Police work

Police Shoot And Kill An 80-Year-Old Man In His Own Bed Over Drugs That Weren't There

California police use taser on deaf man trying to communicate with them via sign language

Family says five Oklahoma police beat father to death after asking for ID

Update 2/19: Georgia Cop Shoots, Kills Teen Who Was Holding Up a Wii Controller

Update 2/20: Police Can’t Get Their Story Straight After a Deputy Fatally Shoots a Texas Woman

Update 2/22: After Video Goes Viral, Austin Police Defend Jaywalking Jogger Arrest

Christianists to Pick Up Artists

Conservatives cite ‘neutrality’ memo as proof of military’s hostility to Christianity

A conservative group claims the United States Air Force violated religious freedom by advising officials not to discriminate against subordinates based on their religion. 

The Family Research Council on Tuesday released a report on religious freedom in the United States Armed Forces, which concluded the Obama administration was cracking down on Christianity. 

The report stated that high-level officers within the Air Force were cooperating with “anti-Christian activists” like attorney Michael Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. As evidence, the report compiled a list of incidence which purportedly showed religious freedoms being violated.

Tasers kill. The police know this and keep on using them.  So I guess they're just letting the lawsuits pile up?

Edward Snowden: US officials are preventing me claiming asylum

Arizona being Arizona... APS seeks higher bills for new solar customers

The Cheney presidency was where the NSA spying started.  Before 9/11.  No surprise there...

We are not Trayvon Martin.

Republican pick up lines to woo women voters....

Tasers kill

500 Deaths From Tasers in USA

Aren't we already there?

Just ask the Afghans and Pakistanis... and the Iraqis, Yemenis...

The growing use of unmanned aircraft in combat situations raises huge moral and legal issues, and threatens to make war more likely as armed robots take over from human beings, according to an internal study by the Ministry of Defence.

The report warns of the dangers of an "incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality", referring to James Cameron's 1984 movie, in which humans are hunted by robotic killing machines. It says the pace of technological development is accelerating at such a rate that Britain must quickly establish a policy on what will constitute "acceptable machine behaviour".

Just like the horribly irresponsible misuse of Tasers by the police force, drones remove several inhibitors to killing when soldiers aren't on the ground and judging the situation up close. If we are to live with such devices, we need to make it harder for authorities to use rather than easier. To start with, a list of how many innocent people have died would be ... educational.

We've talked about this before.

This never ends well.

If cats reported the news

Stripes says everything looks great from his perspective...

Scale of the universe.

Admission by Walker that it was all about union busting. And questions mount over the supreme court vote in Wisconsin.

Atlas Shrugged Part 1.

Bashing teachers is as much fun as hippie punching. Or tasering kids.

Obama's budget cuts

Refighting the Civil War

This is what a decade of war looks like.

Roger Ebert remembers Sydney Lumet

France bans the burqa

Tracking Japanese radiation around the world and the US. And apparently sea salt and baking soda will fight radiation exposure.... (I suggest buying stock)

Firing the entire city management of Benton Harbor, Michigan. You know these guys wanted to do this like forever....

Finally addressing the taser problem

And the twitchy trigger fingers of the police:

A federal appeals court on Monday issued one of the most comprehensive rulings yet limiting police use of Tasers against low-level offenders who seem to pose little threat and may be mentally ill.

In a case out of San Diego County, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals criticized an officer who, without warning, shot an emotionally troubled man with a Taser when he was unarmed, yards away, and neither fleeing nor advancing on the officer.

Sold as a nonlethal alternative to guns, Tasers deliver an electrical jolt meant to subdue a subject. The stun guns have become a common and increasingly controversial tool used by law enforcement.

There have been at least nine Taser-related fatalities in the Sacramento region, including the death earlier this month of Paul Martinez Jr., an inmate shot with a stun gun while allegedly resisting officers at the Roseville jail.

As lawsuits have proliferated against police and Taser International, which manufactures the weaons, the nation's appellate courts have been trying to define what constitutes appropriate Taser use.

*SIGH*

FOUNTAIN HILLS, Arizona – A Taser stun gun, capable of shocking three people without being reloaded, was unveiled Monday in front of hundreds of law enforcement officers who applauded after watching six rounds of the barbed wire fired at metal targets.

The demonstration at the Scottsdale-based company's annual conference was performed by Taser International Chairman Tom Smith, and his brother, CEO Rick Smith, who says the device will become the new standard for police officers who want greater tactical abilities.

The device is the first new stun gun Taser International has introduced since 2003.

