VIDEO: Handcuffed Woman Tased in Police Station
Published on 2007-12-03 00:00:00
“Last November, [Kristina Fretter] was stunned with a Taser while in handcuffs in the Sheffield Police Department booking room after being picked up for drunken driving. The officer who fired the Taser, Edward Long, resigned, and charges were dropped against Fretter in exchange for her promise not to sue the village,” the Chronicle-Telegram reports.
“Tasers occupy a strange place in the police rulebook,” notes Peter Gorman, writing for the Fort Worth Weekly. “Law enforcement officers learn what is called a ‘use of force continuum’ to determine what means or weapons they may use in different situations. The ‘continuum’ begins with simple police presence, then moves up to issuing commands, then the use of open hands, and after that, pepper or other chemical sprays, closed hands (including elbows and knees and other takedown moves), the use of a hard baton, and finally, the use of lethal force.”
You might think Tasers would fit somewhere near the “lethal force” end of that list, right before a gun. Instead, however, many police agencies place Tasers immediately after the “issuing commands” force level — which suggests to officers that using a Taser is less serious even than a push or pepper spray. Which also means that if an officer asks you to produce your driver’s license and you ask “Why?” rather than immediately complying with the order, there’s a chance, in some jurisdictions, that you could, within their rules, be hit with a Taser for refusing the command. That’s in part how Tasers have begun to be used, not as serious, life-threatening weapons, but as a bully’s tool of compliance, something to get people in line — with sometimes egregious consequences.
One such jurisdiction seems to be Austin, where a man was tased for producing his license too slowly (see video). It appears the cop in the video was looking for somebody to use a taser on, as the man in the vehicle seemed to be following orders, albeit too slowly for the cop. The man’s crime? He was driving 70 miles per hour on a 65 mph road. Please keep this in mind the next time you are in Austin and you are driving five miles per hour over the limit.
As an increasing number of disturbing incidents reveal, far too many cops apparently get off on electrocuting people, thus prompting an obvious question: are police departments hiring sadists who revel in inflicting pain and suffering on others? Sadly, it appears the answer is affirmative.
It’s an inescapable conclusion: cops love their taser guns and they love even more to use them on people not quick enough to respect their authority.