Nationally recognized legal scholar Jonathan Turley calls it ‘a very problematic rationale.’ I’ll say. The police came to her apartment looking for her son.(WDTN.com)
Her family said she was yelling at officers because she was scared.
"She was terrified. She was extremely terrified," said Harris’s niece, Dionna. "She was scared because the person identified themselves as a police officer. But she’s been robbed before by someone using the same technique."…
"She’s blind and they pulled her off her Futon, handcuffed her and tased her because he said she swung at him. She can’t see," said Harris’s sister Elvita Harris. "I’m very frustrated and upset. Dayton police need to implement a sensitivity program." (WDTN.com)
Here’s my favorite bit:
The officers [sic] actions will be investigated, but Sgt. Anderson said Harris should have told them she was scared.
"She does not have to open her door. It was a voluntary thing for her to open her door," he said.(WDTN.com)
The moral therefore is, what? If the police knock, don’t let them in?
Turley notes:
The story will add to the controversial use of tasers as a routine matter by officers, including recent incidents of such use on a disabled man and pregnant mother and an 82-year-old woman and routine ticket violater.
This is not to mention the case where the police entered the wrong apartment and then tasered a deaf man who was in his bathtub, here. (Jonathan Turley)
And you may remember the case a few months ago of the man who was tasered to death in a Vancouver, BC airport.
Let’s assume arguendo that tasers are a better option in some circumstances than other means which police have used, or could use, to subdue an uncooperative suspect or other person they are attempting to question or apprehend. Let’s assume further that if they didn’t have tasers, they’d have to use some other means likely to cause greater physical damage to the person.
If so, there urgently needs to be a reassessment of the use of tasers in situations in which the police aren’t in imminent fear that they will be harmed or assaulted and are using the taser simply to ‘facilitate’ the job. And somewhere in formulating appropriate policy the age, mental condition, and general health of the person being tasered needs to be factored in.
