Washington Post show.
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The problem is, tasers have been sold to the public as harmless, at least when compared to being shot. Used as strictly as firearms are supposed to be, that might be the case. What was supposed to have been an alternative to lethal force has become instead a compliance device, torture at the pull of a trigger. And when a police officer with sadistic impulses wants to 'send a message', it has the advantage of not leaving bullet holes in the victim, or telltale bruises/broken bones. Zap 'em, and walk away.
Of course, if the results are too serious to ignore, even fatal, well we're seeing now how easily and routinely such things are explained away, especially in the absence of any video, and how easily the victim can be blamed for 'bringing it on themselves."
Digby hits on one of the key elements that makes this possible: the treatment of tasering in the press. Referring to this news report as an example, Digby observes:
In video captured by cameras aboard a helicopter for KNBC, deputies gather around the man after he falls from a horse he was riding to flee from them. The video shows deputies using a stun gun on him and then repeatedly kicking and hitting him.
KNBC reported that the man — identified by authorities as Francis Pusok — appeared to be kicked 17 times, punched 37 times and hit with a baton four times.
Again, if you look at the footage, Pusok was on the ground, face down with his hands behind his back before anyone tasered him or physically assaulted him. And yet the tasering is apparently considered a-ok. At the very least, it isn’t mentioned as something that shocks the conscience the way the beating does. Perhaps this is because the searing pain of electro-shock doesn’t leave much in the way of a mark. But hideously painful it is. Yet for some reason, delivering this particular agony to a suspect is not something people reject when there is no danger to police or bystanders, and the suspect is compliant. But police do it routinely, and are rarely sanctioned for it.
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Setting guidelines for police taser use, insisting on proper training, etc. etc. is a good thing - but not enough by itself. It's just too easy to torture someone when there's no penalty for doing so without justification - or oversight.
This video of Army MP's in Alaska getting tasered as part of their training is instructive. It's so they'll know exactly what it feels like to be tasered, what it does to the body. Keep in mind these are young people who are in good health and high physical fitness - yet they all scream and twitch uncontrollably as they are carefully lowered to a padded mat. They know what's going to happen - but they also know they are among people there to see they don't get seriously hurt, and it's only going to happen once.
(Warning - this video may contain triggers) https://youtu.be/...
Police officers who use tasers simply because they can have no excuse. From their own training they have to know how painful it is. When they dismiss it as being 'no big deal' because they've been through it and survived, that's essentially BS. Some don't survive, and nobody in their right mind ever wants to go through it again once they've been tasered.
The press has been buying into the 'tasers are harmless' talk because A) a determined PR effort by the company, B) reluctance to confront the police, C) "blame the victim" syndrome, and D) because odds are most of them simply have never been tasered. There's not a lot that can be done about A, B, or C - but any reporter covering news stories involving the police should consider being tasered once so they will know exactly what it is like. (After all, it's supposed to be harmless, right?) While they're at it, they might try a little bit of pepper spray to the eyes, and try breathing some tear gas, other non-lethal 'compliance' tools...
If nothing else, it would give them something to write about.