I'll be visiting the family in the Pacific Northwest later this summer, and I'm going to be very, very careful on the road. The police are authorized to torture you for traffic violations; the courts have recently decided that a case of a pregnant woman who was tasered for refusing to sign a traffic ticket was a fair use of force.
The woman was driving her 12-year-old to the African American Academy in Seattle when she was pulled over on suspicion of speeding in 2004. The child left the car for school and a verbal spat with the police resulted in the woman receiving three, 50,000-volt shocks, first to her thigh, then shoulder and neck while she was in her vehicle. An officer was holding Brooks' arm behind Brooks' back while she was being shocked.
Brooks gave the officer her driver's license, but Brooks refused to sign the ticket — believing it was akin to signing a confession. She was ultimately arrested for refusing to sign and to comply with officers asking her to exit the vehicle.
You know what the police should do in these cases? Add penalties to the ticket, refer it to the courts, and hit her up with extra fines. Wrestling her out of the car and zapping her with intent to cause pain is a bit out of line, and really didn't contribute to the enforcement of the law.
The court's decision is bizarre.
The majority noted that the M26 Taser was set in "stun mode" and did not cause as much pain as when set on "dart mode." The majority noted that the circuit's recent and leading decision on the issue concerned excessive force in the context of a Taser being set on Dart mode, which causes "neuro-muscular incapacitation."
Stun mode, the court noted, didn't rise to the level of excessive force because it imposes "temporary, localized pain only."
So it's OK for the police to cause pain for traffic offenses? Maybe they should be equipped with cattle prods.
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Police brutality is a big problem, especially for minorities. Obviously not all police officers are bad, but as an institution they allow too much of their own to get away with abusing their authority. Honestly, as a young Hispanic male I'm more scared of police than I am of criminals.
"suspicion of speeding"? I'm not sure I understand...
But they are! We are just calling them tasers.
Before the court speak about taser, the pain it can cause, the resulting incapacitation, etc, they should try it for themselves, or shut their mouth.
It's only a problem if you're Driving While Black. I can't imagine the police tasering a victim of melanin deficiency for standing up to them.
Giving cops a free rein to use Tasers is like giving coke-heads the key to the nose-candy shop.
There are simply too many morons who become cops because of the power trip and are so really eager to use the "force" on their prime enemy...the public.
I mean, really, this is just what one would expect to happen.
It gets worse for many people who can fall foul of this sort of badly policed lunacy (pun intended).
Some people can die...er, rather a lot actually.
I suffer from a form of heart arrhythmia called a-fib. It's quite common and a bitch to live with. Being Tasered though could well trigger a spill over into V-fib which is instantly deadly (even an ordinary a-fib episode triggered by a Taser would infringe my rights not to have a resultant stroke). And what, for a speeding ticket ffs? Just because I may object and be unlucky enough to meet Officer Asshole?
American states that allow this crap can take their police state attitude to Tasers and bang it right up the "dates" of the legislators that allow this fascist behaviour to flourish.
And the Taser company can go and get royally fucked, with their profit making lies and disingenuous spin.
Bingo. Exactly, Professor Myers. Jumping Jehosaphat this stuff makes me ill.
The only consolation I've received, with respect to the East Bay's finest, was to get pulled over for doing 83 on a 75 mph freeway, on a severe downhill grade. That wasn't particularly satisfying, but just when the smiling officer was handing me the ticket, the wind blew it out of his hand, and sent it spiraling and fluttering, beautifully, down the hill as the officer watched in dismay (and I in well-disguised glee). Being a young colt however, the officer dashed off dutifully after it, and THAT was when the fun began.
