A Stitch in Haste

"In Britain, the police don't have guns, and the criminals don't have guns. So if you commit a crime, the police yell, 'Stop or I'll ... yell Stop again!"
--Robin Williams

Actually, now it seems that Britain — like many communities in America, will increasingly rely on "Stop or I'll tase!"

Officers in 10 forces, who are not firearms specialists, will be able to use the 50,000-volt Tasers to protect themselves or the public.
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Until now, about 3,000 Tasers had been issued in Britain, but only to members of police firearms units.
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The Home Office said officers would not be routinely equipped with Tasers. Instead, there would be a selection procedure and only specially trained officers who completed a training programme approved by the Association of Chief Police Officers would be issued with one.

Meanwhile, Taser is now selling "personal tasers" geared specifically for women (cost: $350; color options: five, including pink).

All this occurring, meanwhile, as accounts of "taser abuse" accumulate:

--Hospital security guard tasers a man holding a newborn.

--Campus police taser a UCLA student who refuses to show ID in the school library. (Video.)

--Tasering a dog to death during a drug bust.

--Several recent accounts of "death by taser."

A big part of the problem with tasers is that they were originally marketed as a substitute for guns, but have become a substitute for exertion. Tasers are, increasingly, not used to save lives but to merely make cops' lives easier.

If the rule were: "Never use your taser unless you would also be willing to shoot your firearm..." then I can't imagine too many incidents of "taser brutality." (See, e.g., here.) But instead the rule seems too often to be: "Use your taser whenever you perceive a risk to yourself." Or, worse: "Use you taser whenever you deem it convenient."

That simply cannot be right — not to the tune of 50,000 volts.

So the question becomes: Is the taser debate just a typical, predictable and (hopefully) temporary "feeling out" process that will eventually settle into a widely accepted consensus on proper use? Or is the corruptibility of law enforcement, like the corruptibility of politics, so endemic and ubiquitous as to make the taser a losing proposition from the outset?

(Via Danger Room.)

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As for private tasers, I think there is unarguably a right for competent adults to possess them. The rules and standards for their use should be no different than any paradigm for the private use of force: both a proper justification (e.g., self-defense, defense of others) and an objective standard of reasonableness (i.e., non-negligence) should be required, otherwise the conduct should be both a crime and a tort.

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...

I have only one Sunday update this week:

A Utah trooper who used a Taser to subdue a stubborn motorist who was walking away from him during a traffic stop felt threatened and acted reasonably, state officials said Friday.
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"We found that Trooper Gardner's actions were lawful and reasonable under the circumstances," [Utah Highway Patrol Superintendent Lance] Davenport said at a news conference, joined by Scott Duncan, commissioner of the UHP's parent agency, the Utah Department of Public Safety.

The video of the incident here; my previous posts here.

The problem I have with this update from Utah's law enforcement leadership is the equating of "lawful" and "reasonable." The two words are not synonymous.

If there is one inviolate axiom throughout the law, it is that "reasonable" is an objective term, to be defined by general standards applied by independent reviewers rather than the subjective views of the individual or governmental authority involved.

Tort law, Fourth Amendment law, defenses in criminal law -- they all rely on the fact finder (i.e., either a jury or a judge) to determine, based on objective standards, whether conduct is "reasonable." Even where the standard of reasonableness is defined by the profession (e.g., legal or medical malpractice, fiduciary duty), the standard (i.e., a "reasonable expert") is still applied by outsiders, by independent triers of fact.

It is no more the place of law enforcement to determine whether their conduct is "reasonable" than it would be for a merchant to determine (without input from customers) whether its prices are "reasonable," or for a politician seeking re-election to determine (without input from voters) whether his record in office is "reasonable," or for a student to determine (without input from the instructor) whether her final exam grade is "reasonable."

The officers action may have been "authorized." They may have been "lawful." But the court of public opinion has overwhelmingly decided that they were not "reasonable."

Stated differently: If unreasonable conduct is lawful under the rules, then it stands to reason (pun intended) that the rules themselves are unreasonable.

Taser first and ask questions later?

