Originally Posted by adatewithatrain
I guess my point was to not assume that the guy being arrested started anything or ran from cops or whatnot based on the police report..there were no witnesses who made comments in the article etc. It also made no mention as to whether or not the guy actually did succesfully hit anyone so the whole violence thing on his part is sort of a moot point. what we actually DO know is that the cops tasered him and boy does that suck big time. those things are really nasty and have been known to kill people. "less then lethal weapons" is a completely bogus term. im also a firm believer in "equal rights, equal fights"
whether you successfully connect or you miss, violence is violence. if somebody's trying to punch you on the street should you wait for hime to connect before you take him out? obviously tha answer is no. i agree that we will never know for sure what happened because none of us were there. but IF a person is throwing punches he is being violent. attempting to hurt folks. bottom line. i'm not saying that the police are always right, either. however we should not assume that they are always wrong. i would gess that more often than not they are in the right. that is an educated, informed guess, as i work on an ambulance and have interacted with police and criminals and non criminals alike. and technically tasers are not called "less than lethal." they are called "less lethal." only one less word, but HUGE difference in meaning. that being said, incidence of death secondary to taser is much lower than you may think and certainly much, MUCH lower than the news media will have you believe. it is so low that one would be more likely to die riding his/her bike to work tomorrow than if one were tased at this very moment. the statistical data on death following being tased is gathered by doing studdies which adhere to the scientific method, not the crazed speculation of some ratings-hungry reporter. infact cops who carry tasers must be tased before tey can carry them, in most places. if there was ANY significant risk of death they would not be tasing each other.