Cop tasers 10 year old boy for...

[Balog]

Ben and Chris, a serious question.

If it's really 80% - 20% good - bad as you say, why do the majority "good" officers get all thin blue line and protect the bad ones? Can they still be called "good" officers when they turn a blind eye to the abuses and law breaking of the 20%?

[MillCreek]

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20121101/NEWS01/121109963#Edmonds-police-officer-charged-with-sex-crime

And in the theme of this thread, an interesting story about a local police officer who essentially raped a woman that he had detained.  I am not sure why this is not being charged as rape.  From the inferences in the article, it sounds like the woman is a streetwalker, but I have certainly heard of cases in which people are charged with raping a streetwalker.  The officer served in the Navy for 20 years as a police officer, and is now being investigated for allegations of some sort of molestation of a relative while he was in the service.

[Ben]

Ben and Chris, a serious question.

If it's really 80% - 20% good - bad as you say, why do the majority "good" officers get all thin blue line and protect the bad ones? Can they still be called "good" officers when they turn a blind eye to the abuses and law breaking of the 20%?

Do they all? Or is it the police dept itself (as in administrators) and the local government that have gone into lawsuit protection mode? I'm sure there are plenty of depts where the individual officers cover stuff up - we read about it happening in places like NYC all the time.

Does it happen in that same frequency in Smalltown as well? I don't know. My theory is simple and subjective in that the characteristics of a sample group will somewhat follow the characteristics of that population as a whole. Tobler's Law of Geography and all - things that are closer together are more similar than things that are farther apart. Maybe you have more bad apple NYC cops because NYC has more crime and bad apples.

My own subjective claim is that America seems to be composed of around 80% generally decent people and 20% jackasses. If i had to make a claim based on my own very limited interactions with local police, it would be 100% decent people because I've never had a run in with a bad cop. I know they exist though, just like bad people exist in the general population.

[MechAg94]

Like maliciously (or "negligently"  ) assaulting a kid with 50,000 volts of electricity?

If it's out of the holster and pointed at a kid for anything other than true law enforcement purposes... it ain't "negligent."  No matter what.  The intent was snarky intimidation compliance "I am above the law" authoritah bullscat.

Unless my non-existent son were on some sort of Ritalin-rage or other situation calling for his tasing, I'm right there with you.

That is the problem.  You are assuming milcious intent on the part of the officer and allowing for no other option.  That colors every opinion on this.  When the good cops see people like you ready to hang them for small mistakes, it is no wonder they tend to be protective of their fellow officers and fall into CYA mode.  As far as they are concerned, they won't get a fair hearing from you. 


I agree this guy should catch hell for tasering a kid for no legitamite reason, but some of you seem to be acting like the kid is dead and in the grave and you want to string the officer up and hang him.  I guess that makes me want to take the officer's side. 

[MechAg94]

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20121101/NEWS01/121109963#Edmonds-police-officer-charged-with-sex-crime

And in the theme of this thread, an interesting story about a local police officer who essentially raped a woman that he had detained.  I am not sure why this is not being charged as rape.  From the inferences in the article, it sounds like the woman is a streetwalker, but I have certainly heard of cases in which people are charged with raping a streetwalker.  The officer served in the Navy for 20 years as a police officer, and is now being investigated for allegations of some sort of molestation of a relative while he was in the service.

There was a cop down this way that just got convicted for something similar.  Cop claimed it was consenual.  I guess the jury didn't buy it.

Another recent incident had 4 cops being prosecuted for supposedly beating on a 12 or 13 year old.  The kid was a burglar who had many, many, many priors.  They caught him red handed, had to chase him down.  The kid was struggling the whole time and they had to wreste him down to get him hand cuffed.  4 cops brought up on charges based on what I thought was a biased view of the video.  The kid was arrested for burglary a week later.  The first cop was acquitted.  I don't think the rest have gone to trial yet.

[Strings]

>When the good cops see people like you ready to hang them for small mistakes<

I would contend that this is NOT a "small mistake". It is, at best, a demonstration of such a severe lack of intelligence on the part of the officer as to be criminal.

Describing this as a "small mistake", when a similar mistake by you or I would result in criminal charges and loss of rights, does nothing but increase the divide between "Us" and "Them".

[AZRedhawk44]

That is the problem.  You are assuming milcious intent on the part of the officer and allowing for no other option.  That colors every opinion on this.  When the good cops see people like you ready to hang them for small mistakes, it is no wonder they tend to be protective of their fellow officers and fall into CYA mode.  As far as they are concerned, they won't get a fair hearing from you. 


I agree this guy should catch hell for tasering a kid for no legitamite reason, but some of you seem to be acting like the kid is dead and in the grave and you want to string the officer up and hang him.  I guess that makes me want to take the officer's side. 

May I point my gun at you, and enjoy no repercussions?

(No I don't want to shoot you obviously.  But pointing a weapon at another person without a legitimate threat-defined reason is unacceptable)

[Boomhauer]

(No I don't want to shoot you obviously.  But pointing a weapon at another person without a legitimate threat-defined reason is unacceptable)

This. Want to show kids about the taser? Pull up youtube and show them somebody getting tased or arrange for one of your fellow officers to undergo a demonstration (this is best handled by voluntelling them). Don't pull it out and joke with it or point it at anyone. It's a duh-huh kind of thing.

