I’ll be putting this in orange in about 1/2 an hour, after you guys get first crack at me! 🙂
Give me a fucking break.
Quote all the Post Patriot Act Law all you want.
Get all gooey and concerned over Officer Safety as you want.
This is pure fucking bullshit.
Introducing 50,000 volts into someones body and taking the risk of death to get a pair of handcuffs on someone who is already subdued is excessive.
Period.
Worse it is Just. Plain. Wrong.
The guy is in custody, he is on the ground, there are at least five armed officers. 
You can’t sit on him for a few minutes until he stops struggling before TAZING him?
And no…it DOESN’t matter what happened before they had him on the ground. Force should only be used against a CITIZEN if cops are in danger.
DID IT LOOK TO YOU LIKE ANY COPS WERE IN DANGER???
Make all the excuses you want.
He was on the ground, he was no ‘threat’ to the officers…he was tazed because they couldn’t get the cuffs on.
What would the cops have done 10 years ago before Tazing became an accepted practice?
Make all the excuses you want.
But don’t pretend this can’t happen to you. Stop and actually think about that for a minute. Abandon your by now entrenched Official Kossak Position On The Issue and….think.
Is it REALLY acceptable to you for cops to inflict 50,000 volts on YOU for just….non-compliance with an order from an officer?
How bout your Mom?
How bout your kids?
Circumstances be damned. No officer was in danger here.
If you are defending this action, your answer must be….Yes. It is Ok with me for a police officer to Taser my child for not complying with an order.
‘Legal’ or not, ‘Procedure’ or not.
Just plain wrong.
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Pic stolen from Lisa Lockwood…go ahead, taze me!
There was no excuse for this. He was just a kid, for god’s sake. An unarmed kid.
No excuse. None.
That’s progress.
they can do it to any of us.
those things should all be melted down and turned into chairs, or deskes or hospital beds or something. Tazers are WRONG!
And automatic weapons with armour piercing bullets too.
And don’t you fucking ‘sportsmen’ tell me all about hunting. Be a sport – go naked into the woods and chase down your game. I’ll even give you a knife so as not to torture anything you might actually catch.
My opinion Is that using a Taser for acts of civil disobedience is using excessive force. Just my $.02.
Doesn’t matter to me whether or not you think the protester was obnoxious or wrong headed in his actions. To me, using a Taser was unwarranted. Some police departments, IMO, allow its use in situations where it is not necessary.
to which Lisa posted that picture:
“After watching that video, there is no way I could agree with that sentiment. His screams of pain… no way. Excessive force to the max. Welkome to Amerika.”
Even if he was resisting, struggling, wiggling, he was on the goddamned ground with at least five people pinning him. The use of the taser was absolutely excessive and extreme. They could have dragged him out of the room and flipped him on his stomach to get the cuffs on.
This incident makes me really sad, more sad than angry at this point.
Good luck over at orange. There is much passion in the comments I’ve seen, covering pretty much the entire spectrum.
That idea is as old as America, some might argue older.
Where the cops went wrong was not handling road house style, always take the fight outside. There was no reason to teaser this fool, just hog-tie and lift out of the arena. Once he was outside and no longer had an audience, I am sure he would have calmed down.
This dude was an attention whore and it worked out brilliantly for him.
His right to free speech ended when he stopped the debate and kept countless other people there from exercising thiers at the mike.
But whatever, this will be forgotten quicker than Walter Reed.
A real problem with all of the non-lethal force police now have at hand.
There need to be very strict standards for when a taser can be used and very strict consequences when they are violated. Not just lawsuits, but criminal sanction.
that since torture has been so successfully exported to other markets, those who have an interest in its implementation are now looking to develop and expand a domestic market for it.
fucking sickening.
I believe these acts are not accidental. They’re done purposefully and intended to send a message to keep people “in their place” so they don’t “rise up”.
I think most people, probably myself included, are afraid of our American police state and are just trying to keep their heads down. This makes me a good German, I know.
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Off to Orange!
but could I call myself a liberal if I weren’t willing to second guess the police? Looks like an overreaction to me.
we have a US Senator in the room, an upholder of the US Constitution and he did nothing. We had a roomful of people, all looking on and doing nothing.
The police don’t have the right to do this. And by not stepping up and challenging this, more police will follow this behavior.
