Police Tase 80-year-old woman

[cybercoma]

The precedent is ridiculous. It screws all social policy research in going forward, as if burying the mandatory long-form wasn't bad enough.

[kimmy]

No Charge.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/10/09/peel_police_officer_wont_face_criminal_charges_for_tasering_80yearold_woman.html

Apparently she was only carrying a butter knife. :-/

It doesn't say butter knife. One of the articles I read says it was a bread knife, which is a lot different from a butter knife. A bread knife is large, very sharp, serrated, and could cause messy wounds that would bleed a lot.

I'm usually as critical of the cops as anybody, and I completely agree that there have been lots of incidents of tasers being used inappropriately.

However, I'm not sure that this particular incident is one of them.

If they get a report of a demented person chasing someone with a knife, they can't just show up and say "well, whoever she was chasing is safe now, so we'll just leave her alone." That's simply not an option. She could wander off and attack somebody else, she could wander onto the freeway. Leaving a demented person wandering around town with a knife would have been unacceptable. They had to get her into custody, and they had to get the knife away from her.

I think that any means of getting the knife out of her hands would have carried a risk for both the police and for the woman herself. They could have tried negotiating with her, and we don't know that they didn't. However, if you have friends who work at geriatric care facilities with dementia wards, you know that negotiating with demented old-people isn't as easy as it sounds.

While the word "Taser" has become synonymous with callous police behavior and inappropriate use of force by the police, let us remember that the taser was invented as a means of providing non-lethal, comparatively safe ways of defusing potentially violent situations. It is possible that this was the best option the police had in this situation.

-k

[bleeding heart]

While the word "Taser" has become synonymous with callous police behavior and inappropriate use of force by the police, let us remember that the taser was invented as a means of providing non-lethal, comparatively safe ways of defusing potentially violent situations. It is possible that this was the best option the police had in this situation.

-k

I agree. One of the defenses of the taser, and I think a good one, is that nine times out of ten, you're better off being tased than hit with a club.

Of course, tasers are used a lot more than clubs....but this means only that there has been a tendency to overuse the tasers...not that they're inherently a terrible weapon.

[Argus]

del

Edited October 12, 2013 by Argus