
That pic is fantastic!
Makes you wonder if he spotted the taser before he got zapped. He looks a little.....concerned!!
Gave me a good ol' chuckle!!
A 17-year-old Philadelphia Phillies fan, who "scurried around the outfield" during his team's clash with the St Louis Cardinals last night, had his home run attempt brought to an abrupt end by a solid tasering. The unnamed male jumped a fence and managed to dodge two security operatives before taking a high-voltage hit from a …
T: Tasers are "less-lethal".
P: "Less-lethal" than what?
T: Ah, less-lethal than guns.
P: But they're not used to replace guns. See photo. There used for everything but replacing potentially-lethal gun-fire.
T: Excuse me. You're trying to apply common sense and logic to our sales pitch. It only works if you don't try to think it through.
Presumably there's a number of reasonably healthy players of the game on the pitch. There's one *enclosed* stadium (our intrepid sprinter had to leap the fence in order to get in) and only a few ways out.
So. Why did it need a taser to bring him to a halt? Far more entertaining to let him run for a bit (like any stadia, these places look smaller than they are and he would quickly run out of steam) then round him up?
One wonders how many of these hands were hiding the mouthed words: "oh, my God" - or is violence such a routine event in the US these days that a tasering (or whatever the term is) really did provoke laughter? If so, I'm making a mental note not to go back to the US anytime soon.
Police in training in the USA get experience in the use of the Taser. Depending on the state, 60-80% of police cadets volunteer to be hit with a Taser as part of that training. From what I am told, it sucks really bad for about 10 seconds and you remain very sluggish for 1-3 minutes.
Taser use is allowed when taking someone into custody has deteriorated to a physical 'activity' (where tackling, nightsticks and other techniques might otherwise be used). It can also be used in a vehicle pull-over if the officer deems it necessary. Tasers definitely place the safety of the officer over the safety of the apprehended person.
There have been deaths with Tasers, but they have been where the person was quite frail or has flame-accelerant on their skin. There have been far more deaths from nightsticks and physical constraint of people. Messing with the police is never for the frail.
"There have been deaths with Tasers, but they have been where the person was quite frail..."
Such as a mouthy-though-drunken octogenerian or mouthy-though-anorexic teenager? Both classes of human be so skinny as a rule (though there are plenty of fat drunken old folk too) as to pose no real threat although one easy target to the Taser Goon Cop, imvho.
"...or has flame-accelerant on their skin."
Such as a fluffy synthetic-fiber Fashion Plate sweater? (Surely not some flammable liquid such as petrol or alky...?)
Tasing the already-cuffed and thus entirely helpless ones seems indeed to be on the rise as well. Fair play? Not by MY book...
Deaths of apparently robust suspects/perps have reportedly taken place when the ill-placed bolt disrupted the implanted cardiac pacemaker, for example. One suspects that the effects of a malplaced shot to the cranial enclosure just might likely produce a net result far in excess of the psychiatrically-approved convulsive effects as well...
Cripple gets crutch; cop gets Tazer®... Just thinkin'.
... could you be a bit less balanced, please - I don't know whether to vote you up or down. "Tasers definitely place the safety of the officer over the safety of the apprehended person" is something I could agree with, because you seem to be critical of that, but "There have been far more deaths from nightsticks and physical constraint of people" sounds like you can see some benefits from their use.
Ms. Bee - can you be more careful moderating this kind of pernicious reasonableness, please?
The Cops are using Tasers like they are Nerf (toy) Guns, the purpose of a Taser i thought was supposed to be subdue a violent offender, not stop someone running round a baseball park.
Its about time the police were sued for using excessive violence. Or better still have the Tasers taken away and have to attend compulsory fitness classes with annual fitness evaluations to ensure that they have a minimum level of fitness.
They had to do something to try and make baseball interesting. Now we just need a computer game where the fat cop tries to take out the young whippersnappers running around the outfield with his Taser. They could call it Major League Baseball 2k10, and would probably get a good uptick in purchases...
The best part about that link is his parents' comments. His mom is more concerned with how this affects the Phillies and his dad assured everyone that, "He wasn't drinking. He was not on drugs."
All I ever really need to know about parenting, I learned from prime time sitcoms.
What is this criminal trespass? ..... you can get a criminal record for trespass! That seams a bit harsh if you have not damaged anything. We really ought to learn a little bit of tolerance - the world would tick along a whole lot better.
...the crowd chanted in glee.
That will be noted by the TV producers and, given their creativity and worship of the bottom line, we can look forward to more "spontaneous Taser events" in upcoming sports coverage. Even burned out over-the-hill personalities may make Taser-assisted comebacks - a Taser-equipped Hulk Hogan in the ring comes to mind.
Considering that Baseball over there is just about as popular as soccer in Europe and over here in Asia, I'd say the tasering was called for. Imagine if he had succeeded his plan: in jumping onto the field, running up to a rival team player and beating him up (yes, that has happened before at soccer matches, I've seen it come up all too many times in the local papers). This will almost always be followed by a full-scale riot. I'd say if the tasering had not taken place, all of hell would've broken loose.
No IT angle, just bitter memories.
the Good Little Lambs all sing in a chorus,
"Tase 'em, tase 'em, all the little children,/Cops is Love, cops is love"...
J'accuse: Forty years hence, when seeking emergency medical attention for an entirely non-related though possibly/likely life-threatening sudden-onset condition, that nimble, energetic young'un of today'll more'n likely be handed The Treatment for Which there is (usually) No Ready Cure instead of the necessary and appropriate patient-beneficial therapy. After all, this IS Modern "Bush-League" Digitalized Legacy America we're talkin' about here, Buddy.