This elusive little yellow ticket spontaneously developed a wicked mind of its own, as it seemed to stop tumbling in the wind just long enough for the CHP officer to STOMP his foot down on it, only to watch it flutter away again, 30 more yards down the road. For some inexplicable reason, the ticket never ventured out into the lanes of traffic. It stayed on the apron the entire time. Relentlessly. Mockingly. Hilariously. This exact sequence of events (Run, Stomp, Swear, Run, etc.) occurred no less than FIVE times in a row! I felt like I was watching a television sit-com, and I laughed my ass off. Finally, at a distance of nearly one-half mile down the freeway, the officer succeeded in trapping the yellow slip under his jackbooted foot. And then the long waddle back UPHILL to my car.
When the officer arrived at my vehicle, there was no smiling face this time. The ticket was simply thrust through my open window on the end of a very impatient hand, and I gingerly took it, and pleasantly bid the officer adieu.
Reno 911?
Actually, while I haven't been able to find exact voltages, it seems cattle prods have lower voltages than stun guns and Tasers.
Source here.
(Tasers are discussed a few pages further on.)
Monado:
Oh, yes they will! Cops all over have gone taser happy. (Watch a few cheesy "World's Wildest Police Chases sometime) and you'll see. I have nothing against a police officer being able to defend themselves, it's important they are able to do that. That doesn't excuse at all the way too many cases of cops simply being taser happy.
To be fair to the cops, I don't think they "caused pain" for speeding. It was for her subsequent behaviour, which again, may not have merited the use of force. To rephrase it, in all probability it did not.
Ahhh.
Land of the free, home of the brave.
Somebody sent me an email circular about your wonderful Sheriff Arpaio (spelling?) headed 'Wouldn't it be great if this happened in the UK?' so I sent her a dose of reality. "It was just a joke!" she said.
I might send her this story and see if she thinks we should import tasering people in cars for speeding, as well.
Remember when Tasers were justified as being better than guns? Nay, replacements for guns?
Would the police have shot them if they didn't have Tasers?
If not, is it really justified?
Suddenly I am so glad I don't drive.
Why should she even be subject to extra fines? What is the point of signing a ticket? Sign it "Bugs Bunny" or something. So the cops have her subdued and they electrocute her - you know it's only OK because that was a nigger they got.
FFS this is not Saudi Arabia or the 13th century! Cops should have no rights whatsoever to cause any citizen physical pain in day to day encounters of the sort we are talking about.
"Don't Tase me Bro!" is not a fucking joke, it is a 21C cry of freedom from the sort of fascism that new technology can engender.
This is excessive force, highly inappropriate, and not what you want to do to a pregnant woman either, unless maybe she's threatening to kill you.
I can not believe a legal body of any sorts could find this not excessive.
Those tasers are cops' best new friends, same here in Australia, it's like shooting, just without the blood and gore, how very convenient.The threshold to use them is way too low, and these cattleprods(which is what they are in the end) need to to be taken away from police stat.
Rorschach:
Exactly. It's one thing to have a weapon which may save your life; it's another thing altogether when that weapon is used because you don't like someone sassing you. Using a taser because you don't think someone is being properly subservient is beyond the pale.
The police are not allowed to torture people for traffic infractions. They are allowed to use reasonable force (which this was) to restrain a resisting suspect (which this woman was.)
I have always maintained that it is an incredibly stupid idea to force a confrontation with nervous, armed men (note: all police qualify,) and that stupid people deserve what they get.
Noone was injured. Noone's rights were violated. The court made the right call. There is no fire here.
JediBear | April 1, 2010 3:48 AM:
"But mommy, she made me do it!"
JediBear:
That would be no one. Given that you can't even tell that's not one word, it's not surprising you think that tasering this woman was justified. Here's a hint: If one man was already holding her down, a taser wasn't needed. You're just the kind of person who would defend taser happy cops until it happened to you; then you'd sing a different song.
Just because someone has a taser, does not mean they should be excused for using it in cases of someone not being as subservient as they like. Before tasers, a fair amount of cops went a little happy with nightsticks and choke holds. Shit happens, and there's no excuse for a cop who is ready to go off when it isn't called for.
moron @ 19,
How is refusing to sign off on being guilty of what was interestingly called a "suspicion of speeding" equal to "forcing a confrontation" ?
