Support growing for limiting taser use (FL)

[struggle4progress]

Two urban senators lined up support in a large black fraternity today for bills that would greatly restrict, or even ban, the use of tasers by police.

Sens. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, and Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, said they hope for a hearing soon in Senate committees on their bills to require a study of health effects of the electronic shock weapons, which police use to subdue dangerous suspects.

Hill and Simplin met with leaders of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity and urged them to go back to their communities and call on school boards for support of the legislation.

Siplin said tasers have not been adequately tested. He and Hill said the Department of Health should conduct a test of what the devices do to the body. <snip>

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/breaking_news/11112811.htm

[Fridays Child]

1. Florida, where babies are tasered in their cribs.

It seems like every time there's a news story about the improper use of a taser, it's in Florida.

[Tempest]

2. Lake City Man Dies After Shock With Taser Gun (FL)

A Lake City man died Friday while officers were attempting to take him into custody for an involuntary mental health evaluation at a local hospital, according to the Columbia County Sheriff's Office. <snip>

Rather that reacting as a normal victim of the stun gun, authorities said Woolfolk pulled the prongs from his skin. Once officers had him on the ground, Woolfolk became unresponsive and was transported to Shands Medical Center at Lake Shore. He was pronounced dead a short time later. <snip>

http://www.news4jax.com/news/4277664/detail.html

[dbt]

3. I can just see the bumper stickers now:

When tasers are outlawed, only outlaws will have tasers.

I'll give up my taser when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

:evilgrin:

[Xithras]

4. I own a taser

And I've nailed myself with it TWICE, so I know how much it hurts, but I don't understand the move against them. These people keep saying that Tasers haven't been tested on the human body, which simply isn't true...tasers deliver an electrical jolt no different than you'd receive from any other electrical device, and the effects of electricity on the human body have been heavily studied over the past century.

Do they occasionally kill people? Yes, people with electrical problems with their heart can be killed by jolts as small as those from a 9 volt battery. But what's the alternative when someone is fighting and resisting? Going back to billyclubs and sidearms?

[Politiclo8]

5. From what little l've heard about he taser incidents is...............

that the cops seem to be using the tasers indiscriminately.
Why did cops use a taser on a 13-year old in south FL a couple of months ago?

So you don't think that someone dying is reason for a review of them? I do. I thought the reason cops began using tasers was because they were supposed to be safer and used to subdue suspects without causing permanent or fatal injuring them much less killing them.

I would think that there would be a way to calibrate the tasers so that the jolt would only stun and not be fatal.

IMHO it would it would take many more strikes with a billy club than it take jolts with a taser to kill someone.

[lostnfound]

6. They still have the sidearms..

How old is your taser? I wonder if they have gotten more powerful in recent years. I've already read that the ones that cops carry are different than ones for civilian use.

On edit: Maybe an alternative is cattle prods (sarcasm)..to the extent tasers are being used to ensure compliance with instructions rather than defense, maybe there's a tendency to misuse and overuse them..to think of them as cattle prods. Sidearms wouldn't be used for a teen refusing to be detained for skipping school or a man who won't give a urine sample -- they'd be used for someone who had committed an act of violence, theoretically?