Fan on Phils' field subdued with Taser

[babylonsister]

Appropriate? I don't think so.


Fan on Phils' field subdued with Taser

By Kia Gregory and Matt Gelb

Inquirer Staff Writers


For the first time in Phillies history, a fan running on the field at Citizens Bank Park was subdued by a Philadelphia police officer using his Taser gun.

With 44,817 fans watching in the stands Monday night, the teenage male, wearing a black baseball cap, red T-shirt, and khaki shorts, ran on to the field during the eighth inning against the St. Louis Cardinals.

"This is the first time that a Taser gun has been used by Philadelphia police to apprehend a field jumper," Phillies spokeswoman Bonnie Clark said in a statement. "The Police Department is investigating this matter and the Phillies are discussing with them whether in future situations this is an appropriate use of force under these circumstances. That decision will be made public."

The fan made several loops in center field with security personnel and the police officer in pursuit. The officer appeared to fire several times before hitting the man. The man fell to the ground. He was then helped off the field.

more...

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/20100504_Fan_on_Phils__field_subdued_with_Taser.html

[malaise]

1. I just saw that

Ridiculous.

[babylonsister]

2. He was a massive threat, wasn't he. I hope the cop gets grounded. nt

[bluedave]

3. now

:toast: :puke: Now THAT'S entertainment!

[Are_grits_groceries]

4. That was stupid.

It was another example of using technology that could be harmful rather than something else.

[brendan120678]

5. Trying...to resist...making a comment...

about Phillies fans....

errgggh......

Man, that was tough.

---------------------------------------------------
Seriously though...using a taser? Seems a little over the top in this instance.

[dancingme]

6. Phillies players were really shocked

Local Philly news showed video of Ryan Howard on the field when the cop aimed at the kid. He was very upset.

[blueamy66]

7. Stupid cops....

I don't believe this actually happened. WTF?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

8. Now now. Just a few bad apples and all that.

[Johonny]

15. IDK

the photo they have up on Yahoo shows a good in shape young guy getting chased by a pudgy security guard. So I can see why he got tased. I suggest the Phil get their security into spring training next season.

[Divine Discontent]

9. They REALLY need to ban the use of these things from oinkers that cannot stop themselves from gettin

their jollies from using them on people to feel all-powerful.


Really, talk about OVERKILL...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riCu3LJOgmk (you can hear people start booing when they figure out they tasered him. the kid pulled up limp just after he was doing a faux slide into "home plate" to give himself up. you see his arm strength disappear as he slides)

just a couple minutes search produced these deaths ----

Va. man dies after being Tasered by Arlington County police‎, 2nd recent - Wa.Post 3 days ago.....
The review followed the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, who was tasered.....
Taser, which delivers a 50,000-volt shock, in an effort to subdue Barga, police said. But the stun-gun had no effect, police said, Barga later died from medical conditions unrelated.....
police said, the smell of marijuana was emanating from Ingles' car. Once he got out, Police said it took three officers to subdue Ingles, using a Taser at least once. The taser use was left off the report.....
Relatives and the neighbor who Torrence allegedly accosted also said he was stunned at least six times with a Taser.....
Questions swirl around unexplained Taser death.....
A production crew working for truTV caught Grande’s death on video. Grande also was Tasered by deputies during the incident before choking on the bag of marijuana.....
Drugs, heart problem caused death of Rhinebeck man who was Tasered by cops, medical examiner says.....


and now they TASER A FAN FOR RUNNING A FIELD because the out of shape cop cannot catch up with him - and that's alright to use a taser because...???

He needs to lose his job for assault with a potentially deadly weapon or abuse of force, or excessive force. It was funny to the drunks and immature watching, I'm sure - but mature people wouldn't find that type of idiocy funny. Cop thought it'd be a great sportscenter highlight, I'm sure, or to show he was a tuffshit.


how many people have to die from these damned things?

[dancingme]

10. the teen's father speaks to the press

"He wasn't drinking. He was not on drugs," said the father of the teen Tasered by police in the outfield at Citizens Bank Park last night.