Older Taser stun guns, in use by 14,200 law enforcement agencies throughout the United States, have to be reloaded after one shot, which can be a problem for an officer who has missed a target or has more than one suspect to subdue.

So... your product has been known to kill innocent people along with people in need of subduing... so what do you do? Build a bigger one that can take down even more people!

Good grief.

Realizing that tasers kill

Canadians do it right:

Vancouver, British Columbia (AHN) - Former Justice Thomas Braidwood released on Thursday in a press conference his anticipated report on the use of Tasers, ending two years of inquiry on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's use of electronic stun guns, which was highlighted by the death of a Polish immigrant who was tasered at the Vancouver International Airport in 2007.

Braidwood made 19 recommendations which were short of asking the RCMP to stop the use of Tasers. He supported the conditional use of the stun gun if major changes are made by the Mounties The Taser has been blamed for 25 deaths in Canada.

He acknowledged police officers need the best weapons to perform their duties, but warned the Taser has the potential to cause death or serious injury and may go against Canadian values. Braidwood pushed for more stringent measures to regulate the use of the controversial weapon.

So... how many more deaths will there be before the US law enforcement concedes that Tasers are a deadly weapon?

Blog sprinkles

Returning to the good ol' days when men were men and races wuz pure and wimmen knew their place....

Public Option Enemy No. 1:

Rick Scott ran a hospital company guilty of epic fraud. Now he wants to tell you how to fix the health care system.

Researchers Find Possible Environmental Causes For Alzheimer's, Diabetes:

A new study by researchers at Rhode Island Hospital have found a substantial link between increased levels of nitrates in our environment and food, with increased deaths from diseases, including Alzheimer's, diabetes mellitus and Parkinson's. The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (Volume 17:3 July 2009).

Led by Suzanne de la Monte, MD, MPH, of Rhode Island Hospital, researchers studied the trends in mortality rates due to diseases that are associated with aging, such as diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes and cerebrovascular disease, as well as HIV. They found strong parallels between age adjusted increases in death rate from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and diabetes and the progressive increases in human exposure to nitrates, nitrites and nitrosamines through processed and preserved foods as well as fertilizers. Other diseases including HIV-AIDS, cerebrovascular disease, and leukemia did not exhibit those trends. De la Monte and the authors propose that the increase in exposure plays a critical role in the cause, development and effects of the pandemic of these insulin-resistant diseases.

Here's an unbelievable headline:

Michael Jackson to be buried without his brain

Oh noooooo! Will they have a funeral for this, too?

Iraq suffers more terrorist attacks.

Even when it's proved the detainees weren't the worst of the worst, some still say they should be locked up because it's obvious they were the worst of the worst or why were they locked up in the first place and besides they might become terrorists when they get out because they were locked up as if they were the worst of the worst... or even worse, tell everybody what happened while in the hands of the government while they were being treated like they were the worst of the worst. So there.

Left a really nasty scar: New Mexico Teen Girl Tasered In The Head By Police Chief

A Cat-erpillar:



Are men now extraneous?

LONDON (AFP) – A team of British scientists claimed Wednesday to have created human sperm using embryonic stem cells, in a medical first that they say will lead to a better understanding of fertility.

Researchers led by Professor Karim Nayernia at Newcastle University and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute (NESCI) developed a new technique that allows the creation of human sperm in the laboratory.

Arctic ice is thinning:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Arctic sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with thick older ice shrinking by the equivalent of Alaska's land area, a study using data from a NASA satellite showed.

Coleman for governor?

Sign of the end of days: Peeps get their own store.

I read the news today, oh boy....

Dubai circles the drain? Really? Dubai?:

With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield.

The government says the real number is much lower. But the stories contain at least a grain of truth: jobless people here lose their work visas and then must leave the country within a month. That in turn reduces spending, creates housing vacancies and lowers real estate prices, in a downward spiral that has left parts of Dubai — once hailed as the economic superpower of the Middle East — looking like a ghost town.

No one knows how bad things have become, though it is clear that tens of thousands have left, real estate prices have crashed and scores of Dubai’s major construction projects have been suspended or canceled. But with the government unwilling to provide data, rumors are bound to flourish, damaging confidence and further undermining the economy.

We've killed people in our concentration camps:

The American Civil Liberties Union has released previously classified excerpts of a government report on harsh interrogation techniques used in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. These previously unreported pages detail repeated use of "abusive" behavior, even to the point of prisoner deaths.

