Two white police officers in Merced, CA used a taser twice on an African American double amputee in a wheelchair, allegedly because he resisted arrest when he held onto his wheelchair to prevent being thrown on the ground by the police officers. Then they handcuffed him while he was on the ground, after his pants had fallen down exposing his genitals to the public at the apartment complex where he lived. He spent several days in jail though he has yet to be charged with any crime by the District Attorney:
The man who was Tasered, Gregory Williams, 40, a double-leg amputee, spent six days in jail on suspicion of domestic violence and resisting arrest, but the Merced County District Attorney’s office hasn’t filed any charges.
Williams is black, and the two main arresting officers are white, but it’s unknown whether race played any role in the incident.
Williams, who was released from jail on Friday, said he was manhandled and Tasered by police, even though he said he was never physically aggressive toward the officers and didn’t resist arrest.
A handful of residents in Williams’ apartment complex said they witnessed the incident and supported Williams’ charges. A short video clip, shot by a neighbor and obtained by the Sun-Star, shows Williams sitting on the pavement with his pants down, his hands cuffed behind his back. […]
Pinnegar grabbed William’s 2-year-old daughter from his lap, handing her to the CPS worker. “I said, ‘What are you doing? I haven’t done anything!’ ” Williams said.
Williams said Pinnegar unholstered his Taser, jammed it into his rib cage and shocked him twice. Williams said he fell from his chair onto his stomach on the ground outside his doorway.
While he was down, Williams said, Court put his knee on his neck, and one of the officers then cuffed both of his wrists. At some point after he fell out of his chair, Williams said, his shorts slid down his legs.
With his hands cuffed behind his back, Williams said, he was unable to pull his pants up. He said police left him for five to 10 minutes in that position on the pavement, with his private parts showing as neighbors and onlookers watched.
At the link I provided there’s a video (which I would embed here if I could) which you should watch. Mr. Williams is not a large man. He’s got gray hair, a thin frame and does not present a very imposing or menacing figure. His testimony in the video suggests that the reason he was tased was because one of the police officers said Williams had a “big mouth” and told the other one to tase him. His story is backed up by a white man on the video identified as his brother-in-law.
You can’t say this is a shocking story anymore. It appears to me that tasers have provided a certain element of law enforcement an easy excuse to torture people who they don’t like. Shooting an unarmed double amputee, or bashing him about the head with a baton would be considered use of deadly force, but tasers? Well, I guess that’s just considered a measured response to anyone who offers law enforcement officials any “sass” or “back talk.” Even if they are a double amputee in a wheelchair. Maybe even especially if they are a black, 40 year old double amputee in a wheelchair.
Not that we have any racism in America, or that our law enforcement agencies treat minorities any differently than white people. That would be wrong to assume that now that we as a nation elected an African American as our President. Wouldn’t it?
Update 1: Here’s the You Tube video of the incident as described by the victim, Mr. Williams:
Update 2: Taser victim not charged by DA because “there wasn’t enough evidence”. Police involved being investigated by Internal Affairs for incident.
I’ve got a five dollar bill that says it did. Anybody wanna bet?
Sorry, I never bet against a sure thing.
The brotherin-law is white, so h’s married to a white woman. Man, this is sooo much a sure thing.
Worth noting that before the right-wing freak out over Obama and the ensuing eruption of race issues into the national discourse, that that line probably wouldn’t have been in the article.
This is why it’s better to have the bigots spazzing out on national television than festering at home.
Me either!
I’d have left out any mention of race in the account. After all, so what if the police are “white”, their victim (that’s what he is, a victim) black? Would you be less outraged if the victim had been “white” men (or women) or the police “black” men or women?
To me, what’s outrageous is the police assault on this poor fellow who, whatever he was supposed to have said or done to prompt the attention and the abusive assault on him on the part of these police officers, couldn’t possibly have posed any danger to anyone involved. What’s outrageous is that it obviously didn’t even occur to these uniformed, badged thugs in the public’s pay that there could be and should be any difference in the way they proceed to question or restrain or arrest an elderly wheelchair-bound man—NEVER MIND HIS RACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Where does such a penchant for spur-of-the-moment violent abuse of official authority come from?
In my view, it comes straight from the unthinking idiocy which cheered a defiant (though illegitimate) President George W. Bush when he stood atop a pile of rubble in the wreckage of the New York World Trade Center site and vowed to get those “responsible”, others, in the gallery of rescue workers shouting toward whomever might hear, “Whatever it takes!”