Edward Casey went to the Federal Heights, Colorado, municipal courthouse to contest a traffic ticket. After losing his case, he walked to the parking lot to retrieve money from his truck to pay the fine, carrying with him the court file. On his way back to the courthouse he was grabbed, tackled, Tasered, and beaten by city police officers.

Try to absorb this: A nonviolent individual committing (at worst) a trivial nonviolent misdemeanor (improperly removing a file from a courthouse) — and in the process of "uncommitting" said trivial misdemeanor by returning to the courthouse — gets tasered:

At that point, Officer Malee Lor arrived in her patrol car. Concluding that Mr. Casey "needed to be controlled," she fired her M26 Taser at him. ... There is conflicting testimony on how quickly Officer Lor fired. One independent eyewitness testified that "[s]he wasn't there longer than a couple seconds."

That was only the first tasering:

According to the witnesses, the officers brought Mr. Casey to the ground, handcuffed him tightly, and repeatedly banged his face into the concrete. After Mr. Casey was on the ground, one of the officers, Clint Losli, also Tasered him by pressing the electrical barbs at the end of the Taser directly into him without launching them. Officer Lor discharged her Taser again and shocked another officer[.]

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, in overturning a lower court motion to dismiss Casey's civil rights lawsuit, not only held that a reasonable jury could find that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated, but essentially said that there is no way to conclude that his rights were not violated:

The absence of any warning — or of facts making clear that no warning was necessary — makes the circumstances of this case especially troubling. Officer Lor gave Mr. Casey no opportunity to comply with her wishes before firing her Taser. ... Her conduct could not be justified by Mr. Casey's resistance to her commands because she did not give him any commands to obey. We have located no published decision in which an officer's use of a Taser has been upheld in circumstances this troubling.

Glad to hear that.

My position is unchanged: With few if any exceptions, taser use is reasonable, and should be legal, only in circumstances when the use of a firearm would also be reasonable and legal.

The case is Casey v. City of Federal Heights, 06-1426 (10th Cir., Dec. 10, 2007) (PDF - 20 pages).

"If they don't (comply), additional force is going to be used. Taser is an available option and if they don't comply at that point, then the trigger can be pulled again, and that's what happened."
--Sheriff Greg White, Cole County, Missouri

The backstory:

A Cole County deputy tasered an angry parent twice Thursday morning when he refused to leave a middle school, Sheriff Greg White said.

Ricky Campbell, 43, was arrested on suspicion of trespassing, peace disturbance and resisting arrest.

At about 8:10 a.m., Cole County School Resource Officer Joe Essen received a call regarding an angry parent at Russellville Middle School.

Essen attempted to arrest Campbell when he refused to leave, but he resisted, White said.

The deputy then deployed his Taser.

As I have repeatedly blogged, this attitude by law enforcement is both inconsistent with the original "sales pitch" of the Taser as a substitute for deadly force (i.e., if it was not appropriate for the deputy to shoot the parent, then it was also not appropriate to tase him), and also unreasonable as an independent question of law (since police force must be proportional to the circumstances).

If the suspect or arrestee is not a direct physical threat to others (or himself), then the use of a violent, aggressive and dangerous weapon such a Taser is per se excessive. "Failure to comply" is simply not enough -- try calling for backup instead.

(Via Danger Room.)

Technorati Tag: Taser.

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Elsewhere in "law enforcement abuse" news:

--Jared Massey, the Utah motorist who was wrongfully Tasered by a state trooper, and who rightfully posted the incident on YouTube, has won a $40,000 settlement in his civil rights lawsuit against the state. Previous post here.

--A "kids in cuffs" incident, and lawsuit, in New York City:

Lawyer Scott Agulnick said Jaden Diaz and Christopher Brito -- both then 4 and students at CS 211, The Bilingual School -- told their parents that a substitute teacher took them and another boy to an empty classroom on Nov. 17, 2006, and left them there alone.

Soon, the lawyer said, the school-safety officer entered the room, cuffed the boys' wrists -- and further terrified them by telling they that they would never see their parents again.
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"He was police," Jaden said. "He said, 'You know what happens when you don't go to sleep in there? ... 'When you go to jail, you're not going to have no fun, no TV, no toys.'"

Why not just tase the kids next time? After all, they "failed to comply," right? (Previous "kids in cuffs" posts here.)