The documents, obtained by the ACLU under a Freedom of Information Act request, contain a report by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church, who was tapped to conduct a comprehensive review of Defense Department interrogation operations. Church specifically calls out interrogations at Bagram Air base in Afghanistan as "clearly abusive, and clearly not in keeping with any approved interrogation policy or guidance."

The two unredacted pages from the Church report may be found here.

The ACLU's release comes on the same day as a major FOIA document dump by three other leading human rights groups: Documents which reveal the Pentagon ran secret prisons in Bagram and Iraq, that it cooperated with the CIA's "ghost detention" program and that Defense personnel delayed a prisoner's release to avoid bad press.

And just what ELSE are the thieves walking out with?:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico is missing 67 computers, including 13 that were lost or stolen in the past year. Officials say no classified information has been lost.

The watchdog group Project on Government Oversight on Wednesday released a memo dated Feb. 3 from the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration outlining the loss of the computers.

Kevin Roark, a spokesman for Los Alamos, on Wednesday confirmed the computers were missing and said the lab was initiating a monthlong inventory to account for every computer. He said the computers were a cybersecurity issue because they may contain personal information like names and addresses, but they did not contain any classified information.

We're still unaware Tasers can kill?

A man in the northern California city of San Jose died after being jolted with a Taser, police said Thursday, apparently the sixth such death since the department began using the stun guns in 2004.

The man, who police said appeared to be in his 20s, got into a struggle with two officers when they tried to arrest him in the backyard of a home late Wednesday.

I think I'll go dig that bunker in my backyard....

Update: Canada is rewriting its rules about Tasers because the Canadians get it:

OTTAWA — Given the "high risk of death" in some cases, RCMP officers are now limited in their use of tasers to individuals who pose a clear threat to the public or police, RCMP Commissioner William Elliott„© said yesterday.

Mr. Elliott used two public appearances to provide new details on the RCMP's taser policy, which has come under fire after the death of Polish traveller Robert Dziekanski„© at Vancouver's airport in 2007.

The new restrictions have been in place since last June, but were laid out in full only yesterday, two months after the announcement that four Mounties who used a taser to subdue Mr. Dziekanski would not face criminal charges.

Speaking to reporters in Ottawa, Mr. Elliott said the weapons can no longer be used against people who are simply refusing to co-operate with Mounties.

When will there be a lawsuit

That stops police from using Tasers as if they were harmless?



Maybe we can get Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright to sue to show that the misuse of Tasers by authority figures has gotten out of hand. The eager willingness to torture by the police must be addressed by the courts.

This reflects the Bush administration just a bit too closely ....

Tasers can kill

They are not a toy for police to play with on the defenseless citizenry. They are not to be used for crowd control, punishment, domination, or whim. Police training needs to expose this misunderstanding that tasers are an easy tool for controlling a person. THEY HAVE KILLED PEOPLE and will do so again.

We need to get this message out there for when the police kill the next person. Then it will be intentional murder rather than an oops. And there will be lawsuits.

Tasers kill, have killed, and will kill again.

Update 12/20: Digby has more.

12/25: And another one. Digby has even more.

Tasers and Turkeys

And flaming dead kittens...



Via Steve Bates, Digby of Hullabaloo cites the most recent incidences involving the misuse of tasers.

Makes your hair stand up on end, doesn't it?

Here are more incidences:

Witnesses alleged police brutality after Eugene officers tasered a protester at a peaceful anti-pesticide rally today downtown and arrested three people.

About 40 citizens and 10 police officers showed up for the noon rally Friday, May 30 at the Broadway and Willamette plaza. Numerous citizen witnesses alleged that police threw UO student Ian Van Ornum, 19, to the ground, pulled his hair, kneed him in the back, ground his face into the pavement and shocked him repeatedly in an act of unjustified brutality.

And here:

A 21 year old black man in Winnfield, Louisiana, named Baron "Scooter" Pikes, was tasered 9 times in 14 minutes by a white police officer in January after he was arrested and handcuffed. He died. Seems a tad excessive to me. However, here's the story of his arrest and subsequent death according to the police report by the arresting officers:

[Police Officer] Nugent spotted Pikes walking along the street and attempted to arrest him on an outstanding warrant for drug possession, according to Police Chief Johnny Ray Carpenter. Pikes took off running, but another officer cornered him outside a nearby grocery store. Pikes resisted arrest and Nugent subdued him with a shock from a Taser.

