Mission Statement - De-Spinning the Pro-Taser Propaganda

Yeah right, 'Excited Delirium' my ass...

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The primary purpose of this blog is to provide an outlet for my observations and analysis about tasers, taser "associated" deaths, and the behaviour exhibited by the management, employees and minions of Taser International. In general, everything is linked back to external sources, often via previous posts on the same topic, so that readers can fact-check to their heart's content. This blog was started in late-2007 when Canadians were enraged by the taser death of Robert Dziekanski and four others in a short three month period. The cocky attitude exhibited by the Taser International spokespuppet, and his preposterous proposal that Mr. Dziekanski coincidentally died of "excited delirium" at the time of his taser-death, led me to choose the blog name I did and provides my motivation. I have zero financial ties to this issue.



Sunday, July 25, 2010

Making it personal - lawsuit against two Columbia police officers

Two Columbia police officers are the focus of a civil lawsuit concerning an incident last year in which a man was tasered after a traffic stop. Attorney Samuel Trapp filed the civil suit yesterday in federal court in Jefferson City on behalf of Cadilac Derrick, 23, of Columbia. [LINK]

Mr. Derrick's crime? Nothing; or (let's be frank) maybe Driving While Black. The classic "cover charge" of resisting arrest was dropped (of course).

Police claim he was tasered because he was "reaching for his waistband". Sounds like a fairy tale to me, but that's just my intuition speaking.

This incident appears to be a classic taser incident where if the taser hadn't been there, then it's very likely that nothing would have happened. Mr. Derrick wasn't reaching for a weapon. There was no reason to attack him with the death-dealing electro-torture device. None of this should have happened.

I hope that the lawsuit sticks. Nothing personal. But something needs to be done to counteract the trigger-happy taser wielding idiots.

1 comment:

JC said...

In the video [embedded in article] it's clear that they didn't warn him before they tasered him. Even assuming someone supported use of the taser as a pain-compliance device the least the police could do is explain: "If you don't obey this command, we will taser you."

In this case, the command appears to have been to get out of the vehicle, and Derrick refused.
This was the same excuse Seattle police gave after tasering a pregnant woman three times: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/pregnant_woman_tasered/

AFAICT they had no reason to ask anyone to step out of the car.