Granny gets stunned
 

http://www.officer.com/article/artic...&siteSection=1

Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- The city of Portland has agreed to pay $145,000 to an elderly blind woman after police pepper-sprayed and shocked her with a stun gun.

I wish I could feel surprised by this, but I don't. There are policemen out there who are decent people, doing their best; but there's also a significant minority who are little better than the criminals they supposedly are protecting us against. It also just goes to show that there are two systems of justice in this country - one for the white, middle class (preferably male), and one for everybody else.

Okay, so if she was on the ground, on her stomach, how could she be tased in the breast??

sidenote: one of my friend's police dept issued a memo which stated "As of (date) it is the policy of (dept) that suspects cannot be tased for the purpose of making them spit out drugs that they are attempting to swallow."

You have clearly never been attacked by a feisty elderly lady ... the problem in dealing with such is that your instinct to defend yourself is in conflict with the need not to break the little old lady. One of my ambulance crew has a scar from a little old lady encounter that required 30-40 sutures to repair. AND she got him through a pair of heavy work pants. She clawed him. No teeth or weapons involved.

I could do it, if I wanted to and was perverse enough.

She'd have to have large, balloon-like, perky hooters for that.

IIRC, Taser use requires a center of mass shot, within a specified zone of the torso. Also, if someone is already down on the ground, it's usually not necessary to tase them.

I bet she was pirating MP3s.

Actually, I have been attacked by a feisty, elderly lady. This woman had attacked another little old lady in the neighborhood and left bruises on her arms. The police were called and all they did was to tell the attacker to please not resort to violence the next time she had a disagreement with someone. When this same woman later attacked me - she has senile dementia combined with an extreme paranoid streak - I was easily able to grab both her hannds and force her arms down to her sides. No tasers were required, and I am not especially strong.

Bullshit, in a crowd that's precisely who the cops go after. Not the women, not the kids, the men. I suppose W/MC/M never have this happen to them.:rolleyes:

Bullshit, in a crowd that's precisely who the cops go after. Not the women, not the kids, the men.

Exactamundo Bruce , in crowd controll classes in the USMC we were told to watch for the largest folks ( guys) . Though a question was asked " what about the little old ladys with butcher knifes ?" The instructer just paused then said " well then i guess your FUCKED !!!!"

Frankly, I think just like any other predator, they go after the easy prey. Given the choice between a prosperous looking white male in a 3 piece suit and a funny looking kid with green hair and a grubby looking woman, I bet the businessman would be their last choice.

Wrong.:p

Pffft! Anyhoo...

I'm guessing you have some experience to contribute since you have such a cavalier response?

Get off it. I've been dropped on the ground, held down, and pepper sprayed by cops, and I'm a white middle class male.

Fact is, cops are all bad. They either commit henious wrongs in the course of doing their jobs, or they condone it and protect by silence and prevarication other cops who do so.

That isn't a broad brush, that's an industrial class spraygun.

Oh, you're gonna get sooooo many tickets.:worried:

My experience with people with dimentia is that they were remarkably strong.:confused:

As I see it, Whites in the middle and upper classes are "normal." If you don't fall into either of those classes, or don't look like you do, you could be in for a hell of a time. I base that on a variety of factors, such as my personal experience of living in the pseudo-south, the backgrounds of prison populations and various incidents of racial profiling.

Care to retort?

Well, all I can say is that this lady was 80 and pretty frail. I was afraid of breaking her bones. She'd already slapped me once with all her might which was about like getting pawed by a kitten. Also, dementia is just what I assign the reasons for her bizarre attitude to. Maybe she was just - what?

Oh yeah, on the WMCM thing: I think it depends on how you look. Remember I said that the police would be unlikely to pick on a guy in a three piece suit. Now a guy with long hair or a punk rocker look - that's different. I'd be curious to know if any white guy, wearing a business suit, was seriously harassed by our boys in blue?

Yes, especially after dark with no witnesses.:(

Pseudo-south?

And profiling, when used correctly, is a valid pro-active tool.

