I’d continuously taze that fucker until they sat up straight and fucking OBEYED me. That’s what i’d do. What would you do?
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Indeed.
They talk about “damage to property” as if it’s something that can’t be fixed. He kicked the window out of the car, right? Can’t they just… I dunno… buy a new window?
Now that they’ve killed this guy, you can’t really go buy a new guy.
How damaging property becomes the justification for tazing someone is beyond me. Even if they’re threatening to hurt themselves- (as I’ve said before…) the laying of hands on someone to restrain someone is a last resort. And tazing isn’t any sort of “restraint” I’ve ever heard of.
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You really have to read the source material they started out that way:
"As the officers pulled up to the hospital, Lambert kicked out the squad car window.
Video from inside the car shows officers yelling at him to stop. When they cracked the passenger door, Lambert jumped out, sprinting roughly 20 feet towards the ER entrance and crashing into the building’s glass
doors.
The officers ran after him and began tasing him. In response, Lambert’s body goes stiff and, with his hands cuffed, his arms could not break the fall when he hit the cement. The three officers surrounded
him on the ground. "
Could it have been handled better? Of Course. But the source of all the problems is Lambert. I don’t see warriors or sadists going nuts - I see people frustrated with a lunatic who is crazed on coke. He has proven to be a threat to himself and others, he has broken several laws, and they are taking him to jail now, rather than make the hospital workers call the police. As far as I understand it, the hospital can’t admit him or restrain him without his permission, or unless he has been arrested.
There are abusive cops out there who need reining in. We disrupt that process every time we second guess good cops.
I still waiting for your suggestion as to how to restrain him without a tazer or physical force.
Your wife, the nurse, does this without physical force or drugs? She must be a Jedi. Please don’t just say “simple techniques”, explain, link, enlighten. I don’t know them, clearly these simple techniques aren’t part of Police training.
He was cuffed, but if they sat on him, it would be excessive force, right? You see how this becomes impossible. Clearly repeated tazing isn’t the answer, but if the cops can’t wrestle, can’t hit, can’t taze, can’t shoot, what are they to do with someone who is resisting them?
Then you seem perfectly qualified for a career in law enforcement.
Uh huh, mmm-hmm. So after they arrested him outside the hospital, which option would seem to make more sense, treating him at the hospital, or killing him?
You might not have grokked your own philosophy here, but it is that of a murderer.
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He didn’t say to restrain him “without the use of physical force.”
It’s a hospital. They have both the training and resources to restrain this man both physically as well as chemically.
Restraint training is a thing. It is physical. It is formalized. It, when practiced properly, allows the physical control of adults who are agitated.
Tazing is not a restraint technique.
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I will never fuck the fuckers. I have some fucking self-esteem.
It makes me think of "soft power" in general can actually facilitate even greater violence and domination.This is in my opinion not correct, the main problem is not the less lethal weapon but the (trained and politically desired?) willingness to use a taser as first (re)action. Training in de-escalating conversation is also a soft power, but does rarely increase violence.
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You’ll have to ask her. I can’t do it. I know she uses physical force (intelligently) as well as pressure points when danger is involved and restraints when called for. She’s taken me down in the blink of an eye on a couple of occasions.
Why would it be? They can sit on his legs, his arms, and his stomach without harming him.
Who says they can’t wrestle or hit? They just have to not do it excessively or to a person already restrained. And I’m kind of shocked you would even add shooting as a restriction on what they can’t do to restrain. Are you kidding me with that BS? You only shoot when lives are at stake. You never shoot someone just for resisting. Wait… are you a cop?
Get training from people who actually know the answer to that question would be my first reaction. Most of these problems with cops killing people could be resolved by putting cops in jail for murder. I imagine you would see some fairly effective non life threatening techniques displayed if cops were held to the same standards as your average street bum but I suppose that’s too much to ask of them.
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It can easily be argued that he had not broken any laws when police first abducted him. Noise complaints are quite subjective, and “being delusional” isn’t even a crime.
Lambert was detained after officers responded to a noise complaint and found him to be delusional
If they are frustrated with him, isn’t that their problem? There is no mention at all here of a threat to others. He was arguably a threat to himself, but needing to kill the guy to subdue him is a quite ineffective way to protect somebody from themselves.
Why bother restraining him? By their own admission, it wasn’t until he was subject to police handling that he had become difficult.
Respect is something which needs to be earned. And when cops try to earn it by ordering people around, grabbing them, processing them like meat, this respect and the cooperation associated with it are lost. Which I think is perfectly natural, and as it should be. Police belligerence is basically the tantrum of an armed toddler and people conceding to it sets a bad example.
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Call an ambulance, drug overdoses are a medical emergency. You know what you don’t do when you’re Monday morning quarterbacking? Blame the victim of the homicide for the behavior of his killers.
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Yeah, definitely. But often there seems to be this expectation that the introduction of new “more humane” control technology will inevitably result in the authorities being more gentle:
Instead of shooting people dead when they’re threatened, cops can use tazers to temporarily incapacitate them. This will let police do their job with less violence!
Instead of putting cops on street corners to hassle people and get in their business, we can put cameras there. Order will be maintained with less invasion into people’s lives!
Instead of isolating prisoners by locking them up in huge jails, we can fit them with tracking devices and cameras, and use automatic surveillance systems to monitor them at all times. This will give our prison population more freedom!
In fact, we just end up with police using tazers literally just for fun, surveillance becoming more invasive than even the worst secret police could be, and (soon) the prison system being extended outside the walls of the jail and onto skyrocketing numbers of people, as it becomes increasingly cost-effective to place people under direct state supervision.
As you suggest, if the political purpose of a system is domination, it will use all technologies toward that end. We can’t fix the police by changing the tools they use, we have to abolish the political institution itself.
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Pretty much. Making society more humane ultimately means getting rid of entrenched “authorities”. Career police and career politicians exist to lie about perpetuating problems.
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I think your last sentence is the most important one: It is nearly impossible to solve organisational or political problems with technology (true everywhere). In the case of the police it’s the training - both content and duration.
Compare the US and Switzerland, in the latter it takes a year of apprenticeship before a police officer can begin the on-the-job training and specialisation. 10 years ago the first Swiss police units introduced tasers, I’m not aware of incidents comparable to this one.
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OK, just got back word from my wife on why a nurse can subdue a person without killing them but cops have a problem with it. Her response: “because cops are pussies”
So there you have it.
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A more human society would also require a higher degree of first-responder training of their police workers— a level at or above that of EMTs.
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That’s no reason to pay them a complement!
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Not like you have the honor to do more than muddy the waters, but nobody said anything about physical force besides you?
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I think the cops were just lazy. Subduing a man properly takes effort. Much more fun, I mean easy, well, easy and fun, to just zap the sucker. Over ‘n’ over.
Edit: added “properly” to 2nd sentence.
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In other news: the government of Norway announced today that the police officers will not carry weapons anymore - and they were only armed for a year because of more concrete terror warnings.
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