On that day, what was or ought to have been very, very clear, was that now there’d be no tolerance of any restraint in the use of force in general. Those who didn’t shoot first and ask questions never had much more reason to fear repercussions of their hesitation than those who cavalierly would shoot without hesitation.
Are you, were you, a fan of the television series ’24’? If so, then whether you understand it or not, whether you know it or not, and whether you admit it or not, your own acceptance of authority’s use of violent force (as glorified in that program’s episodes)— with little or no oversight or sanctions before or after the facts— has materially contributed to a national climate of accepted violent force on the part of the authorities.
How, why, by some strange manner, should a nation which made ’24’ a top hit television series for season upon season be “surprised”, “shocked”, when it happens that the police can consider it their routine duty to throw a wheelchair-bound double amputee to the ground, roughly handcuff him and then inflict even more injurious harm?
In the face of all that, what strikes some most is that the victim was “Black” and those who assaulted him “White”?
“A dog starved at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.”
(“Auguries of Innocence”)
“Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion.”
(The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
— William Blake
I never watched 24. Not one damn episode.
And you;re free to have your opinion here, and I’m free to disagree with it. Too many cases of the use of tasers have been against poor African Americans, just as more black men are stopped for driving while black, etc.
” never watched 24. Not one damn episode.”
Congratulations! Really.
“And you;re free to have your opinion here, and I’m free to disagree with it.”
Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. That is as trivial and beside the point as it is true.
“Too many cases of the use of tasers have been against poor African Americans, just as more black men are stopped for driving while black, etc.”
And you’re free to harp upon the single element of racial opposition in this story. That, too, is true, but it isn’t trivially true. It’s material, material to the fact that lots of people who’d instantly join you in your outrage over the simple facts of abuse of police authority cannot, despite all their best intentions, get as worked up over the fact that the police in this instance were “White” and their victim “Black”. That would be (in many of these people’s cases) because, to them, there is simply no need, when pointing out that, for example, Pol Pot was a genocidal maniac, that he was also a racist.
What you don’t seem to understand is something which to me is flagrantly obvious here:
when you emphasize the racial element which, as it happens in this particular instance, is that of an outrage committed by “Whites” upon a “Black”, you invite “White” people to either
a) join you in what looks like a one-way condemnation of a phenomenon which is not a “White” sickness any more than it’s a “Black” sickness or that of any other racial profile while, in doing so, they studiously ignore the cardinal fact that racism is a “HUMAN” sickness and making a general condemnation of the phenomenon—something which a fair-minded person would rightly balk at doing, despite your insistence on its overwhelming importance,
OR
b) simply turn off or turn away from what is a patent case of exceptionalism: namely, “Let’s all join in condemning this episode mainly, if not exclusively for its racial aspects!”
And, in doing that, you pave a handsome path for the proper cause of outrage, the violent abuse of police authority, to skate calmly away while you turn shades of purple and invite others to do the same. The thing is simply this, (and this is something that garden variety contemporary liberals seem helpless to grasp):
I’m anything but confident that these hardly-subtle points will make their way through the thicket which apparently surrounds your critical thinking capacities; but others may see the point and appreciate it.
Methinks thou dost protest too much. There are studies which indicate black suspects are disproportionately tased by police. Here’s one from Houston last year:
You seem to think ignoring racism in America is preferable to pointing out instances in which it likely played a role in the outcome of a particular events or series of events. That’s naive, at best. I have cited many stories that show African Americans suffer from the effects of institutional racism in America: significantly higher death rates from heart attacks at emergency rooms hospitals, lower life expectancies, lower birth weights, higher infant mortality rate, discrimination in obtaining home mortgages, pay higher rates on credit cards and have greater difficulty in obatining jobs, etc. (and that’s with other variables being equal).
Is racism a world wide phenomenon? Sure. But it is minority populations who suffer more harm from the prejudice and bigotry of majority populations than vice versa. The point of stories like this which point up the racial element in abusive incidents like the above is to show that the stereotypes whites have that the blacks usually deserve it, and the cops get a raw deal on the “racism” card is flawed. When even a double amputee in a wheel chair can be abused by white police officers despite not resisting arrest (and remember the DA refused to back up these cops by filing charges) the outrageous quality of their behavior is an object lesson, as much as the fire hoses and dogs used against non-violent black children protesting for their civil right also helped white Americans see the racial injustice of the official power structures in the South in the 60’s.