[lysander6]

The 80/20 debate is laughable in my opinion.  I think it is the 98% of cops that give the 2% a bad name.  These are not representative cross-sections of the population any more than other occupations that have a self-selection process and a vetting process in the culture to ensure the compliance of the new members to the "thin black and blue line".

Not only are thugs attracted to the job code but the police unions and unlimited immunity perpetuate and incentivize bad behavior, in this case, barbaric behavior.

The majority of all police will do what they are told.  No thug on earth in ancient or recent history could maintain an oppressive government of any stripe (name your political bogeyman) without a willing constabulary to do the dirty work.

As America continues to descend into an economic calamity and increasingly oppressive federal and state laws, the cops will be the loyal praetorians to fine, kidnap, cage, maim and kill the "lawbreakers".

Incredibly, Congress has been creating on average 55 new “crimes” per year, bringing the total number of federal crimes on the books to more than 5,000, with as many as 300,000 regulatory crimes. As journalist Radley Balko reports, “that doesn't include federal regulations, which are increasingly being enforced with criminal, not administrative, penalties. It also doesn't include the increasing leeway with which prosecutors can enforce broadly written federal conspiracy, racketeering, and money laundering laws. And this is before we even get to the states’ criminal codes.”

In such a society, we are all petty criminals, guilty of violating some minor law. In fact, Boston lawyer Harvey Silvergate, author of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, estimates that the average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to an overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal and an inclination on the part of prosecutors to reject the idea that there can’t be a crime without criminal intent. Consequently, we now find ourselves operating in a strange new world where small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community are finding their farms raided, while home gardeners face jail time for daring to cultivate their own varieties of orchids without having completed sufficient paperwork.

See:  https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_overcriminalization_of_america_are_we_all_criminals_now

I would eventually like to see all police activity privatized and the criminal code abolished but until then the immediate remedies are abolition of all police government union activity and membership and the immediate gutting of all unlimited immunity for sworn officers and force them to be bonded and insured through a private broker they pay for instead of the taxpayers they savage daily.

David Friedman's interesting take on the criminal code:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqpdIcGEQsY

Per the uniform tasering the child:  fire him and send him to the parents house for a determination of weregild.

[vaskidmark]

That is the problem.  You are assuming milcious intent on the part of the officer and allowing for no other option.  That colors every opinion on this.  When the good cops see people like you ready to hang them for small mistakes, it is no wonder they tend to be protective of their fellow officers and fall into CYA mode.  As far as they are concerned, they won't get a fair hearing from you. 
.... 

IF, in the beginning, bad cops were not protected by the rest, and good cops were taking the line that weeding out the bad ones sa soon as possible was good for everybody, then I doubt we would be seeing the battle lines we in fact have today.

I do not care a fig about unions, union contracts, and making sure that a dues-paying member never loses out in order to convince the others to keep paying dues.  That's not the point.

Society has ceded, and cops have accepted, the role of law-enforcer.  But the laws are not being enforced equally*  Folks are not happy about that.

stay safe.

* I said "equally", not "equitably" - because if equity were brought into play the penalties given law-enforcers for breaking the law would be arsher than for the rest of us.

I know there are times that the cops need/want to arrive quickly without announcing their arrival to the whole neighborhood and thus travel above the speed limit without using lights and/or siren.  But when I see s cop blow past me at 70+ in a 40MPH zone, only to catch up to him two minutes later at the 7-11 where he is buying a Lotto ticket, how am I supposed to feel?

[Ben]

The 80/20 debate is laughable in my opinion.

The 80/20 is of course not a debate at all. It is one man's personal observation that in his 52 years on the planet around 80% of the people he's come across have been pretty decent. Maybe I'm hanging out with the wrong crowd.

[lysander6]

Ben,

  To paraphrase our esteemed president, let me be clear, 80/20 rule as applies to the assumption that the greater number of cops are better behaved than the smaller is laughable.  if good cops were truly such, they would work daily to root out the bad seed instead of allowing it to flourish.  Their inaction to bring bad cops to heal makes them accountable in that wretched behavior.

  I do believe the 80/20 rule holds true for lots of instances of human activity but not this particular one.

[MechAg94]

May I point my gun at you, and enjoy no repercussions?

(No I don't want to shoot you obviously.  But pointing a weapon at another person without a legitimate threat-defined reason is unacceptable)

Okay, equating tasers and guns explains your viewpoint quite a bit. 

I guess I feel lucky that I haven't had all these bad experiences with police officers and don't hate them. 

[Strings]

See, *I* don't hate cops. I hate the institutionalized attitude of "Us v Them" that seems to pervade the profession.

Compare cops to gun owners: when was the last time you saw a story of a gun owner acting in a certifiably idiotic fashion (and pointing a taser at a kid is just that, assuming lack of malice) without the entire community condemning them?

>Okay, equating tasers and guns explains your viewpoint quite a bit.  <

OK... so you think that pointing a taser at someone without just cause wouldn't result in criminal charges for the likes of you and I? Want me to check that with the local DA's office for you?