Then on the way to the police station, Carpenter told the newspaper, Pikes fell ill and told the officers he suffered from asthma and was high on crack cocaine and PCP. The officers called for an ambulance, but Pikes later died at the hospital.

So Mr. Pikes was high on PCP, crack cocaine and had a serious asthma condition? That poor man was seriously messed up if he smoked crack and took PCP with an existing asthma condition. The again, perhaps we should take a look at what the subsequent autopsy report by the Parish Coroner found:

An autopsy determined there were no drugs in Pikes' system and that he did not have asthma, according to Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish coroner.

They've used Tasers on prisoners in the US run Camp Bucca, a pregnant woman, attempted to use one on a deaf man getting out of the bath tub, tried to silence a yoga instructor in Best Buy, a man on a bike.

The UN says the use of Tasers is torture. Judges have been trying to remove references to Tasers in court cases involving deaths. Since 2001, more than 300 people... MORE THAN 300 PEOPLE have died by Tasering.

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team was mysteriously brought back to the US and trained to Taser civilians who might be protesting.

And just a question... does the fact Blackwater has been involved in training local police explain why the rising use of Tasers for unimportant actions and the indifference to human suffering?

Update 11/24:
Youtube of policeman accidentally Tasering himself.

Police shoot a drugged out teenager after Taser doesn't work.

Gee... what else could go wrong?

Update: How about police suing Taser Co. after a demonstration goes awry?

Soldiers from Iraq duty being brought home

And being toughed up to deal with protesters:

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

And: (my bold)

The colonel’s remark suggests that, in preparation for their“homefront” duties, rank-and-file troops are also being routinely Tasered. The brutalizing effect and intent of such a macabre training exercise is to inure troops against sympathy for the pain and suffering they may be called upon to inflict on the civilian population using these same “non-lethal” weapons.

According to military officials quoted by the Army Times, the deployment of regular Army troops in the US begun with the First Brigade Combat Team is to become permanent, with different units rotated into the assignment on an annual basis.

In an online interview with reporters earlier this month, NorthCom officers were asked about the implications of the new deployment for the Posse Comitatus Act, the 230-year-old legal statute that bars the use of US military forces for law enforcement purposes within the US itself.

Col. Lou Volger, NorthCom’s chief of future operations, tried to downplay any enforcement role, but added, “We will integrate with law enforcement to understand the situation and make sure we’re aware of any threats.”

Volger acknowledged the obvious, that the Brigade Combat Team is a military force, while attempting to dismiss the likelihood that it would play any military role. It “has forces for security,” he said, “but that’s really—they call them security forces, but that’s really just to establish our own footprint and make sure that we can operate and run our own bases.”

Lt. Col. James Shores, another NorthCom officer, chimed in, “Let’s say even if there was a scenario that developed into a branch of a civil disturbance—even at that point it would take a presidential directive to even get it close to anything that you’re suggesting.”

Update 9/27: Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat found the possible original link.

I deny everything!

Someone googled "stun gun sex domination" and got my blog...

Maybe I should post something in honor of this:



WITH a stun gun!



I hope I have made someone somewhere very happy....

Think before you fire

That Taser! They are not harmless. (my bold)

A new proposal to increase the number of stun guns in police hands is hitting a series of public relations hurdles, with a Brooklyn man dying this week after being shocked by a Taser and Amnesty International warning the police department to reconsider.

Since 2001, more than 300 people — including the Brooklyn man who was shocked by Suffolk County police officers Monday — have died after the guns were used on them, a statement Amnesty International sent yesterday to New York reporters said.

"Given their questionable safety record, TASERs should be used with extreme caution and not become a weapon of first resort for the NYPD," the group's director, Larry Cox, said.

According to Amnesty's records, the number of fatal Taser shocks has gradually increased as more police departments seeking less lethal alternatives to firearms have bought up the stun guns. Nationwide, 69 people died last year, compared with 13 in 2002, according to the group.

Amnesty said 90% of the 300 victims were unarmed.

Police sergeants on patrol are carrying stun guns in their holsters starting yesterday. Officers in specialty units already carry Tasers with them.

Lovely. Who on earth is encouraging police to regard Tasers as a quick and easy solution for dealing with irritating people? Don't answer that...

Bicyclists deserve to be tasered

Just for being .. ah... irritating:

A bicyclist tells an incredible story of police brutality after being stopped for riding his folding bicycle away from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport after a flight in September.

Stephan Orsak, writing at his Greencycle website, said he was "rudely accosted, assaulted with battery," and tasered. He says he was complying with all the laws of the airport and Minnesota rules of the road at the time of the incident.