And if "stupid people deserve what they get", I hope you get what you deserve too.
Being tasered certainly counts as injury. It arguably counts as torture. In many cases water-boarding causes no permanent damage; does it also count as less than injury?
In other words, for all your condemnation of the victim you fear the police as well.
Weak.
I would also ask why it had to be done 3 times. What does it say when a woman is so terrified to leave her car with the police that she has to be cattleprodded 3 times to make her comply.
What does that really say about the position of your law enformcement agencies in society?
Rorschach:
I don't know how it works in Australia, but in the U.S., when you're given a ticket, you have to sign the bloody thing or you aren't free to go. You're told it's not an admission of guilt, but an acknowledgment and an agreement to show up in court. If you refuse to sign, you'll be arrested. Apparently, in this case, the woman's refusal to sign gave those hopped up cops an excuse to let off some adrenalin.
As a cop myself (and an atheist to boot!), I have never had to taser anyone. I don't know all of the facts in the case, wasn't there myself, blah blah blah, but it sounds like the dude was mistaking his taser for an easy button.
Unfortunately, in most states, you are actually required to sign the ticket or face the judge immediately. A citation is a written notice of an affidavit that will be filed with a court, and your signature is your promise to appear to that court. No signature = no promise to appear. No promise to appear = must appear now (that means jail).
The way we handle these kind of situations is like so:
1. Be polite when you make a traffic stop. Don't be a jerk, this never helps and you are there to help people, not to be a jerk.
2. Be sure to clearly explain that a persons signature is NOT an admission of guilt and NOT a plea of guilt but simply a promise to appear (or 'take care') of the citation.
3. If the person refuses to sign, you inform them that if they do not sign, you are required by law to take them before a judge (that = jail).
4. If they still refuse, you call your supervisor to come out. He then also explains what happens if you don't sign.
5. If they still refuse, you arrest them. Hopefully at this point, they don't resist arrest because that is a much higher charge than a class C misdemeanor. I have NEVER had to take someone to jail for refusing to sign a ticket in my many years. But this all goes back to point #1. I'm also not an ass because I know what my job is and how I'm supposed to treat people.
Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. In my department (one of the highest paid in the nation) I would lose my job and possibly do jail time if I violated a persons rights (as well I should). My department and my city expect more of their officers. Many cities can not afford to pay much more than minimum wage for a job that gives a person the legal right to carry a gun and forcefully take away another persons rights. It is vital to hire only the best people for this kind of work. You can't hire the best for $9/hr. Bad apples always sneak into any job, but you get a rotten bunch when you can't afford to hire quality officers.
Loved meeting some of y'all at the convention in Melbourne btw ;)
Yes, sure, but I'm confused over the wording here. What does "suspicion of speeding" mean? Did the cops look at her car go past and went " Hm, she might have gone too fast there" ? That's different from them pointing the radar gun at her and taking a snapshot, proving she went too fast.
"Let's caddleprod you 3 times because we're not sure but you might have been going too fast" does not seem appropriate at all.
I also note, from the article cited :
People with medical conditions keep being killed by these 'non lethal' weapons. I am doubtful that cops are educated about any of that when they learn to use the tasers.
I think that K9 drug units should be banned in addition to tasers. Some angry cops call these units up when you refuse a vehicle search (you wait like an hour for em to show up), and the dog 'signals' that it found drugs and then yer car gets searched anyway, and when no drugs are found no one is held accountable.
Those stupid field testing kits show false positives for countless common substances.
Bathroom Ninja, there are indeed cops whose patience is well above and beyond. However, for each one like that, there are 20 who aren't and are trigger happy, no matter what the weapon might be.
It's got to be difficult for someone like yourself, who understands that and dislikes it. I spent most of my life in Southern California. Lots of bad cops there. It's telling when, if you were pulled over, and you're relating the story later, you say "yeah, he/she was a good cop. Things have gotten much worse since cops have been let lose with tasers.