[Ben]

Compare cops to gun owners: when was the last time you saw a story of a gun owner acting in a certifiably idiotic fashion (and pointing a taser at a kid is just that, assuming lack of malice) without the entire community condemning them?

I see it all the time on gun forums. It doesn't seem to make it into the MSM so much, leaving the general non-gun culture to think we're all a bunch of barbarian gun and bible huggers.

[brimic]

Okay, equating tasers and guns explains your viewpoint quite a bit. 

OrLy?
Lets go back to the idea that the tasers were more or less supposed to be a replacement or supplement to the baton/nightstick on the force continuum- less than lethal, but not by any stretch 'non-lethal.'
Cop pulls out bataon/nightstick and whacks kid over the head rendering him unconscious- still feel the same about your guilt/negligence/accident angle and still feel that its 'hanging him for small mistakes' if the cop is successfully prosecuted to the full extent of the law?

[Balog]

Okay, equating tasers and guns explains your viewpoint quite a bit. 

I guess I feel lucky that I haven't had all these bad experiences with police officers and don't hate them. 

  Opposing police not being held accountable for their actions equals hating them in the same way opposing gay marriage means you hate gays or opposing abortion means you hate women. Weak rhetoric.

[T.O.M.]

I'll just say this... I worked with cops for 12 years. I prosecuted some along the way.  Some I call friend.  Most of these friends would fit on this board with no problem, except for their job. One has a ranch set-up with his prep materials and everything in a way I bet would cause jealousy among most of you as it did me.  The ones I call friend are Life Members of the NRA, are strong supporters of individual rights, and would join us in condemning the idiot at issue in this thread. They are good people.  They don't have the us v. them attitude.

Look, this one shouldn't be a cop, or put in any position where he has to have good judgment, as he just showed his complete lack of that is this situation.  Can't say if criminal charges are warranted, as I don't know enough to make that call.

As for the actions of good cops covering for bad, I have never had that experience. I'm sure it  happens, but also damn sure it doesn't always happen.

I'm done. Going to be with my family while they watch the Sandy fundraiser on TV.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

but also damn sure it doesn't always happen

you don't get enough of your reality from youtube obviously

[Tallpine]

I'm just trying to figure out how I could "accidently" shoot a ten year old on a school ground with a taser and not be sitting in jail right now 

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

I'm just trying to figure out how I could "accidently" shoot a ten year old on a school ground with a taser and not be sitting in jail right now 

really?  you can kill a kid and not be sitting in jail
http://waycrossga.blogspot.com/2011/04/accused-child-killer-in-waycross-ga-out.html

[Tallpine]

really?  you can kill a kid and not be sitting in jail
http://waycrossga.blogspot.com/2011/04/accused-child-killer-in-waycross-ga-out.html

tasers don't always kill 

[vaskidmark]

As for the actions of good cops covering for bad, I have never had that experience. I'm sure it  happens, but also damn sure it doesn't always happen.

Every cop that knows of another cop that has over-stepped the bounds has an obligation to report that activity.  That's how things work in the "perfect world".

When cops who know of other cops who have committed felonies do not report them you get an "imperfect world".

Think of it in the same way the service academies treat their honor code and those that know of a violation by another cadet.  The expulsion of the cadet who violated the honor code is in many ways a shame.  The expulsion of the cadet who knew of the violation but did not report it is much less of a loss.  Even when folks try their hardest they can find themselves breaking the law.  Sometimes it was not out of malice or for personal gain but due to any of a number of other reasons.  Folks who intentionally lie should not be allowed to remain in positions of trust.

And yes, the standard for cops should be higher than for "ordinary" folks.

stay safe.

[MechAg94]

tasers don't always kill  

I'd like to hear what their reasoning is for the punishment also.  They haven't made a statement that I have seen.  Tasering a kid by "accident" is hard to forgive.  If they really believe it was an accident and the kid was thought to be okay, I can see the lack of charges maybe.  

Q:  are people generally charged with assault/battery for doing something accidental?  Or is it left to the civil side?

I was trying to decide if a car accident involving a 10 year old was analogous, but I am not sure.  If there were no significant injuries, I wouldn't think there would be an arrest unless gross negligence or something worse was involved.  I guess that is the argument is.   . Maybe someone can define how that is applied legally.

[MechAg94]

Every cop that knows of another cop that has over-stepped the bounds has an obligation to report that activity.  That's how things work in the "perfect world".

When cops who know of other cops who have committed felonies do not report them you get an "imperfect world".

Think of it in the same way the service academies treat their honor code and those that know of a violation by another cadet.  The expulsion of the cadet who violated the honor code is in many ways a shame.  The expulsion of the cadet who knew of the violation but did not report it is much less of a loss.  Even when folks try their hardest they can find themselves breaking the law.  Sometimes it was not out of malice or for personal gain but due to any of a number of other reasons.  Folks who intentionally lie should not be allowed to remain in positions of trust.

And yes, the standard for cops should be higher than for "ordinary" folks.

stay safe.

i think if people applied those expectations to politicians, applying it to cops would not be much of an issue.