Court OKs Repeated Tasering of Pregnant Woman

[Ed Jewett]

Court OKs Repeated Tasering of Pregnant Woman

• By David Kravets
  
• March 29, 2010 |
  
• 3:46 pm |
  
• Categories: The Courts, The Ridiculous
  

A federal appeals court says three Seattle police officers did not employ excessive force when they repeatedly tasered a visibly pregnant woman for refusing to sign a speeding ticket.
The lawyer representing Malaika Brooks said Monday that the court’s 2-1 decision sanctioned “pain compliance” tactics through a modern-day version of the cattle prod.
“To inflict pain on a person if that person is not doing what the police want that person to do is simply outrageous,” said Eric Zubel, the woman’s attorney. “I cannot say that loud enough.”
Zubel said he would ask the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear Friday’s 2-1 decision that drew a sharp dissent from Judge Marsha Berzon:
“Refusing to sign a speeding ticket was at the time a nonarrestable misdemeanor; now, in Washington, it is not even that. Brooks had no weapons and had not harmed or threatened to harm a soul,” (.pdf) Berzon wrote. “Although she had told the officers she was seven months pregnant, they proceeded to use a Taser on her, not once but three times, causing her to scream with pain and leaving burn marks and permanent scars.”

The majority noted that the M26 Taser was set in “stun mode” and did not cause as much pain as when set on “dart mode.” The majority noted that the circuit’s recent and leading decision on the issue concerned excessive force in the context of a Taser being set on Dart mode, which causes “neuro-muscular incapacitation.”
Stun mode, the court noted, didn’t rise to the level of excessive force because it imposes “temporary, localized pain only.”
The majority reversed a lower court judge who said the woman’s rights were violated. The lower court’s failure to distinguish between the two levels of pain modes “led the court to err in finding excessive force.”
The woman was driving her 12-year-old to the African American Academy in Seattle when she was pulled over on suspicion of speeding in 2004. The child left the car for school and a verbal spat with the police resulted in the woman receiving three, 50,000-volt shocks, first to her thigh, then shoulder and neck while she was in her vehicle. An officer was holding Brooks’ arm behind Brooks’ back while she was being shocked.
Brooks gave the officer her driver’s license, but Brooks refused to sign the ticket — believing it was akin to signing a confession. She was ultimately arrested for refusing to sign and to comply with officers asking her to exit the vehicle.
“A suspect who repeatedly refuses to comply with instructions or leave her car escalates the risk involved for officers unable to predict what type of noncompliance might come next,” Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall wrote for the majority. She was joined by Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain.
“Therefore, while using the Taser three times makes this a closer case, we find that it does not show excessive force in light of the corresponding escalation of Brooks’ resistance and the fact that it was the third tasing that appeared to dislodge her such that the officers could finally extract her from her car and gain control over her,” Hall wrote.
See Also:

• “Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” Jolts the Web
  
• Taser-Happy Cops Restrain Themselves at Gonzales event
  
• University of Florida Student Tasered for asking Kerry a Question …
  
• Inventors Design Less-Lethal ‘Taser Me Elmo’ Rifle
  
• Raw Video: Cop Tasers 72 Year-Old Granny
  
• Taser Releases Safety Tests for Shocking New Shotgun (Updated …
  
• An Electrifying Tour of the Taser Factory
  
• Latest Taser Could Zap Farther, Shock Longer, Hurt Kids
  

Tags: excessive force, stun gun, Taser


Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03...z0jmxSgyl3

[Peter Lemkin]

...when the average police officer would first try to persuade politely, if the person still refused, say something like, "I'm sorry but that means I need to take you down to the police station now." -or- take out his radio, report the refusal to their commander, or tape the refusal and issue a summons for the refusal - thus issuing two infractions and letting the court decide the penalties! Instead the Gestapo met out punishment and humiliation for defying the Fatherland and its agents of fear and repression.
Even worse is the rubber-stamping by the packed-with-fascists court system, in all too many cases. We are WELL DOWN the 'slippery slope' to full scale Martial Law and a Police State.....and some thought 'it can't happen (t)here'. HA....! !Surprise, it already did! :hello: :bandit:

[Jose Corral]

Legalized brutality in the name of law and order. We've regressed to such an extent, that barbarism is again fashionable. I am sure I could find folk who would say she should have complied when the police instructed her to. And besides that, the police did give her more than enough ample warning. Are we really that hard up for common reasoning? When the courts deem this behaviour acceptable, it is time to pack up & start again. But it is getting more & more difficult to find a sufficient outrage nowadays. They have become so devalued, that only extreme consequences are considered. It seems that tasering a 7 month pregnant woman, doesn't quite cut it anymore.