After he was hospitalized for observation, the 135-pound violinist was thrown in jail for 8 hours and eventually charged with six counts of obstructing officers, failure to comply, etc.; the usual charges you'll see in cases like this.

Orsak says a preliminary hearing on the charges is coming up later this month.

The bizarre chain of events started when an airport policeman started yelling out the window of his squard car at Orsak for riding his bicycle on Outbound Road at the terminal.

He stopped and the officer gave Orsak some contradictory orders about where he could and could not ride. Just for the record, there was no sign prohibiting bicycles on that road at the time. After some discussion, Orsak tried to leave, he was thrown to the ground, picked up, accosted with a taser and arrested.

On his website, Orsak says:

"It must be understood that from the onset that I was treated disrespectfully and as a second class citizen. My presence on the road, though absolutely legal, must have been an annoyance to Officer Wingate. I was clearly profiled simply for being a cyclist, a clear violation of civil rights."

Orsak's blog has received dozens of comments in support, and the RoadGuy blog at the Star Tribune website has received many responses to the story. His story -- with a warning -- also was posted on the BikeAccess.net website.

Go check out his story. It's an amazing case of police brutality and coverup. Let's wish him luck.

Welcome to the New World Order. Where Tasering is commonplace and always called for.

Update 6/6: I was informed in comments this case was a year old, and that the case had already come to court. Orsak received a stayed sentence. Good to hear.

What I'm most interested in is the attitude of the police, their belief that tasering is not harmful and is too quickly used in unnecessary ways. Where are they getting this encouragement to misuse such a weapon?

(edited for clarity)

Tasers don't kill people

People with Mphff Mph Mphff's do.



Sailor at SteveAudio notes that a judge has ruled the references to Tasers must be removed in the autopsies of three men who died while Tasers were being used:

A judge ruled today that the Summit County Medical Examiner must change her autopsy findings to remove all references to the Taser stun gun as a contributing cause of death in the cases of three men who died during encounters with law enforcement officers.

The police have been found to use Tasers too quickly and Tasers have actually killed people. And we are supposed to ignore it?

Are we supposed to let the police continue to use Tasers without accountability or acknowledging that it is a dangerous weapon? So more people can die?

Just why would we do that?

'Tis the season to be tasered

Fa la la la la la ow ow ow...

Digby of Hullabaloo quoting The Daytona Beach News:

Can running your mouth off at a police officer during a confrontation in a crowded store get you blasted with a Taser?

It happened last month when a Daytona Beach police officer stunned a yoga instructor. The officer used her Taser when the teacher refused to pipe down inside the Best Buy store on West International Speedway Boulevard.

Sounds ok until you read further.

The interaction with the police was less than one minute from start to tasering....

And then there is this: (my bold)

A News-Journal review of all Taser incidents by Daytona Beach police in November shows officers used the weapons 10 times. Beeland's was the only incident that did not involve violence or a fleeing criminal suspect.

Officials with the ACLU and Amnesty International USA say other tactics should have been used, especially because Beeland was not acting violently or threatening the officer in any way.

"In my view, a Taser should be used only as an alternative to a gun," said Glenn Katon, director of the Central Region of the ACLU in Orlando. "Is yelling (at an officer) enough resistance to cause someone to be Tasered?

"People are getting killed with Tasers," he said.
Taser use has become so commonplace, Katon said, that officers no longer employ other training tactics they've learned to subdue people.

"I certainly don't want to see an officer get hurt, but a cop should have enough training to be able to use something other than a Taser to calm someone down," Katon said.

It's so quick just to taser somebody into submission and then figure out what the problem is. Why on earth do police need any training at all?



Could it be this policewoman went to the Blackwater camp for training?

Mistaserment

The act of using the Taser thoughtlessly, especially on a deaf man stepping out of the bath after you've broken into his house by mistake:

Donnell Williams had just gotten out of the bath tub, wearing only a towel around his waist, when he turned the corner to see guns pointing right at him.

"I ain't never been so scared," says Williams.

Police forced entry into Williams home while responding to a shooting, but it turned out to be a false call. They had no idea at the time the call wasn't real and that Williams is hearing impaired. Without his hearing aid he is basically deaf.

"I kept going to my ear yelling that I was scared. I can't hear! I can't hear!"

Officers were worried about their own safety because at the time it appeared Williams was refusing to obey their commands to show his hands. That's when they shot him with a Taser.

Just how many more of these are we going to put up with before we take their new toys away?