My friend has picked up as many whites as blacks using it.

When my Nan was in the later stages of alzheimers she dragged a radiator off the nursinghome wall.

Wow! I didn't know alzheimer's gave people such strength! The lady I refer to didn't have alzheimer's. But all this brings up an interesting point: Should the police figure that any elderly person they encounter has alzheimer's and treat them accordingly?

Here's my experience with the police which makes me feel that they are on the side of middle class males. I mentioned an abusive ex boyfriend in the death penalty thread. Well, one of the things that happened is that he tried to strangle me. I was extremely lucky to escape being killed. I went down to the police and swore out a complaint against him and it was taken by a policeman who looked like this guy's twin brother (unsettling, to say the least). The policeman made a half hearted attempt to find the guy (I'd told him all the places he could most likely find him). The cop said he couldn't find him and never issued so much as a summons. He did do a thorough check on ME, however, and wanted to run me in for an old unpaid traffic ticket. He seemed disappointed when his dispatcher told him that the matter had been cleared. That was the endof police involment in the whole thing!

Missouri, particularly the southern portion of the state.

I'm not saying it doesn't have valid uses, but I do think it's abused and overused.

The right tool for the right job.

Matt, if you don't mind me asking, why do you have such disdain for police?

I've had some bad experiences and some good experiences but I would never generalise that broadly about *anyone* *anywhere*.

Here's a good one. :D

I've had the same problems. I got stopped for a DWI, but it turns out that the cops were stopping every car travelling down that sidewalk that day. And that's profiling, and profiling is wrong.

Thanks for the tip about sidewalks. I'll be sure to keep my car off them in the future. Stupid rules!

No, they already have such strength and now lack the social controls that would ordinarily keep them from using it.

Man StunGuns five year old


Somebody oughta hold his ass down and zap HIM a few times....


Sidhe

i don't know if this counts, but i am a middle class white male. i was arrested for dui. i was sitting on the tail gate of my truck, keys in pocket, talking to two friends in my own apartment parking lot. i had 3 beers with dinner with more than an hour before. the cop came through and started hassling me about problems with drunk driving in the area and i told him there wouldn't be any problem here. he then gave me a field sobriety test, which i did fine on, but he was a bike cop and they have no cameras on the bike. his report stated i had to lean on a wall to prevent falling to the ground. (remember i was in a parking lot, no walls) my friends had split. after the field test the bastard spun me around and started to cuff me. i didn't physically resist but i said "what the hell are you doing" SOB dropped me to the cement and pepper sprayed me. he wrote on the report that i resisted and called in backup.

this was about 4 years ago. since then i've become friends with one of his colleagues who said that the cop who got me hates white guys with shaved heads and takes particular pleasure in f'ing up their lives. the cop who jacked me up is hispanic. shit happens both ways. (and no i am not a white supremist, i'm just bald)

the lawyers all said i would probably beat the charge in court but it would cost about $3-4000 grand, if i plead guilty it was 24 hours in sheriff joe's tent city and less than a $1000 fine.

I would have thought that beating the chrage at a cost of $4,000 would have been the cheaper way out once you consider the increase in /loss of insurance.

Has your insurance gone up?

You should have gotten a different lawyer.*

1. You were not observed to be operating a motor vehicle.

2. You were not breath-a-lyzed at the scene, nor do you indicate going to an ER for a blood draw for BAL.

Only thing he could have gotten you on was violation of an open container law, if your town has one, and the resisting, which should have been a reasonably easy defense given the likelihood of the other charges getting dropped.



* the commentary which follows presumes that we are provided an accurate report of the circumstances.

no it never did. i voluntarily surrendered my license for 90 days before trial so i wasn't required to file an sr-22. i have kept the same truck and insurance company with no accidents so the ins. company hasn't run my record since then.

that is an accurate account. i considered another lawyer, but i was trying to get on with a new company at the time. cases which are closed were no problem, but a pending case could have prevented me from getting the job.

i did forget to mention - i was breath a lyzed by the "backup" that came. i blew a .01 which is exactly the legal limit. if i had been operating my vehicle i would admit my guilt, but all i was doing is sitting out there BS'ing with my friends.