"I don't recommend running on the field, but I don't think they should have Tased him at all," he said.

"You can't condone this kind of behavior," he added, but he explained he wasn't angry, because it was "teenagers having fun."


http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20100504_Tasered_teen_asked_dad_for_OK_to_run_on_field.html

[Blue_Tires]

26. If he wasn't drunk or high I'm really concerned now...

Because no one sober does this stunt knowing the consequences...

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

33. Oh great, Dad......

So your son is just naturally an idiot.

[tomm2thumbs]

11. ESPN commentator -- 'I have absolutely no problem with it... in fact, I liked it'

Found it interesting, so posting.

link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2vdfhMbX6c

[Goblinmonger]

14. I saw that segment at lunch.

He was talking about the number of death threats he received as a player. Puts a whole new spin on letting some random jackass run around on a sports field.

[Octafish]

28. Disgusting comment repeated on Detroit sports talk radio all day.

The talking heads must have no idea that Tasers have killed hundreds of people.
If they do, then they are evil for feeling that it's OK to use.

[Goblinmonger]

35. Do you think you would feel differently

if you were a pro athlete and had death threats against you and had seen other pro athletes attacked by people running on the field?

[Octafish]

36. No. It's wrong to Taser a kid. Period.

Fans have threatened pro athletes for centuries and I've never heard of one attacking a pro jock in real life.

Tasers, OTOH, killed...

The Death March

Since Ohioan Kevin Piskura’s tasering and death on April 25th, in North America alone, 6 9 10 11 14 20 27 (updated August 12th), more people have died after being tasered:

340. April 24, 2008: Kevin Piskura, 24, Cincinnati, Ohio
341. April 24, 2008: Dewayne Chatt, 39, Memphis, Tennessee
342. April 27, 2008: Paul Thompson, 24, Greensboro, North Carolina
343. April 28, 2008: Jermaine Ward, 28, Jackson, Tennessee
344. May 4, 2008: Joe Kubat, 21, St. Paul, Minnesota
345. May 6, 2008: James S. Wilson, 22, Alton, Missouri
346. May 28, 2008: Ricardo Manuel Abrahams, 44, Woodland, California
347. May 31, 2008: Robert Ingram, 27, Raceland, Louisiana
348. June 5, 2008: Willie Maye, 43, Birmingham, Alabama
349. June 6, 2008: Donovan Graham, 39, Meriden, Connecticut
350. June 8, 2008: Quintrell T. Brannon, 25, Vincennes, Indiana
351. June 9, 2008: Tony Curtis Bradway, 26, Brooklyn, New York
352. June 23, 2008: Jeffrey Marreel, 36, Norfolk, Ontario
353. June 24, 2008: Ernest Graves, 26, Rockford, Illinois
354. June 27, 2008: Nicholas Cody, 27, Dothan, Alabama
355. July 2, 2008: Isaac Bass, 34, Louisville, Kentucky
356. July 4, 2008: Othello Pierre, 23, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
357. July 8, 2008: Samuel DeBoise, 29, St. Louis, Missouri
358. July 8, 2008: Carlos Vargas, 42, San Bernardino, California
359. July 14, 2008: Marion Wilson Jr., 52, Houston, Texas
360. July 14, 2008: Deshoun Keyon Torrence, 18, Long Beach, California
361. July 22, 2008: Michael Langan, 17, Winnipeg, Manitoba
362. July 23, 2008: Richard Smith, 46, Dallas, Texas
363. July 26, 2008: Anthony Davidson, Statesville, 29, North Carolina
364. August 4, 2008: Jerry Jones, 45, Beaumont, Texas
365. August 4, 2008: Andre Thomas, 37, Swissvale, Pennsylvania
366. August 2, 2008: Lawrence Rosenthal, 54, Hemet, California
367. August 10, 2008: Kiethedric Hines, 31, Rockford, Illinois

SOURCE: http://judycarlin.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/grim-statistics-taser-death-toll/

FWIW: It's wrong to hurt, let alone kill, another human being -- jock, cop, kid or crook.