You seem to be taking this personally. The point is that all too often we in effect, tacitly condone this behavior because we don’t know about it, or we resist hearing about the ugly things that would disturb “our beautiful minds” in the words of the infamous Barbara Bush. Until the entire society condemns these behaviors they will continue. And your personal moral stature and lack of personal prejudices will benefit no one unless you bear witness to these wrongs and seek to do something to correct them.
This is ‘the point’!?? :
[where you write, erroneously]
???
Granted, what I point out below is a minor mistake on your part, and, moreover, I still see the point you are trying to make (about which more in a moment, but first):
Even “tacitly”, one can’t fairly be said to “condone” what one doesn’t “know about”. I trust you can see that.
In fact, however, no sentient American (or anyone else, for that matter) who is sane can, with any reasonable liklihood, be ignorant of the fact that racism is a regular feature of human affairs in the U.S. (not to mention everywhere else on the planet).
But what I most object to about your argument is what you expressly assert here:
“Until the entire society condemns these behaviors they will continue.”
No, again, as I am trying to point out, EVEN IF the entire society condemned these behaviors they would still continue.
Think about why that is necessarily true, please.
Do you, for example, expect that thanks to brilliant crime prevention work one day “crime” itself will be eliminated or even largely thwarted to such a degree that it’s almost a relic of some long past time? If not, then I wonder, why would you harbor any different belief concerning racism?
“And your personal moral stature and lack of personal prejudices will benefit no one unless you bear witness to these wrongs and seek to do something to correct them.”
I do advocate that “something” be done to “correct them”: namely, I advocate the arrest and prosecution for criminal assault (in this instance, for example) wherever and whenever the police actually behave as they are described to have done in this case. That is called “fighting crime” which I favor. I also favor identifying and punishing and rectifying wrongful prejudice, of which racism is one example. Someone is denied an opportunity or is made to suffer the infliction of an injury because of his or her race? That’s wrong, an “evil” and I am unconditionally in favor of its punishment and the restoration of the aggrieved person’s just interests which were denied.
But none of that means in even the slightest way that I regard these racist wrongs as part of “X” race’s faults, general habits of thought or behavior, etc. When racism is practiced, it’s done not by or “on behalf of” any particular race. It’s done, rather, by this or that individual and you continue to stubbornly ignore that fact without comment.
We can no more “correct” all such people “once and for all” (as you seem to urge) any more than we can “correct” any other individual anti-social behavior “once and for all” among all a society’s population. That is no more a call for a renunciation of an effort to recognize and punish those who practice racism any more than the same recognition regarding criminal behavior is a call to renounce combating that phenomenon.
We differ over the nature of what we both oppose: racist behavior.
If in your view the answer to racism is achieving the goal of getting every “White” person of good will to see it, recognize it and condemn it, you’ll be disappointed to discover that even if that were to come about, it still wouldn’t mean the end of the issue. And that is why I see little point in holding anti-racist pep-rallies for well-intentioned “White” people to demonstrate their bona fides or in calling on them en masse to pronounce ritual incantatory denunciations.
“Races” do not practice ‘racism’ despite that it can often seem so. Whole societies? Yes. Frequently. And this can indeed be “institutionalized” behavior. But that still doesn’t make it a ‘ “White” thing’ any more than a ‘Black thing’. Instead, it’s a phenomenon of the “dominant class” wherever that dominant class is distinguishable as a race (or even a minority number of dominant races combined).
And least of all is this something I take personally. [“You seem to be taking this personally.”] Indeed, that’s an odd complaint coming from you when, if anything, you seem most upset because I’m apparently not taking this episode personally enough let alone too personally. Yet another example of your patent confusion over the matter.
You are the ideal person that the movie “Black Like Me” was made for. I suggest that you view it!
he didn’t write about it as an outrage of “whites” upon “a black” he wrote about it as a tasering by a white police officer of a black double amputee in a wheelchair (and btw he had his 2 yr old daughter in his lap). Steven D is pointing out some specifics of this incident.
Ever hear the Monty Python routine where a guy hires another guy for 50 pounds to move a piano from one room to another? Turns out it’s the piano Napoleon played at Waterloo that the guy wants moved from the Louvre to his apartment in London – left out a few pertinent details. just sayin.