Please tell me that you transposed numbers.

most states have a legal limit of .10 for DUI.

Some have dropped it to .08 (like PA).

.01 is the equivalent of "I french kissed a woman who just had a shot right before you had me blow into the little tube."

Also, the breath test is not usually admissable without the blood draw. The breathalyzer does not generate a printout, therefore there is no direct evidence beyond the officer's report of the results.

the breath test is in a mobile van (uh, no shit? why didn't you say a MOBILE van..) anway - it does print out. there is no requirement for blood in arizona. yes i did transpose the numbers, thank you.

i've never looked it up, but they told me that even if i did beat the dui they would nail me with a tag-on charge. something about - not intoxicated, but there was alcohol in the system, presence of keys, and a vehicle. sounds like BS to me, but that is what i have been told.

Someone once told me that if you ever feel you are too drunk to drive, you should pull over and either place the keys under the car or in the trunk, demonstrating that you had no intention of driving intoxicated.

But see what I mean? You "looked" like a skinhead to this guy, you were sitting on the tailgate of a pick-up truck, and from what you describe, I doubt if you were wearing a business suit. I'd like to hear the story of a white male with a regular hair cut, wearing a business suit, sitting in front of his nice suburban home in a well-to-do neighborhood who got the same treatment.

Because a white male with a regular hair cut, wearing a business suit, doesn't sit in front of his nice suburban home in a well-to-do neighborhood. And it doesn't happen to anyone sitting in front of their nice suburban home in a well to do neighborhood because the cops are only looking for people that don't belong there.
It does happen however, to white males with a regular haircuts, wearing business suits, when they're where the police are having trouble.:p

guess again, you don't have to be driving. you have to have control of the vehicle. basically if there are keys, you, and alcohol use you can be convicted of dui. at least in arizona.

i was wearing very nice slacks and shirt with my tie sitting next to me. we typically don't wear suit coats in arizona - something about death by heat stroke...

sorry bruce - on this one you are wrong. this was an extremely quiet area. no issues there. everyone in there would fall into the respectable income, professional category. no drug or alcohol related calls to the police. he just happened to be motoring through and i just happened to be there.

Yeah, but you didn't get maced and tazered, and you weren't wearing a suit.
I can't see that sticking if your car is parked at home. If your at the mall they might have a case, but not at home.:(

trust me - it sticks. i am not a proponent of drinking and driving, but they have gotten the laws so over the top that it is easy to get screwed by them if you have a less than scrupulous cop, which there are plenty of. and it makes no difference what color you are - a bad cop is a bad cop.

Well, I'm willing to admit that I could be wrong in my perception (I believe I was wrong about something once before back in '84 or was it '76? hmmm....). Still, it seems to me that given the choice between a black guy in jeans sitting on the tailgate of his truck versus a whiteman in a business suit sitting on the tailgate of his SUV, the cops would hone in on the black guy a higher percentage of the time, but what do I know?

Speaking of DUI's: I know a guy who realized that he'd had too much to drink, so he pulled his car into the parking lot of the local Safeway. He pushed the driver's seat back and took a little nap to sleep off the alcohol. The next thing he knew, the cops were pounding on his window and charging him with a DUI. He'd have been better off just driving home drunk and sleeping it off there.

He should have hidden the keys and slept in the passenger seat. That has been used successfully in court.;)

Yeah, I've used a varient of that one. I wasn't driving drunk, but my driver's license had expired and I had a whopping traffic fine that I had to pay before I could renew it, and I simply didn't have that kind of money. I was driving along and one of my contacts popped out. Some 6th sense must have warned me because I pulled over to the side of the road, pulled the keys out of the ignition and got into the passenger's seat to look for my contact. Sure enough, the cops pulled up to see what was going on. I told them that I'd just had a big fight with my boyfriend and that he'd gotten out of the car and walked off in a huff. I must have seemed believable, especially with my eye filled with tears due to the contact lens problem. They ran my vehicle on their computer and saw that it was legal, registered in my name. I told them that my "boyfriend" had been driving since my license was expired. The cops actually gave me a ride back into town where I called a friend to come get my car for me!

