MSNBC.com is polling readers asking if it is okay to Taser a nut who runs onto a playing field as happened at a Philadelphia Phillies baseball game Monday night. I was among the 70% who said damn right.
A policeman and stadium security guards chased Steve Consalvi, 17, for a frantic minute when the officer nailed the frolicking youth with a Taser and the kid dropped like a bag of cement.
The boy phoned his father, Wayne Consalvi, earlier in the game, asking permission. “I said, ‘I don’t think you should, son,.’ ” the father told the Philadelphia Daily News. “This would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” the son replied, according to his father.
Police Commissioner Charles Ramsay reviewed the tape and felt the officer had acted within the department’s guidelines, which allows use of Tasers to arrest fleeing suspects.
Young Consalvi jumped the fence in the 8th inning of the game with the St. Louis Cardinals and several Phillies fielders placed gloves over their faces and appeared to be stifling laughter. Stadium officials said it was the first time a fan interrupting a game on the field had been tasered.
Police said Steve is charged with defiant trespass, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
Fans who enter playing fields or throw beverages at players from the stands should be banned from attending games. Perhaps, tasering them may have some of those jerks think twice. I recall about five years ago a father and son jumped onto the field and attacked the first base coach during a baseball game.
In the 1960s during the Vietnam war, a fan leaped onto the field at Dodger Stadium and set an American flag on fire. Rick Monday, the Chicago Cub center fielder at the time, wrestled the war protester to the ground and saved the flag from additional desecration.
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Jerry Remmers worked 26 years in the newspaper business. His last 23 years was with the Evening Tribune in San Diego where assignments included reporter, assistant city editor, county and politics editor.