Video Camera = Weapon?
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A few weeks ago I posted a video depicting one example of the War on Videotaping Cops.
Here's another:
That last sound was of the law-abiding, non-interfering citizen being tasered (and "bean-bagged"). He was acquitted of all charges against him. He, and three others, are now suing.
It's quite simple really: If the police would not be justified in shooting him (and they were not), then they were not justified in tasering him. The sole legitimate purpose of a taser is to replace the use of a firearm, not to convert police into "just another vicious street gang."
The laughable gobbledygook the authorities spewed out after the fact was that the gentleman's camcorder — from a distance of perhaps 100 feet — could be a weapon. By that kindergarten logic, what couldn't be a weapon?
In this video we have the confluence of two disturbing miconceptions: (1) that the taser is a substitute not for a firearm, but for exertion (or, worse, reasoned discourse), and (2) that police have a "right not to be videotaped."
Both of these dangerous fallacies need to be quashed, quickly and permanently.
And, as is so often the case when individual rights and government abuses are colliding, it may well be judges who pick up the slack from the "dedicated public servants" in legislatures.
Stay tuned...
Here's another:
That last sound was of the law-abiding, non-interfering citizen being tasered (and "bean-bagged"). He was acquitted of all charges against him. He, and three others, are now suing.
It's quite simple really: If the police would not be justified in shooting him (and they were not), then they were not justified in tasering him. The sole legitimate purpose of a taser is to replace the use of a firearm, not to convert police into "just another vicious street gang."
The laughable gobbledygook the authorities spewed out after the fact was that the gentleman's camcorder — from a distance of perhaps 100 feet — could be a weapon. By that kindergarten logic, what couldn't be a weapon?
In this video we have the confluence of two disturbing miconceptions: (1) that the taser is a substitute not for a firearm, but for exertion (or, worse, reasoned discourse), and (2) that police have a "right not to be videotaped."
Both of these dangerous fallacies need to be quashed, quickly and permanently.
And, as is so often the case when individual rights and government abuses are colliding, it may well be judges who pick up the slack from the "dedicated public servants" in legislatures.
Stay tuned...
Posted by Kip on
18 October 2007
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