[Goblinmonger]

39. See post 25 for a few examples

It happens. Should the cops wait until the kid attacks one of them? Or if he is trespassing and resisting arrest should they stop him before it escalates. And if they don't stop him and just let him run around and he wasn't going to attack someone it certainly lets those that want to attack someone know that they just have to run on the field like they are a kid out screwing around and nobody will touch them.

This kid broke the law. He's lucky one of the athletes didn't take him out like has happened with multiple people running on a pro football field.

[Nailzberg]

42. You've never heard of an athelete attacked by a fan?

Happens all the time.

Monica Seles was stabbed on the tennis court by a fan.
The Angel's Wally Joyner was hit with a Bowie knife thrown by a fan, which luckily hit him with the butt end.
KC Royals first base coach Tom Gamboa was violently pummeled by a drunk fan and his 15-year-old son. Security also recovered a knife from the scene, but no one was stabbed. (At the next meeting of KC and the White Sox at US Cellular Field, an ump was attacked by a fan in the very same spot on the field. Didn't turn out so well for that fan, though, the ump was a marine.)

I could google and come up with many more. Athletes, coacehes and officials are very vunerable out there during a game, their attention is elsewhere, so when they get blindsided by a drunk fan they are often injured. The sheer space of a ballfield means other players have to run a good distance just to get there to help defend their teammates. Even when they see em coming, being a pro athelete doesn't automatically give them an advantage, as all three of those attacks involved knives.

There are dozens of incidents involving fans and athletes every year, a lot of them involve objects thrown from the stands. And don't even get me started with soccer fans. Players are killed around the globe by fans for mistakes made on the pitch.

[zappaman]

12. Glad they tased him

He is on the field acting like an idiot.
It's not like they blew his head off with a pistol!

[tkmorris]

16. With a username like that I am not shocked (!)

Oh wait, did you mean FRANK Zappa?

:evilgrin:

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Goblinmonger]

13. So the cops are supposed to know that this is just an instance

of "kids being kids." They are supposed to know that this guy isn't going to do something stupid to one of the players. They are supposed to know that nothing bad is going to happen.

This kid was where he was not supposed to be and would not stop. What should they have done? Tackled him? I'm sure nobody on here would be bitching if he had his collarbone broken by being tackled (the kid should probably be glad he didn't do this at a football game and had to face a linebacker).

I have no problem with the use of the taser in this situation.

[Mojeoux]

17. This was a little Questionnaire in the Philly Paper

What is Philly sports fans' all-time low?

1. Tasered guy on the field
2. Vomit guy
3. Snowballs at Santa
4. Batteries at J.D. Drew
5. Looting Robinson's Luggage
6. None - Philly fans are the best!




I have no idea of what they mean by "vomit guy" and "snowballs at Santa"
sounds pretty bad.
However throwing batteries and looting some guys luggage are criminal.
IMO the cops have a grudge at the fans.

Still tasering is out of control.

[PCIntern]

20. vomit guy was

the guy who deliberately puked on a little girl...whose Dad is a cop

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

34. Don't forget this Philly idiot.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxNTX6W8SXc

"Vomit guy" was a dude who threw up on a seventeen year old girl when her father asked him to stop swearing at a Phillies game.

"Snowballs at Santa" was at an Eagles game in the late 60's where Santa came out on the field at halftime near Christmas and the Eagles were getting slaughtered and the fans chucked snowballs at him. Ed Rendell said he was at that game!

[KansasVoter]

18. Idiot cops, 17 year old running around and laughing. Ego gets the best of cops everytime!

[Goblinmonger]

21. No 17 year old would ever do something that would hurt someone else

:sarcasm:

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

25. And no fan who ever ran onto the field of play has EVER hurt anyone!

More :sarcasm:

[proteus_lives]

48. Good examples.

But wasted because it's hard for most of DU to see past their automatic anti-LEO bias.

