Quote:
Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos
I do see the difference. Your point of "you can't judge because you weren't there" is still bogus though.
Anyway, you made a good point earlier in response to another poster -- that people are arrested all the time in varying circumstances and nobody gets hurt or killed.
But when someone needlessly (and arguably through negligence of the police officers) dies during an arrest, anyone who questions police tactics o is immediately labeled "anti-cop" or dismissed because they "don't know enough about police procedures and don't know what they are talking about".
That's not the way it should work.
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I have never dismissed anything you have said. I am merely trying to promote a better understanding of how/when/why the taser can be deployed.
Again, police are trained to use the taser when presented with a certain type of subject. If that subject is in a certain category, there is a designated level of force that is allowed to be used. The system itself is very dynamic and police must constantly evaluate the subject and the environment. In this case, if anyone of those officer can articulate it's use based on this training, they cannot be deemed to have used excessive force. This is why judging someone from a single camera view can be dangerous.
For example, a suicidal subject has threatened others with a gun. No gun is seen. 2 officers arrive on scene and for the sake of argument they are positioned facing each other, 25 feet apart. The subject is between them (pig in the middle type thing- yes, I again see the irony). Both officers have their guns drawn. The subject is facing officer 1. The subject pulls up his shirt and reaches for a gun. This obviously is not seen by officer 2. Officer 1 shots the subject, while officer 2 did not because he did not have the requisite grounds nor was the subject in the correct subject category to use lethal force.
Although this is an exaggeration, you can certainly see the importance of a) articulation b) perception. This is the crux of my argument. If those officers can ARTICULATE, based on their (not Rouges, not Dion's, not some politician in Ottawa, etc, etc) observations (read, PERCEPTION) that the taser was an acceptable level of force to be used on that subject, it simply can't be deemed excessive. It makes no difference if the police were there for 2 seconds, 25 seconds or 25 minutes- if they can legitimately articulate it's use at the moment in time it was fired, then any other arguments regarding their conduct matters little. The issue you guys have is training and use of force model.
This is why understanding police training/tactics is so important when judging an acceptable level of force. And I know Dion loves linking police brutality threads but I have never once said police are infallible, and there are certainly bad ones and there are certainly poor decisions that have been made.