Instead of Kerry issuing statement blathering bullshit about not seeing this (or HEARING IT MAYBE) he ought to come forward and demand the officers be fired. And apologize to this american citizen.
this is not mere bullshit. this is what is happening to us while our country is making other plans.
…We’re finally on our own.
Land of the free, home of the tazed.
(Is it me or do those cops look like Rhodes Scholars to you too?)
Sorry, but as a former college prof, the kiddo went out of turn, spoke his piece (long introductory exposition before getting to his question) and asked a three part question. It wasn’t framed in political-speak, and it wasn’t polite. However, it wasn’t disrespectful, it wasn’t pornographic, and nowhere under the Constitution, did what he said before he was forcibly hauled off, did he violate anything relative to free speech.
If it wasn’t his words, then what was it?
He didn’t threaten anyone with words or actions. He wasn’t trespassing.
He was a student who went out of turn and hogged the mike to ask a question in an unskillful way.
If this isn’t a police state, then I really truly do not know what one is.
It’s abominable. It’s intolerable. It’s the US norm.
What are you going to do about it?
when I was a kid in Humboldt County, CA, when some kids chained themselves to a desk or something at Pacific Lumber’s HQ. The sheriffs went in and while a 14 year old was physically chained down–he couldn’t move as part of the protest–the officer swabbed peper spray DIRECTLY IN THE KID’S EYES. And as I recall, nobody really got punished for doing that.
Boy times have changed. These days in Humboldt if a cop pulled something like that he’d get fired. But back then people went along.
are making my hair stand on end. That this was done under the auspices of a Dem speech is even more terrifying.
Have you seen the logo for Blackwater? It’s absolutely chilling. A guy dressed like a Ninja warrior, with huge, mirrored sunglasses, pointing a weapon at the camera while smaller, similarly dressed mercs march unders him, with the words, “Bringing freedom and democracy to the whole world.” are printed beneath. Dear lord! Freedom to murder, rape and steal and democracy to set up puppet regimes that do our bidding.
I didn’t know how important my freedom was until I lost it in 2000.
VMAD, Sydney’s APEC meeting, designated protest zones, yes this is not America. Wake up, we now live in Northcomm, what didn’t you get the secret memo?
Seig Heil!
Tazering after subduing a kid for disorderly conduct is pathetic. Somehow the fact that he was disruptive and engaged in disorderly conduct takes precedence over the fact that he was endangering anyone.
As a society, we yawned at prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, we made excuses for kidnapping (rendition), we described the Geneva Conventions as quaint, we invaded a sovereign country based on lies, and still find excuses for excessive force used against peaceful protests. All you can do is shake your head in disbelief.
Madison Police tazed a high school kid’s Mother. I guess she tried to interfear with her kid trying to go to school on the first day of the semester. Maybe she was in the wrong somehow, but WTF?
If I could figure out how to make a linky, i’d send you to…
http://www.google.co…
for authoritarianism. No two ways about it. While not tasered, my son was arrested. I just put up an essay about it here:
http://www.docudharm…
This young man was in college. Do you know that in most of our cities we have armed police officers patrolling the halls? We’ve criminalized childhood.
they have been doing this for
a looooooooooooooong time, there
just aren’t videos of all of them.
“Laws can embody standards; governments can enforce laws–but the final task is not a task for government. It is a task for each and every one of us. Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted–when we tolerate what we know to be wrong–when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened–when we fail to speak up and speak out–we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.”
-Robert Francis Kennedy
Maybe we just need to speak LOUDER.
sign…. maybe someday they will LISTEN.
posted a comment at the big orange which neatly sums up the ramifications of this incident:
[http://www.dailykos….]
To repeat, for emphasis:
the “less-lethal” technologies only empower cops to be bigger bloodthirsty powermad bullies, since the public backlash is dampened.
“mama! mama!
someone said they made some noise,
the cops have shot some girls and boys.”
zappa
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…University of Florida police department. These officers deal exclusively with students, faculty, operations and administrative people on campus at U of F. They should understand who they are dealing with …students, not hardened criminals.
Obviously, they overreacted.
I am a resident of the town. The uproar among the people that I know is running at a high level.
See my diary “Speaking of Democracy” for more details.