Pennsylvania man tased in his own home

And from Yesterday, Videos also show use of force at Orange County, CA Jail with a taser on a handcuffed prisoner

From the Los Angeles Times:

Orange County sheriff's deputies repeatedly shocked a handcuffed prisoner with a Taser, even after he had been strapped into a restraint chair, slammed him onto the floor with a "knee drop" and appeared to hit him in the head while he sat passively on a bench, jail videotapes show.

The grainy but graphic images from 2006 show Matthew Fleuret, 24, being put into a holding cell at Orange County Jail and held on the floor by at least five deputies, one of whom pulls Fleuret's arms back and sharply up toward his head while others repeatedly shock him with the Taser over a period of about 13 minutes. Fleuret's lawyer says he was hit 11 times with the stun gun during the incident.

...Experts on the use of force interviewed by The Times suggest the deputies violated widely accepted standards. "It does not look pretty," said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminology professor who has studied the issue for about 25 years.

~~~~~
~~Autumn~~

As if there were safety in stupidity alone.
--Henry David Thoreau

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by: Autumn Sandeen @ Fri Jan 25, 2008 at 14:46:51 PM CST

tasing link from the LA Times

Here's the link to the story quoted above.

Electricity's for light bulbs!

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by: n8nyc @ Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 11:44:25 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Oops...

...forgot to fill in the HTML code with the actual article link -- so it defaulted to PHB's homepage.

Thanks for catching that, n8nyc.  :)

~~~~~
~~Autumn~~

As if there were safety in stupidity alone.
--Henry David Thoreau

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by: Autumn Sandeen @ Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 15:00:03 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I was glad to

see the story. I hadn't before. That tasers and stun guns are being used for pain compliance makes me want to scream.  

Electricity's for light bulbs!

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by: n8nyc @ Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 23:01:51 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Don't Taze The Constitution, Justice Scalia

"Shawn Hicks was sleeping on his couch when he said he was awoken by police officers who shocked him with a Taser stun gun."

...

"There is no allegation that Hicks had a drawn weapon on the officers; Wiehagen only offered that 'the officers could not be certain he was unarmed' while lying prone on the sofa."

I realize that its easy to slip into hyperbole when commenting on something like this, but...

If these jack-booted thugs get away with this (read: if some hight court signs off on it), then there will cease to be any reason for any jack-booted thugs in any jurisdiction not to taze first and ask questions later under any circumstances.

Math of the Bush era: 2008 = 1984.

Kat

>^..^<

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by: KatRose @ Fri Jan 25, 2008 at 15:43:14 PM CST

Taser parties

Thanks Pam for continuing to post about these devices. I'll add this and Autumn's story to my taser tags. I usually post about new taser news items once a week. Sadly, my collection keeps growing. I just found this story about a company that sells tasers via taser-parties targeting women in Arizona:

The SUV-driving, stun-gun-wielding housewife is coming to a suburb near you. In Arizona, Tupperware-style Taser parties have become all the rage, thanks to the enterprising savvy of saleswoman Dana Shafman, founder of Shieldher Inc.

Shafman’s little soirees aren’t just popular, they’re also highly profitable. Over light conversation and snacks, women are invited to handle the palm-sized C2, the latest (and smallest) civilian version of a Taser stun gun. The C2 is also the most affordable Taser to hit the market, starting at $299.99—with an option to upgrade the C2 with a $50 laser beam to better the chances of debilitating a human target. Because practice makes perfect, the women in attendance are encouraged to grab a C2 and take turns shooting at a cardboard cutout representing a male attacker.

“I felt that we have Tupperware parties and candle parties to protect our food and house, so why not have a Taser party to learn how to protect our lives and bodies?” Shafman told the the Arizona Republic. Shafman projects that the parties will be held in at least a half-dozen other states by March.

...

In a number of promotional media appearances and technology conference presentations since that time, Taser officials have even gone so far as to dub the C2 the “Lady Taser.”

“When you’re going out to a nightclub or you have the device clipped onto your belt at a business meeting, you don’t want to look like Dirty Harry,” company spokesperson Steve Tuttle told ABC News last summer.

In what could have easily passed as a terribly tacky infomercial, ABC News ran a December 2007 “Money Matters” segment praising the palm-sized stunner as an exciting holiday gift for women, in which anchor Laura Marquez described the C2 as a “Taser with a softened look.”

...

The Scottsdale, Ariz., corporation has spent years honing a relentless public relations campaign—complete with a Rolodex of at-the-ready medical, legal and law enforcement stun technology “experts”—that seems to have convinced many news outlets that Taser’s word is gospel truth.

The success of Taser’s C2 sales over the past several months can largely be attributed to the company’s aggressive strategy to play on women’s worst fears of assault and rape. While the C2 might look cute, it is utterly debilitating—a serious step up, as it were, from older self-defense products like mace and pepper spray.

Just as with the “professional” model, a triggered mini stun gun shoots out two, thin nitrogen-fueled wires with dart-like tips that penetrate clothing and embed in the skin. These darts are juiced to deliver an incapacitating 50,000 volts of electricity for 30 uninterrupted seconds—ostensibly to allow the Taser-wielder to make a quick getaway.

I'd love to see one of the cutouts used for target practice at these parties.

Taser International's promotional material for the C2 is creepy, just like their other promotional material. Their videos are disturbing. Another video I saw in a Wired post features police using pain compliance stunning/tasering. This one shows cops repeatedly tasering a variety of victims and includes cattle tasering. How is using torture level pain on unarmed or restrained people legal and ok?

Electricity's for light bulbs!

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by: n8nyc @ Fri Jan 25, 2008 at 20:33:38 PM CST