This one comes from Mobile Alabama, where police used both a taser and pepper spray to deal with a deaf and mentally disabled man who couldn’t understand what they wanted him to do.
Officers who used pepper spray and a Taser to remove a man from a store bathroom found out only later he was deaf and mentally disabled and didn’t understand they wanted him to open the door, police said today.
A spokesman for the Mobile, Alabama police department said the officers’ actions were justified because the man was armed with a potential weapon: an umbrella. But relatives of Antonio Love, 37, have asked for a formal investigation and said they plan to sue both the police and the store. […]
Police spokesman Christopher Levy said today store workers called police complaining that a man had been in the bathroom for more than an hour with the door locked. Officers knocked on the door and identified themselves, but the person didn’t respond. Officers used a tire iron to open the door, but the man pushed back to keep it shut. Officers sprayed pepper spray through a crack trying to subdue the man, Levy said. They shot the man with a Taser when they finally got inside, he said.
Officers didn’t realize Love was deaf or had learning disabilities until he showed them a card he carries in his wallet, Levy said. He was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct, but officers released him and took him home after a magistrate refused to issue a warrant.
Makes you wonder how police ever survived before tasers were invented. How did they ever manage to deal with these stressful situations where someone refuses to leave a rest room stall without the ability to peper spray him and then send 50,000 volts coursing the poor guy’s body just because he he was wigged out by a bunch pf people using a crow bar to force the door open. Oh, and lets not forget the umbrella. That would have scared the crap out of me. How did those boys in blue ever manage people armed with deadly umbrellas back in the old days? I guess they just had to pray Bat Man was on the case.
What did they do in the old days when you wouldn’t “move along”? They beat the hell out of you with clubs, their fists and their boots. Then they buried you in an earthen dam and told your family to fuck off if they didn’t like it. And be careful or they’d end up the same way. That’s what they did in the good ol’ days.
Terrible story. But I can’t help but wonder why he was in the toilet for so long. Instead of a taser and pepper spray, maybe they should have used a plunger and some air freshener. (But, then, maybe I’m just confusing it with my bathroom.)
Cops and soldiers both have hard jobs and deserve some respect and appreciation for what they do. In America, though, we’ve gone way beyond that. We’ve decided that there’s nothing they shouldn’t be able to do, that they should always get the benefit of the doubt, that “fighting crime/terror/badness” justifies pretty much anything.
Allowing cops to use tasers should have been subject to intensive debate, just like allowing use of other over-the-top weaponry. But, except in a few high-media events every so often that let us think everything’s under control, we opt to give them impunity. I was going to say we’ve given up our freedom for the illusion of security, but I can’t actually think of a time when Americans were free.
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A new multi-shot Taser stun gun which can shock three people without being reloaded has been unveiled. The X3 “electronic control device” comes with improved safety features, according to manufacturer Taser International at its headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona.
More than 330 people died after being shocked by the weapons between 2001 and August 2008, according to a report published by Amnesty International in December last year.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."l guess they didn’t have a key to the door, eh…right.
anyway, it’s a lot more exciting to break shit. plus, the article doesn’t identify his race…but making a wild stab at it…l’d guess it ain’t “white”
no shit sherlock.
to serve and protect who?
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The deaf man needed to use the bathroom. He went into store bathroom. The store management called the police. Why? Is it illegal for a Black man to use a public restroom in Alabama?
Police spokesman Christopher Levy says police didn’t realize Love had a hearing impairment until after he was out of the bathroom. The officers’ conduct is under investigation.
Love was tased three times. He said police didn’t realize he was deaf until they got him outside the store. That’s when they looked in his wallet and found a card detailing his handicap.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Well I wasn’t aware there was any potential racial angle to the story. That this would happen to anyone is bad enough. That it may have been triggered by store management being concerned about a black man using their “facilities” is even more disturbing.
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How do these dudes bathe? With clothes on? WTF buch of morons, or is this a discriminatory remark?
For some wine lovers a nude nymph is artistic expression while for others it is offensive trash.
A wine label showing a nude nymph is too much for Alabama‘s liquor control agency, which has told restaurants and stores not to sell the product.
The label on Cycles Gladiator wine, produced by Hahn Family Wines in Soledad, Calif., shows a vintage 1895 advertising poster for Cycles Gladiator bicycles. The French poster features a nude nymph flying beside a winged bicycle.
Damn California liberuls."But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."we need a class action lawsuit against these tasers.
Tasers are used entirely too easily and often, because they’re considered to be “safe” — though that is debatable. People have died after being hit by a taser. And they’re used instead of actually trying to communicate with or persuade the individual, and as Stewart showed last night on The Daily Show, sometimes just when a person is being verbally uncooperative with an officer, but not actually posing any kind of threat. This case illustrates that as well — this guy wasn’t even doing anything illegal, and was certainly not a threat — just difficult to communicate with, between his disability and the closed door.
We need MUCH stricter rules and regs as to when those things should be used, if they should be used at all, much like those concerning an officer’s firearm.
On a side note, there was a somewhat disturbing scene in the latest Transformers movie that involved the casual use of a taser — for comedic effect. This is disturbing in that it does perpetuate the notion in the public that being hit with a taser is not any big deal — not a good impression to have out there, when it comes to public safety.
I wonder if the Mobile police carry cards showing that they are handicapped. Imagine trusting these cretins with tasers. That’s a formula for civil disruption.