If your comment
“he didn’t write about it as an outrage of “whites” upon “a black” he wrote about it as a tasering by a white police officer of a black double amputee in a wheelchair (and btw he had his 2 yr old daughter in his lap). Steven D is pointing out some specifics of this incident.”
is directed to me, “thank you”, but please note,
Duh. I got that. I got it the first time, in fact. And, it so happens that whichever way you pose it, his emphasis (as your “rephrasal” [needlessly] makes plain) is still upon the racial factor at the expense of everything else.
well it wasn’t clear that you got it because you rephrased it as a discussion of an outrage of “whites” on “a black” and that’s not at all what he was writing about. Everyone here knows that many white ppl voted for Obama, even self-proclaimed racist white ppl voted for Obama because they thought he was the best candidate to solve the usa problems. As far as discussion of this incident, the Skip Gates incident and others, I say finally we are having at least the beginning of a national discussion of this – and it wouldn’t be happening if the repub candidate had won. So thank you very much for saying we shouldn’t have this discussion, I disagree.
I “rephrased it as a discussion of an outrage of “whites” on “a black” and that’s not at all what he was writing about.” ?
I’m not even sure I understand what you mean there. In no way have I “rephrased” or otherwise altered this article’s specific emphasis on the racial aspects of the incident.
Here, taken verbatim and unchanged, is the author, StephenD, of this “diary” entry describing for us the incident:
then, in defense of his emphasis on the racial character of the police officers’ motives in assaulting this man, StephenD writes in his replies to my comments,
“Too many cases of the use of tasers have been against poor African Americans, just as more black men are stopped for driving while black, etc.”
“You seem to think ignoring racism in America is preferable to pointing out instances in which it likely played a role in the outcome of a particular events or series of events. That’s naive, at best. I have cited many stories that show African Americans suffer from the effects of institutional racism in America: significantly higher death rates from heart attacks at emergency rooms hospitals, lower life expectancies, lower birth weights, higher infant mortality rate, discrimination in obtaining home mortgages, pay higher rates on credit cards and have greater difficulty in obtaining jobs, etc. (and that’s with other variables being equal).”
and, going on, he writes,
“The point of stories like this which point up the racial element in abusive incidents like the above [emphasis added] is to show that the stereotypes whites have that the blacks usually deserve it, and the cops get a raw deal on the “racism” card is flawed.”
If that doesn’t make clear to you where StephenD places the key emphasis, then I really think you’re not paying attention. It’s on race. And that is the gist of my dispute with his portayal. I don’t deny that the incident was likely to have had some racist motive on the part of the police. And, by the way, it’s also utterly untrue that I “think ignoring racism in America is preferable to pointing out instances in which it likely played a role in the outcome of a particular events or series of events” as StephenD says seems to be the case.
What I think is that while it’s one thing to give due steady consideration to the problems of racism and race relations in the U.S. and in every other nation on earth, it’s something else to make race a primary or key aspect of this incident when, in fact, none of us knows so far exactly what went through the minds of the police officers involved.
What I find interesting and rather pathetic is the fact that, despite our not knowing what any of them really were thinking as they abused this wheelchair-bound man, it’s precisely there, on the unknown but assumed racist motive of the police that most of the emphasis is placed. Meanwhile, “shoved to the back-burner,” so to speak, are their outrageous actions which aren’t hidden in their minds but open to view. Those aspects—physically rousting a legless amputee out of his wheelchair and handcuffing him with wrists at his back as though he’s some sort of danger to them or someone else, those aspects aren’t in much of any doubt.
In addition, no where have I argued that “we shouldn’t have this discussion.” The discussion is useful in and of itself. Making mainly a discussion of the racial aspect of the incident is what I think is pointless, misguided, unnecessary and needlessly giving away what is otherwise a very strong case against the police officers’ behavior—that behavior being clear improper use of physical force.
You write,
“As far as discussion of this incident, the Skip Gates incident and others, I say finally we are having at least the beginning of a national discussion of this – and it wouldn’t be happening if the repub candidate had won.”
Yet the way this incident is being interpreted here—namely as being particularly outrageous not for what was actually done but, rather, for the fact that it was “White” people who did it to a “Black” person—is, in my un-humble opinion, a demonstration of how, again and again, even the best-intentioned liberals get it wrong, failing to recognize where the easy but faulty priorities are and in the process missing what is really the essence of a matter.