[Nailzberg]

22. Shouldve bashed his knee in with a baton, cause tasers are scary.

[PCIntern]

23. As a lifelong Phillies fan and Philly resident...

I am appalled at the actions of this policeman, AND am not surprised in light of recent flash mobs, vomit-guy, and other incidents which are occurring around the city. I know a lot of cops and the vast number with whom I come into contact are quite profesional, but there are a few of whom I am almost afraid...make the hair on the back of my neck go up. Often, interestingly, they have strange family relationships...I know b/c I see the whole family in almost all cases.

One guy used to take his service weapon out of his holster, place it on the counter so it aimed right at me...looking down the barrel of a gun LITERALLY...he was eventually dismissed from the force back in about 1984 or so. He thought that was a riot AND used to bring in disgusting, and for me that's pretty awful - cause I have no taste or class at all whatsoever - accounts of assaults, sexual and otherwise. Graphic stuff. I told him he shouldn't be showing that to my delicte eyes and he'd laugh, but put it away.

But as I said, almost all the cops whom I've treated over the years were in fact decent people with reasonable expectations from the job and the public.

[flvegan]

24. I just can't get worked up over this.

The Taser is largely non-lethal and a good means to stop someone rather than chasing them all night. The kid is a criminal, he got tased. So what.

[Flaneur]

29. Non-lethal...except for the hundreds of people who have died.

[flvegan]

30. That's why I said largely non-lethal.

Lesson is don't break the law and run from the cops. Pretty simple, really.

[timtom]

32. Absolutely!

We need to stay in line!

[crazyjoe]

27. kinda funny actually. bet he won't do that again.

[political_Dem]

31. Although I don't approve of Taser use, that kid is lucky a Taser is all he got.

After all, this is part of the post-September 11th society. The law doesn't play--even with youthful indiscretions like this. He could have gotten shot.

[petronius]

43. And that's the scary thing about this story - the acceptance of these escalations in force

because of what could have been...

[Goblinmonger]

44. The discussion of what COULD have been is valid

So they don't taser this guy. They certainly have to stop him, right. He's trespassing and resisting arrest. They can't just let him run around on a ball field at his leisure until he's done. So they tackle him and use a submission hold on him so that he doesn't get up and run again. In the process he separates his shoulder, breaks his collarbone, breaks his arm, some combination of all three or even worse, cracks a rib which punctures his lung. All are very possible given what they would potentially have to do to stop him. Don't even pretend to tell me that if that had happen, the same people complaining about a taser would be complaining about the bodily harm done to this guy. Seems to me that the taser IS a better option considering what the other options were.

[petronius]

45. Do you really think that's what this officer was motivated by - a humanitarian instinct?

The "could" I was referring to are the possible dangers this guy could have represented - that are so often used to defend an excessive use of force. But look at it from your end instead - of all the fans running onto the field in the history of sports, and being tackled by security, how often has the outcome that you postulate occurred? Now compare that rate to the risk of injury from tasering. My guess is that the tackle would have been safer.

It seems to me that from either perspective the tasering was wrong - on the one hand it was an excessive response to a small threat, and on the other hand it was not a safer way to control the guy (heck, if they didn't want to tackle him, they could have just let him run out of steam)...

[underpants]

37. MSN is now calling it "Fans Gone Wild" -see he DESERVED to be tasered

:eyes:
Fans Gone Wild
Gallery: From Monday night's teen Tasering in Philly to Morganna the Kissing Bandit, there's a long (& sometimes scary) history of fans rushing the field.


http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/gallery/Fans-gone-wild?GT1=39002

[Blue-Jay]

38. Save the taser for the Eagles fans.

I kid, I kid...















or do I?

[Renew Deal]

40. It's OK for Phillies fans

But not the rest of civilization. :)

[CBR]

41. Another fan ran onto the field tonight! nt

[KansasVoter]

46. Wild Guess - His Boss Thinks The Force Was Needed. Then asked "what force did he use?"

[proteus_lives]

47. I bet it will be a long time for he tries another jackass stunt.