|
7/11/2009 5:55 PM
|
#1
|
|
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 380
|
RE: Looking for any insight or advice
Defending less lethal force is easy. Some people will not cooperate and the police should not be allowed to kill them (use lethal force) for just that. At the same time, they should not be allowed to just get away with what they want because they will not cooperate.
Defending lethal force is much harder.
But, if by defending less lethal force you meant defending some specific force option (such as Tasers), you might have more of a challenge. The public sees reports on these various options and does not get factual reports.
For example, there have been around 225 people (I think) that have died after being Tasered. That makes it sound bad and like a Taser is dangerous. But, how many people have been Tasered and not died? A couple hundred thousand, especially if you include the police officers that have been hit while in training. So a claim of one set of numbers without presenting more data misleads the public. Another factor to consider is how many of the people who died have had the Taser listed as a cause of the death. A couple reports have mentioned it and one death certificate (if I remember correctly) listed it as a contributing factor. This means the claim of people dying after being Tasered is a logical fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc. The latin phrase translates to after this therefore because of this and it points out that just because something happened after an event, it does not mean the event was the cause.
Another thing you might point out is that the force continuum is not a ladder where each rung must be touched. it is more like a wheel where the officer takes the appropriate and reasonable reaction to the suspects actions. He can jump from verbal commands to deadly force or less lethal weapons without going through each step in between. The question to answer is if ht eofficers use of force was reasonable for what the suspect was doing.
The final argument to ask people is exactly how the officer was supposed to handle the situation without the questioned use of force. Would the person prefer the officer to just let the criminal behavior continue or let the suspect get away? Would he prefer the officer to beat him with a night stick instead of using a Taser? Would he prefer the officer shoot him instead of trying to use some force option that is less likely to kill? most of the people I have talked with who did not support some force option could not answer what the officer should have done instead.
|
|
7/11/2009 10:57 PM
|
#2
|
|
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 3
|
RE: Looking for any insight or advice
Thank you, Steve, there's some really good stuff in there. It's true that every officer carrying a taser or pepper spray has to experience it first, right?
|
|
7/12/2009 9:05 PM
|
#3
|
|
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 380
|
RE: Looking for any insight or advice
Yes and no. When Taser first came out, the company would require anyone taking their training to get hit by the Taser. This was just a company requirement and not a law, plus there was no real law requiring the officer to be company certified. Most agencies did it as a protection on liability cases. Taser has changed their training to only recommend the officer get the shock and not require it. Agencies may require it on their own and some still do.
OC Spray is another weapon used in the same general fashion. The big difference is that I do not know of any agency that does not require the officer to be sprayed to be certified. One reason the officer is sprayed is that there is a good chance he will be hit with the OC spray if someone else deploys it. The officer needs to know what it will be like so he can fight through the effects and survive while the bad guy is being subdued. And so, when we get the whole agency certified, everyone has been sprayed.
The difference between the Taser and the OC still requiring the spray is that OC is not a precise weapon. If you use it in the wind, you will get some effect. If you are fighting someone and another officer uses OC, you will probably get some of the overspray. But a Taser is a pinpoint weapon and the officer cannot get shocked by overspray or even by holding onto a person who is hit by the barbs. So, there is very little chance of an officer needing to know how it affects him to defend against it like there is in OC.
And the end result answer to your question is that there is a high probability that an officer carrying OC spray has been exposed to it and a good probability but not nearly as high for the Taser. Neither one will have a 100% certainty though.
|
|
8/6/2009 12:18 PM
|
#4
|
|
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 3
|
Re: Looking for any insight or advice
That makes a lot of sense, the taser being a precision weapon and all. It wouldn't be sensible for officers to be shot with a hand gun in order to carry one. I'm really interested in continuing learning about this, even though my paper's done. The teacher gave me a 100, so I guess it was persuasive enough. Thanks again for your advice.
|