[Keith Millea]

It seems that tasering a 7 month pregnant woman, doesn't quite cut it anymore.

Hello Jose,
If they can't find pregnant women to terrorize,there's always lots of kids around.

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/ta...2F19423387

Taser Used on 10-Year-Old; Policemen Suspended



David Knowles Writer
AOL News
(April 1) -- Two police officers have been suspended for reportedly using a stun gun on a 10-year-old boy who had gotten out of control at a day care facility.

The incident occurred Tuesday, when a worker at Tender Teddies Day Care in Martinsville, Ind., called police to report that one of the children there was acting up and posed a potential threat to the kids, local news affiliate WRTV reported.

A spokesperson for the Martinsville Police Department told AOL News that Capt. William Jennings and Officer Darren Johnson arrived at the scene and found the boy to be "combative." Jennings then slapped the boy, and Johnson used his Taser to further subdue him, police said.
The boy, who weighs 94 pounds, received two marks on his arm where Jennings used the gun, WTHR news reported, but is believed to have suffered no lasting injuries.

While the day care center's owner, Heath Lancaster, did not comment on the case, police released a statement announcing that the officers had been placed on paid administrative leave pending further investigation.

"While the department will not condone the unnecessary treatment of any subject, regardless of age, in any apprehension situation, additional comments will not be made pending results of the final investigation," the statement read.

Separate investigations have now been launched by the Morgan County Sheriff's Department, the Martinsville Police Department and the Martinsville Department of Child Services.

"We need to look at it a lot closer because [the Taser gun is] not really made for 10-year-olds," Martinsville Police Chief Jon Davis said at a news conference.

While the police had been called to Tender Teddies Day Care on another occasion about the behavior of the same child, local resident Kenneth Frazier told WRTV that he thinks police went too far.

"I don't think that should have happened. I'm sure they could have detained him some other way," Frazier said. "They take big grown-ups down without tasing them ... why a 10-year-old?"

[Ed Jewett]

Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.

[Peter Lemkin]

Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.

-Wars, in fact what used to be a string of wars now made into perpetual war.
-Ecocide = war against nature and all things natural
-Violence in the forms of brutality, torture, poverty, economic slavery and bondage, police abuse, abuse by authority, setting one group against another.
-Spying [mostly now electronically] on everyone for everything.
-Fear - keeping the fear level up - 9/11 was the prime example, but everyday there are many.
-Dumbing-down and Propaganda, along with what the Romans called 'Circus'.

...and you get the America and much of the world who blindly follow us....:marchmellow:

NOT a pretty picture. Long past due for a revolution!.....anyone second the motion?

I know W said it and the Constitution were 'just a pieces of paper', but...

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. [From the US Declaration of Independence]

[Jose Corral]

This form of sophisticated violence, has replaced the physical restraint. No need to worry about excessive force. You simply point a taser & zap as per instructions. It is not designed to kill or maim permanently & if it does, well you can be sure the police were only doing their job. In Australia where I am from, they have only recently begun to roll them out to our police force. There has hardly been consideration as to the terms of use. All the debate has been as to how safe they are as compared to using a gun. We've had a spate of incidents involving police using them as a first point of order after a warning. Even for the most innocuous circumstances such as a drunken party revelers. It has eliminated the need for tolerance on the part of the police. They exact control not by mediation or reason, but violent threats of taser use. The police will just get lazier & sloppier if this persists as the norm without any legal repercussions it would seem.

[David Guyatt]

7-month pregnant women and 10 year old kids have become Taser meat.

Great.

So good to see civilization advancing so ferociously these days.

[Peter Lemkin]

7-month pregnant women and 10 year old kids have become Taser meat.

Great.

So good to see civilization advancing so ferociously these days.

As alarming as the arrow of change, the absolute near light-speed of this change is even more so (not to mention how most sheeple don't even bleat in protest). Next 'stop', IMO, into the metaphorical Dante's Inferno and plumbing its inner/lower depths. Won't have to wait long for what is next.....just imagine a high-tech version of the Third Reich and I think you're Reich on the mark! :bebored: :ahhhhh:

[David Guyatt]

Very sadly Pete, I think you're quite correct.

Let's not forget that Hitler favoured big business and the very wealthy in the Third Reich. Indeed, they financed him. From home and abroad.