Do you want Americans—whatever their age, their sex, their “race”, their incomes or their “social standing” to take from this incident the fact, above and beyond all else, that it involved an abuse of police authority which is mainly important because it happened that the officers were “White” and the victim was “Black”? Is that, for you, the key to the “lesson” here?
If so, then, again, I contend that you are simply and grieveously missing the point as it ought to be grasped because, at the heart of my argument is that EVERY ONE OF US OUGHT TO BE ABLE TO GO TO Mr. Williams and say in complete honesty, “We’re outraged by what was done to you because it was wrong, and wrong no matter what your “race” may happen to be.” That view makes of the victim what he ought to be: our full and equal peer in every sense rather than merely some “unfortunate Black man” who because he is Black, is given some sort of extra though “pinched” “sympathy” from us since, though it remains unstated, we don’t regard him as anything like our true and equal peer. Instead, he because a kind of “charity case” on which to pour out our politically correct sympathies as a demonstration of how finely developed are our moral precepts.
If, as should be the case, Mr. Williams is our full peer and equal, we should be outraged at what he suffered and our outrage need not and ought not have to carry the slightest racial component because, as should be obvious, it ought not to matter what his “race” is.
But to StepehnD Mr. Williams’ race does matter, it matters very much. And that fact bespeaks a failing of understanding on StephenD’s part in my opinion. It may be a very common one but that is no reason to let it pass unremarked.
in my post above, where I wrote:
“Instead, he because a kind of “charity case” on which to pour out our politically correct sympathies as a demonstration of how finely developed are our moral precepts.”
it should have read,
“Instead, he becomes a kind of “charity case” on which to pour out our politically correct sympathies as a demonstration of how finely developed are our moral precepts.”
sorry for misunderstanding in what I was saying – I took your phrasing to allude to an extrapolation from this incident to a whites/ blacks more general discussion. What I was trying to get at is that all the details are important. I referred to the Skip Gates incident because there as well all the details were important. Certain factors in each resonate with larger institutional issues, but each should be discussed with all the details as a single instance.
I’ve said for 30 years that the US would be much better if we simply fired all cops and hired old women over 55 with ten verifiable letters of reference to replace them.
All, and I do mean, all cops are drug addicts. One of the most potent drugs – adrenaline. They aren’t drafted. They are simply trying to get a fix.
“All, and I do mean, all cops are drug addicts. One of the most potent drugs – adrenaline. They aren’t drafted. They are simply trying to get a fix.”
I’m inclined to agree with that. However, your ‘solution’ fails to take account of the facts of life. Women, too, feel adrenaline rushes, even “women over 55”. It’s odd that you recognize that police officers, being a self-selecting bunch, aren’t often the sort of people in whom many of us would like to entrust authorization to use force, including deadly force; and yet, somehow, “women over 55” (with all those references of attesting to their marvelous qualities) are supposed to be different.
This discussion should be framed and read as a case-book example of the moral morass in which U.S. society finds itself so hopelessly lost.
By just altering some of the details, the central failings in this so-called discussion can be found to recur again and again and again across the spectrum of other social controversies. No where in the exchange above has a single correspondent even tried to directly and adequately address the points I’ve raised. Instead, the thesis urged against me–namely, that what must be regarded as the key aspect of the outrage which was perpetrated on Mr. Williams is and can only be the simple and narrow fact that it was “White” police officers who did this to a “Black” man–was urged and simply repeated without further supporting facts or argument. It was simply insisted on, as though one had to find it correct and compelling and, when I objected, it was insisted on again. Apparently that’s the beginning and the end of the story for the majority of the people who bothered to comment here.
In the U.S., expecting a useful discussion of such a charged issue is apparently a vain hope. People are adamantly opposed to giving thought to challenges to their stubbornly fixed unexamined notions when these concern “race” matters and so much else which is intimately related to how they think of their “identities”.
In such a climate of fear, distrust and stubbornly- closed minds what is ahead for your society? In my view it is increasing polarization, and increasingly violent polarization. After a certain point (which is undefined) the closed minds find violence the last, most ready, recourse. That is what I think is ahead for U.S. society: a violent ripping itself apart, because when blind stupidity reigns violence easily becomes the first resort.