UCLA's official policy on handling passive resistors: PAIN CONTROL

[pnwmom]

It looks like the real criminals here may be those on the University board that approved the policy on the use of Tasers. You can download the official policy by following a link that appears on the Daily Bruin page. Below are some of the relevant passages.

http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=39010

301.24 PAIN COMPLIANCE TECHNIQUES Pain compliance techniques may be very effective in controlling a passive or actively resisting individual. Officers may only apply those pain compliance techniques for which the officer has received Departmentally approved training and only when the officer reasonably believes that the use of such a technique appears necessary to further a legitimate law enforcement purpose. Officers utilizing any pain compliance technique should consider the totality of the circumstance including, but not limited to:
(a) The potential for injury to the officer(s) or others if the technique is not used,
(b) The potential risk of serious injury to the individual being controlled,
(c) The degree to which the pain compliance technique may be controlled in application according to the level of resistance,
(d) The nature of the offense involved,
(e) The level of resistance of the individual(s) involved,
(f) The need for prompt resolution of the situation,
(g) If time permits (e.g. passive demonstrators), other reasonable alternatives.
The application of any pain compliance technique shall be discontinued once the officer determines that full compliance has been achieved.

5) CRITERIA FOR USE - CARTRIDGE DEPLOYMENT Authorized personnel may use a Taser when circumstances known and perceived to the individual officer at the time indicate that the application of the Taser is reasonable to subdue or control:
A) A violent or physically resisting subject, or
B) A potentially violent or potentially physically resistive subject who has verbally or physically demonstrated an intention to resist, or
C) A dangerous animal.

6) CRITERIA FOR USE - DRIVE STUN Authorized personnel may use a Taser in a drive stun capacity, as a pain compliance technique, in the following situations.
A) To eliminate physical resistance from an arrestee in accomplishing an arrest or physical search.
B) When a skirmish line is deployed and/or for pain compliance against passive resistors as allowed in UCLA Police Policy § 301.24 (Pain Compliance Techniques).
C) To stop a dangerous animal.

[nebenaube]

1. pain compliance technique

newspeak for torture.... Had enough yet? This is bullshit.

[pnwmom]

2. I had enough a long time ago. You're right, this is state approved torture.

[Zodiak]

3. What a bullshit set of criteria

I love it where dangerous animals are mentioned right after people who have demonstrated no violence whatsoever (twice, actually). As if passive resistors and people asserting their rights are comparable to dangerous animals. Talk about dehumanization by juxtaposition.

I don't care if a person is mouthing off, that does not deserve torture.

And what the hell is a drive-stun? Is that using as taser as a cattle prod?

[Jed Dilligan]

4. I hope these shits

learn about the other end of PAIN COMPLIANCE in the general population of a state prison.

[Karenina]

5. Woo-hoo!

These will certainly need to come under scrutiny!

[pnwmom]

6. I think I read about this somewhere else

without reading the actual policy. From what I recall, the policy was approved in 2004, with apparently little notice. Hopefully it gets noticed now.

I'm going to see what the University of Washington's policy is with regard to these things. I know the local police departments have had some real problems with them. In a nearby town, a 32 yr. old former Microsoft employee is suing because the police tasered her after she got involved in a fender bender. They told her to get out of the car and she wasn't "responsive." So they broke the vehicle window and tasered her. Her only response then was to scream, so they dragged her out of the car. The Fire Dept. arrived and immediately recognized that she wasn't drunk -- as the police had assumed -- she was in diabetic shock.

And when the police had tasered her, the probes landed near her transplanted kidney. When I googled about this once, I found quite a number of cases of diabetic shock victims who had been tasered under similar situations.