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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 10:14 pm Post subject: Are tasers worth it? |
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4640393.html
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The Houston City Council approved $4.7 million to buy Tasers in November 2004, one year after the shooting deaths of two unarmed Hispanic teens, with the hope that the alternative weapons would reduce the number of shootings by officers.
In the first two years officers had Tasers, they shocked 40 people who wielded weapons and whom officers would likely have been justified in shooting. But a Chronicle report in January found officers still shot, wounded and killed as many people as before the availability of Tasers.
In fact, 95 percent of the Taser discharges were not used to defuse situations in which deadly force clearly would have been justified, according to a Chronicle analysis of the first 900 police Taser incidents. The majority of instances began as traffic stops, disturbances or suspicious-persons complaints, and in more than 350 cases no one was charged with a crime or the case was dropped by prosecutors or dismissed by judges and grand juries. |
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Octavius Hite

Joined: 28 Jan 2004 Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 10:19 pm Post subject: |
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I think yes. There are way too many guns and the police are to often left with no other choice than to use their sidearms.
The major concern has to be the apparent overuse of these weapons. Look at the case at UCLA (I think) where campus police stunned a kid for not leaving the computer lab. I have also seen police officers using it to wake up homeless people amongst other crimes.
I say, use them instead of guns but they have to be treated as weapons and when an officer uses one it has be followed by a report and an investigation of some sort. |
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cbclark4

Joined: 20 Aug 2006 Location: Masan
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Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:23 pm Post subject: |
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Defiant father Tasered while holding newborn
Man says daughter injured when security guards downed him in hospital
Updated: 4:31 p.m. ET Aug. 14, 2007
HOUSTON - In a confrontation captured on videotape, a hospital security guard fired a stun gun to stop a defiant father from taking home his newborn, sending both man and child crashing to the floor.
Now the man says the baby girl suffers from head trauma because she was dropped.
�I�ve got to wonder what kind of moron would Tase an adult holding a baby,� said George Kirkham, a former police officer and criminologist at Florida State University. �It doesn�t take rocket science to realize the baby is going to fall.�
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20266747/?gt1=10252 |
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dogshed

Joined: 28 Apr 2006
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Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 7:26 pm Post subject: |
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In Startrek I don't think they ever showed anyone getting an injury from
the fall after being hit with a phaser on stun. Why am I talking about Startrek? Because, regardless of how much training you give some people
they will still think of the Taser as being a harmless stun gun that works
like the stun setting of a phaser on the original Star Trek. |
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dogshed

Joined: 28 Apr 2006
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Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 7:30 pm Post subject: Re: Are tasers worth it? |
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Hater Depot wrote: |
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4640393.html
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In the first two years officers had Tasers, they shocked 40 people who wielded weapons and whom officers would likely have been justified in shooting. But a Chronicle report in January found officers still shot, wounded and killed as many people as before the availability of Tasers.
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So instead of decreasing the number of shootings it eliminated a 40 person increase. That's still good. |
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