An eleven year old was girl tasered at school by a law enforcement officer as a method used to stop a ‘violent temper tantrum’ from happening seems a little extreme. Actually, it seems and is downright excessive, whether called for or not. Some people agree, some don’t.
An eleven year old was boy tasered as he exited his group home. Even while under suspicion of stabbing someone prior, that still seems a little extreme.
What did police men and women do with unruly children before they were equipped with stun guns? What couldn’t an adult (male or female), trained for taking down aggressive and dangerous large men, do with an unruly child? I mean really, what couldn’t they do? Could they use their brute strength, almost undoubtedly more powerful than the child’s? Yes. Could they use their adult intellect, almost undoubtedly of a higher range than the child’s? Yes. Could they contain the child in their surroundings using their trained and quick ADULT thinking or the threat of violence until back up arrived? Probably.
Are these the strategies that police men and women used decades ago, when it was either talk the kid down, restrain them physically or shoot? Yep. So why is tasering children becoming a commonplace event? Perhaps the officers involved in these disgusting displays of lazy job performance and unnecessarily intensified environments are infrequent examples of how average persons wielding above average authoritative power can eventually lead a situation into ridiculous endings.
Or maybe the fault lies with the entire forces they represent. If all taser carrying police officers were rigidly and explicitly guided beforehand in the use and misuse of such conducted energy weapons, and in no uncertain terms, were informed of the penalties for misuse, maybe pre-teen children weighing less than 100 lbs wouldn’t be shocked with tools that have proven to kill adults.
What kind of rules do police officers have in place for what constitutes justified use of CEW’s? Are there any rules established, written down, there for officers to look back on when in doubt? Now, obviously in the heat of the moment, an officer has no time or chance to think back through the mental catalogue of their yes’ and no’s of due force when dealing with an unpredictable or extremely dangerous subject. I just wonder what constitutes an ‘unpredictable or extremely dangerous subject’, and if that definition in any way counts out CHILDREN.
I would hope it does and I sincerely hope that with these latest acts of police brutality, undue force, whatever you want to call it, police departments everywhere in North America are beginning to realize that the revising of their taser use guidelines is in order, though not before a clear and immediate revision of what ‘reasonable force’ must mean to the boys and girls in blue takes place.
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