More taser news from the heartland.
This time it’s a white 16 year old male teenager who suffered a broken back after a thirty foot fall in Ozark, Missouri. When police arrived the boy was incoherent and refused to get up when ordered to do so, so police tasered him 19 fucking times! I bet that’ll teach him some respect for law enforcement officers:
OZARK, Mo. — A family wants answers about what happened to their son that left him hospitalized. Early Saturday morning, police found Mace Hutchinson, 16, underneath the Highway F overpass over U.S. 65. […]
By the time officers arrived, the teen was off the 30-foot overpass, lying on the shoulder below along U.S. 65, with no good explanation as to how he got there.
“According to the doctors, all injuries are consistent with a fall,” said his aunt, Samantha.
“They tested his system. He was clean of drugs and alcohol. We don’t know why unless just being in shock and the whole thing in itself caused him to forget everything,” said Hutchinson.
His aunt says he is undergoing major surgery for a broken back and broken heel. While he was lying on the ground, she wonders why Ozark police used an electric stun gun on him up to 19 times.
“I’m not an officer, but I don’t see the reason for ‘Tasering’ somebody laying there with a broken back. I don’t consider that a threat.”
His dad says the use of the stun gun delayed what would have been immediate surgery by two days.
“The ‘Tasering’ increased his white blood cell count and caused him to have a temperature so they could not go into the operation.”
Hey, at least he didn’t die like Baron Pikes in Winnfield, Louisiana. Still, what the hell is going on in this country? Tasers were supposed to be an alternative to using a gun to subdue dangerous individuals, not a means for the police to torture people already in custody or lying incoherent with severe injuries after a 30 foot fall. By the way, what was the official police explanation for tasering a kid with a broken back 19 fucking times? Well, read it yourself:
“He refused to comply with the officers and so the officers had to deploy their Tasers in order to subdue him. He is making incoherent statements; he’s also making statements such as, ‘Shoot cops, kill cops,’ things like that. So there was cause for concern to the officers,” said Ozark Police Capt. Thomas Rousset.
Yeah, I believe that. A 16 year old kid with a broken back was so threatening and so dangerous that several police officers had to taser him 19 fucking times just to subdue him. Right. That must be how it happened. Kid must have been the size of the Hulk. Or not. But you decide. Here’s a photo of him in the hospital:
Now tell me again why tasers for our law enforcement officials are such a great idea? I don’t think even the guys at Gitmo were tasered 19 fucking times, with or without a broken back. But what do I know. I’m just some left wing tie-dyed hippy blogger.
Where do they get these cops, anyways? Retired from Blackwater??
Each department should have rules that every use of a taser should be investigated in the same way that happens every time an officer uses a firearm.
I disagree. They should be banned NOW before they get entrenched in our society.
The cops seem to feel that “nonlethal” means they can tase somebody as many times as they want. First of all they should have a psych evaluation before they’re even issued a goddam taser. Second, they should be subjected to tasering themselves, so they know what it feels like! I mean all of them, not just the ones who do it for TV demonstrations.
They’re making me afraid of all police. What next? Taking pit bulls on patrol with them?
It seems like they should all be tasered about 19 times to see if they get the point.
Look, the guy (not a “kid” but actually 29 years old) was photographing the bridge for targeting purposes. He was an al Qaida foot soldier and panicked when police approached, jumping from the bridge in an escape attempt. The local cops are bound by national security secrecy rules from telling anyone this. Painting them as excessive in their use of Tasers impugns their patriotism. Steven D. should know better.
What can I say? I must be part of an Al Qaeda cell too, eh? <snark>
There’s a million terrorists on the domestic no-fly list, so the odds are getting better everyday that he (or you) are indeed a terrorist…
I am reading THE PHOENIX PROGRAM now. Just 35 pages into the book and it’s clear that Lansdale, Colby and the Dulles had no problems with the kind of “torture problems” that we’ve recently had overseas and at home. I haven’t even gotten to the Phoenix Program.
Zimbardo’s experiment showed how easy it is for people to cross from decent person to torturer, so I’m not about to write off all cops. But I think that the cultural ambience has been tipping towards this kind of thing for awhile now. What did Elvis Costello sing? “I hear that South America is coming into style.”
Same book. I’m on p. 120 and still no Phoenix program. Soon, I hope.
As to Ozark cops and tasers. Did I read this right? The kid with the broken back constitutes such a dangerous threat that he must be subdued with electricity. How did these so called defenders of the public welfare ever avoid being institutionalized? My god but things must be pretty bad in Arkansas if this whom they hire as policemen.
of the police and military in this country. It seems more and more that they are like an occupying force in our own country, rather than protecting and serving us as they should.
Yes.
There was an interesting taser case in Eugene, OR last May. At a demonstration against the use of pesticides in the forests one young college student did a piece of street theater where he dressed in a fake pesticide suit, had a pesticide sprayer filled with water and went around spraying things. Well, there’s a demonstration every other week in Eugene. But the cops went to arrest this kid and he was tasered. There were charges of police brutality and a lot of witnesses and somebody who taped at least part of the incident. But that’s not all. A few weeks later the local paper, the Register-Guard, reported that Homeland Security agents had been at the demonstration and had told the police this kid was blocking traffic, which led to the whole incident. HS also claimed (falsely) that they were monitoring the scene because the demonstration was organized by a man who lives in a country town nearby who has organized a group he calls The Pitchfork Rebellion against timber company herbicide spraying of forests which has sickened his children. He was speaking at the demonstration but hadn’t organized anything. Anyhow, he was arrested, too. I can’t find the RG article online anymore. it was very extensive. I can only find a link to a local tv station report.
http://www.kval.com/news/local/23966629.html
Anyhow, it was actually pretty scary. It seemed to me pretty clear that HS was interested in provoking an incident and ratcheting up tensions between police and the community, which are already pretty bad here. They’re also interested in getting environmentalists typed as terrorists.
And after the environmentalists, the liberals, and gays, and lesbians, and teachers, and . . .
Thank god for Tasers, otherwise they’d have had to put him down like a broken racehorse, eh?