Should We Blame TASER for People’s Non-Sense Behavior?

In a 2005 article by Peter Gorman, he discusses the unlawful deaths of two men who were Tasered by police officers in a supposedly abusive manner. The first man was Tasered after police asked him to come out of a closet where he was hiding under a black trash bag. When he refused, police Tasered him several times, and soon after he stopped breathing and was pronounced dead a short while later. The second man was apparently Tasered because he ran from police as well attempted to fight a police officer. Both men had cocaine in their systems. Both men’s cause of death was determined to be heart failure, with cocaine also being cited as a factor.

I’m not saying that there has never been a police officer that has abused the purpose of a Taser. But it’s just this sort of ridiculousness that results in unnecessary time and money spent trying to assuage someone’s grief. Whatever happened to responsibility? Both men were using cocaine. Last time I checked, that is an illegal substance. One which has a scientifically indeterminable overdose amount. Cocaine metabolizes very quickly, so it’s virtually impossible to cite an exact amount that can cause death. But apparently we need to know exactly how much can kill us so that we can experiment with just a little bit less than that…nothing wrong with a little white powder-Russian Roulette, right? Trust me, you’d be amazed at how many people will think I’m serious.

In the case of the man hiding under the garbage bag in the closet, Peter Gorman cries foul on the part of the police because the suspect only had misdemeanors on his record, and he was not a “violent criminal.” Oh, my bad. I was under the impression that laws are NOT meant to be broken, but if he was just a thief…COME ON! So now people who use drugs and steal things should be up for Man of the Year, because they aren’t violent. I don’t think he should be on Death Row, but the guy uses drugs! He steals things! He obviously has no regard for the law, so what’s to say he won’t take it one step further next time? Maybe he’ll be so desperate for whatever he’s stealing that he won’t let anyone stop him, not matter what he might have to do? Police officers are trained to take all possible factors and scenarios into consideration. The officers that were called to the apartment where the man was hiding in the closet had NO IDEA what he had hiding with him under that garbage bag, because he was already in there when they arrived. According to Peter Gorman’s assessment that they abused their Taser protocol, those officers should have waited until the man came out, possibly wielding a weapon of any kind, to start getting the situation under control. Well thanks, Mr. Gorman, but I think I’ll err on the side of caution and subdue a man who’s been hiding and is not complying with my requests to come out peacefully.

Let’s stop placing blame on officers who are forced to make split-second judgment calls about the safety of themselves (largely law-abiding people) and other bystanders. Let’s stop placing blame on a device that has phenomenal statistics for saving lives vs. costing them. Let’s change things up a little: let’s start holding people responsible for getting themselves into the situations which force police to use their Tasers