This accusation, one regrets to point out, is more than likely well-justified due to the newly-emerged Black Art of Electronic Medical Records Interpretation; it is emerging largely imvho thanks to the knock-on effects of modern electronic data retention spamming the decades.
Spamming. The. Decades.
SOP: Those who are privileged+tasked to view and take action based on the duly retained industry-standardized decades of any given personal medical+legal+/-military data will reliably see to it that Yesterday's Impulse/Misdeed is reliably treated on-site in realtime, even forty years (yah, two generations) later, as though it Happened Only Yesterday.
Result: "We KNOW what you did. Now take yer seat at the end of the queue on that Group 'W' Bench in the corner over there, stop snivelling and NO Pain Management for YOU today, sonny! Besides, for YOU, the REAL Doctor is OUT!"
Been there as recently as February of this year. It's apparently being field-refined already, albeit somewhat crudely, on *believed-helpless* ER walk-ins. (One rather suspects that this is most likely not at all so for those new acute-symptom arrivals who flash their Gold Card instead of producing Social Security/Medicaid ID at the Registration Window.)
Fought 'em off without ever committing any manner of MacMurphy-on-Ratched assault. Accomplished that objective, albeit at the time from a state of deep-seated physical exhaustion and significant bodily pain (numb with it at the time) as well as numerous half-healed and entirely visible bodily wounds. Mission accomplished by virtue of Adamant Civil Tongue Mastery coupled firmly to Stubborn Resistant Curmudgeonry, said Traditional Elder Privilege being itself robustly buttressed with Having Actually Been There to Begin With. Wave after wave of that incredible twenty-sumpin'-MD-perpetrated college-grade forcewrong ancient-records-based bullshite was provided by the Aggressive Graduate Intern with Full Records Access and No Genuine Life. Even demanded my cell-phone so she could just go bombin' through my contacts to "make sure" I was "real" - never mind that by far not exactly everyone on that personal electronic contact list is in reality exactly that sort of friend - or even necessarily any manner of friend at all. (Sensitive private business contacts with lifework-in-progress ongoing, for one class of example.)
So here's this semi-pretty although really ugly-actin' twenty-sumpin' fresh-grad MD, Playing Doctor on my presumed-helpless person just like a rookie cop (or Main Street opioid addict) on the make-and-take; likely some manner of Trust Fund Baby too, to be sure. So much zeal and so little regard for even the basics of timeline (let alone normal human respect), while all the while I am semi-naked in a jonny-top on the gurney in the corridor, not yet even roomed-in let alone settled, and STILL the intern-grade MD Doctor with a Medical Shrinkage Degree from Hah-vahd comes after me with Multiple Convenient Derivative Contrivances of her Own Preference, all reality and the truth thereof be automatically academically void, null and damned.
Set that one straight so many times I lost count.
Fact: Only adamantly civil and rock-steady hard-shell non-cooperation with that silly college-trained Forcewrong Doctor at last (days later, still in hospital with a friendlike though entirely burly guard stationed at my unit door) finally won me an interview with a REAL HUMAN MD of my own age and somewhat comparable life-experience. With some additional records research and sensitive follow-up effort on my own part, that hard-won interview just might - only just *might* - result in things being set straight in due course at last. (Still in the Discovery Process on that matter... being Medically Mal-Represented is no good and no fun at all.)
Therefore this Old Turtle, who by habit and constitution comes out to speak truth at all times, says that it is surely only a matter of short-term time before the USAmerican Political/Military/Police/Medical/IT Complex routinely albeit surreptitiously (or even blatantly) determines the fate and termination date of the underclass herd, one by one, Stalin/Judge Dredd-style but ever so much more subtle and pernicious. The overall practice seems to be called "Biomedical Ethics" in the field... Like standard-issue intake triage, but from Ex Post Facto Hell instead.
Oh, one CAN trust them... To a certain end...
Beer all around and I'm getting me coat now. Should I make it home unmolested by any more Monetized Doodooheads tonight, I'm stayin' home and makin' me own medicines from Natural Foods, Strong Vitamins and (as last resort) USP Reagent Scratch from now on. Boycott the whole corporate schlemedical schlemazel thang. Live well until I do die well at a time and place of my Creator's and my own mutual consent while the Bleating Herd all goes down to dead silence all-around clueless and non-voluntary though entirely trusting, utterly corporate-media-driven and thus quite unwitting re what the Judas Goat really does for a living.
Here's to LIFE. Hope that Philly-lovin' kid's OK tonight, and in the clear forty years hence, I really do. (One can and does so pray.) As to that Corporate Overclass State's Portly 'n' Uniformed Taze-O-Cutioner... Oh not wuth th' bother so nemmind. It is to stand clear of (RUN FASTER FROM!) all such.
Ta! :)
are a bunch of nasty, fickle thugs.
I was in a cashpoint queue about two months ago with Etienne Esajas in front of me and he was getting some right abuse from a fan who'd "been a supporter since the day he was born". The verbal towards Esajas continued, with him eloquently responding to the fan's concerns.
The fan ended the argument with "I pay your wages so go back to where you f*cking come from you f*cking w*g".
Wish I'd have had a taser, that "fan" and his mates wouldn't have been so big and clever laid on the floor, hopefully having soiled themselves after a tasering.
I'm a Blade BTW.
draft in the local rugby (league or union matters not) club players in their off season to be stewards just like they do at the cricket. Oh yeah I remember american rugby needs all sorts of pads and helmets, and a major misunderstanding of the legitimacy of forward passes.
The article clearly states that they thought it was funny, so not sure where you get ANGRY MEN from, and since the first thing you do in baseball when you start running is to THROW AWAY your bat, I don't really think your point is valid.
On a similar note - if the cop had only had a firearm, would it have been appropriate to use that? If not, then it wasn't appropriate to discharge a semi-lethal weapon either.