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Naked Wizard Tased By Reality from Tracy Anderson on Vimeo.

Remember all that stuff about how Tasers were humane, non-lethal replacements for firearms? About how police officers would only use them against knife and gun-wielding crims or any other situation in which an officer feared for his life or safety? At least, that was the official justfication. However, as was predicted by many, their principal use in the US has turned out to be the subjugation of anyone refusing to comply with a police officer’s orders, and this is a much larger section of the public than those wielding dangerous weapons.

In this video the man could have just been handcuffed, arrested and charged with whatever offence he was committing. In a democratic, accountable society it’s the job of the courts to meter out punishment, but these officers couldn’t be bothered with all that pesky bureaucracy. After the obese officer’s cowardly and dangerous knee drop into the nudist’s stomach failed to hurt the prone man sufficiently, three fit, well-trained policemen really should have been able to render him immobile, even though handicapped by wearing little gloves to protect them from germs. They can certainly do this in Japan, but then Japanese police officers aren’t too fat to tie their own shoe-laces, they all practise judo or aiki-jutsu and their primary concern isn’t avoiding getting their Ray-Bans bent or their shirts creased. I realise it’s a bit much to expect the porkers in this video to do much else other than sit on people, wave batons around or pull triggers, but it would be nice for the American public if their ordinary police officers were fit and capable enough to be able to subdue suspects of highly questionable threat without resorting to torture methods or lethal force.

Of course, a single video does not constitute evidence of widespread abuse of the device by police officers. But then, that’s why we have services like delicious. If you’re not up to speed with the Taser issue, I suggest you spend a few minutes scanning the following link’s listings:

http://delicious.com/tag/Taser

This entry was posted on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 11:07 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.