Defenders of tasers invariably trot out the argument that "tasers save lives." Despite the obvious evidence, they are convinced that in every other scenario they would have used a gun and shot to kill. However, actual data shows that 79% of the time tasers are used on unarmed people.
Of course it is easier to electrocute than to negotiate. [Easy, and fun!] Most of the time it doesn't even kill the person electrocuted; they just become a lot more likely to cooperate with whatever the torturer wants. And the mere threat of electrocution serves other purposes as well. After all, police have never been known to torture or rape people, have they? No, I'm sure that just magically stopped happening in the early 20th century.
A civil society which loses confidence in its police force is in trouble. Right now there is an unfair balance of power: police carry a torture implement for which they cannot really be held accountable. Tasers which merely record the date, time, and duration of an electrocution do not also record the circumstances, the identity of the victim, the location or the reason for doing so. As such, they not only hold potential for abuse, they practically guarantee it, and the evidence is there.
3 comments:
Perhaps the best check on police power is the plethora of cell-phone video cameras in the world today? (Ala Rodney King?)
I think cameras help in some circumstances, particularly crowd scenes like protests. But other people are not always around, and not often aware or courageous enough to confront a police officer with a camera.
We're certainly moving toward police panopticon surveillance, and patrol vehicles now often have permanently fixed cameras which are recording all of the time. But those don't follow a cop into a cell, and those videos are not readily available to the public. The video of the man murdered by the RCMP was confiscated, and only returned after a lawsuit was filed. If it had been a police video, I daresay it would never have come to light.
Depending on the jursidiction, it is legal to film cops in action, but a dangerous and scary practice – you're filming professionals armed with firearms, and, well, torture devices. Once again, the fact that tasers cause extreme pain and usually leave no evidence makes them especially prone to abuse.
Just like our nephew Eddie, I do not like guns/arms.
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