Well, it happened again.

Woman in Taser case gets probation, horn-honking charge dismissed

So the cops respond to a disturbance call, get into an argument with a 67-year-old lady in the street outside which escalates, and end up stunning her.

a) Why not just walk away? She wasn't interfering with their duties.
b) What about the original call? It would be pretty embarrassing if someone was seriously injured or killed while the cops were outside stunning bystanders.

The fact that neither the woman or her husband had any kind of record makes me suspicious of the cops. I don't know enough about the witnesses relationship to the woman or her husband to judge their testimony.

In elementary school we were taught to walk away from rude people. Maybe next time the cops can repeat 'stick and stones' a few times and get over it.

Tonight police brought us an unruly 14 year old girl.

What's unruly? She had taken her legal guardian's living room apart ... broken furniture, vases, picture frames, everything. The kid was raging and not going to stop.

Not for nothing.

That's why the guardian called the cops on her ... even the cops couldn't get her calmed down despite their relative expertise in de-escalating the extremely pissed off.

So, the cop pulled out his special magic wand ... and the kid cut the shit right out.

Because she looked down and saw the little red dot from the laser sight on the Taser smack in the middle of her chest.

Magic.

WHAT??? You're fuckin' kidding me!

FUCK THAT SHIT!

If a cop ever points a taser at me they WILL see a lawsuit. I don't care if it's a busybody lawsuit. They need to cut that shit out, pronto. This was not the idea of not using deadly force, that they can fuckin' cattleprod 14 year olds at will, and anyone else who's remotely out of line.

Who gives a crap how much furniture they destroy!

Sooner or later someone's gonna catch 50000 volts across their bridgework, and forget how to say their own name, and then sorry won't be enough.

Sorry UT, you're way off on this one. The cops are there to put a stop to her destruction, not to watch while she "lets off steam" in a violent or threatening manner. They also have the right to protect themselves in the course of their duties, and physically wrestling a 14 y.o. girl is an invitation to about a dozen other lawsuits ranging from molestation to unnecessary force. Notice, also, that the threat of being tasered was enough to calm her down. That's the way it's supposed to work.

Every cop that carries one has been zapped themselves. They don't aim for the head, they hook em in the torso from close range. I say fire away.

Tasers are fine for most people. With my heart, I would very likely die if tasered.

Needless to say, I plan to say "yes sir" and "no sir" to cops at every opportunity. Heck, I might even call the station and say it for no reason whatsoever, just in case.

Things like taser usage play the odds. Odds are that more serious injuries and deaths are going to be prevented than caused nationwide, over time. I think it is a viable alternative to other, less subtle methods of intervention and restraint. That said, there *are* going to be abuses. There is another taser case which was just concluded in KC that cost two cops their jobs for tasering a guy *five times*. He was combative and could well have hurt both himself and the cops, but there was a dashboard video from the cops' car showing the whole incident, and the department determined that #5 was uncalled for and vindictive, and so the cops lost their jobs.

Nobody gave a crap about the furniture.

It was about the killing the aunt parts. And the screaming. And the raging. And the refusing to respond.

Essentially the same things that went into the decisionmaking about pepper spray.

I also expect that you are imagining what you remember 14 year old girls to be too ... she was about 5'9" or 5'10" and looked like she was 25.

Well the 16 year olds in the Wawa parking lot in West Chester at 10pm last night had their own taser and it was like a joke to 'em. I guess the old rule about not pointing a weapon at something you don't intend to destroy doesn't apply any longer. This wasn't what was intended with non-lethal weaponry.

Somehow, I don't think 'tort reform' is a reason to taser someone. Cops have every right to defend themselves and protect the public. Choosing zapping someone with 50,000 volts over the destruction of some furniture is a bad choice.

Tasering someone for talking about hurting someone seems counterproductive. It won't make them change their minds.