Great. Another authoritarian.
The victims of government oppression do not "deserve what they get". We don't have an obligation, in a free society, to "avoid confrontation" with the police. We are entitled to stand up for our rights. And if violence is used unlawfully against a person standing up for his or her rights, he or she should be able to sue and receive compensation. This court decision is a travesty.
Sadly, police violence is a huge problem in all countries. From a policy perspective, it's a difficult balance to strike: we need police, since the state has to be able to use force in order to protect lives and property, yet by its nature the whole concept of policing provides opportunities for abuse of civil liberties. That's why the ability to bring an action in the courts, when your civil liberties have been violated, is of central importance. History shows that courts and the judicial process, while imperfect, tend to be better guardians of freedom than any other institution we've yet developed. But the rule of law and constitutional governance are let down when, as here, the courts fail in their duty to defend individual rights.
aarrgghh. That should be "loose with tasers".
Yeah, some of us were born too loose.
Rorschach:
I don't know what that means, except maybe it's copspeak for "we suspect somethin', but we don't know what."
Agreed. If you're stopped for speeding, then it should be damn fucking clear you were speeding.
No, it isn't. It was unnecessary and excessive in my view.
Well, that sure as hell puts a big fat light on things. It's very difficult to deal with these cops not being held accountable for what they did.
@ Caine - I don't live in your area so I don't know what it's like there. Where I am, it's the opposite. There is probably about 1 bad to 20 good. Then again, we require college degrees, life experience, intensive background investigations, etc. I know it's not like that in a lot of places and it worries me. I don't like to jump to any conclusions on any story I read. Sometimes the true picture is far worse than the story lets on. Sometimes the story makes things seem much worse than they are. It's good to know that at least these incidents get printed. It's important to keep up with your local police department and hold them accountable (and also to support them when they do good, or else many officers can feel a 'them vs us' mentality).
About the Taser thing. In our department, every officer must get tasered before they can carry a taser. I can tell you that the taser hurts like I can't describe. It CAN be very useful when used properly, but far too many departments allow their officers to use it instead of simple 'hands on' tactics to place persons under arrest.
That wasn't true in this case. From the article:
Arghh...I now see Rorschach @27 already quoted that.
Bathroom Ninja:
True. I haven't lived in SoCal for almost 20 years. I live very rural in North Dakota these days. My 'town' doesn't have cops, the nearest ones are 20 miles away. For the most part, ND cops are good ones. In the small towns, such as the one 20 miles from us, you do get the occasional cop with the "I'm a bad ass officer of the law" complex; fortunately, they are the exception, not the rule. There was one, he'd stop my husband for going 1 mile over the speed limit on highway 10, which is now a rural route. He took a dislike to our motorcycles and '71 El Camino and would stop either one of us every fucking time he was on duty. Piece of work, that one.
Which, in a very roundabout way, brings me to a point: cops are humans, they are individuals, and no matter the training, that can't be filtered out. The best, they put aside their personal biases; the worst, they indulge their personal biases.
From the article,
Fucking pathetic.
@Feynmainiac - In that case (where it's not an arrestable offense), it's clearly (as if this were not already apparent) a REALLY bad move.
'suspicion of speeding' is not 'cop-speak'. It's legal speak. As in 'innocent until proven guilty'. You are suspected of committing an offense until you have been proven guilty in a court of law. This is one term you should really learn to appreciate, it's your rights we are talking about. It doesn't matter if 100,000 people watch as you run a red light and every one of those 100,000 people have video footage of you doing so AND you say "yep, I ran it"; you get a citation for suspicion of running a red light until you are found guilty by a court. Keep in mind that if you pay the fine, you are pleading guilty and waving your right to a trial.
That thing would never happen here in Sweden because tasers are illegal
This is the kind of crap I expect to see from the idiots who drive twenty miles an hour over the speed limit and then tell the cop to start finding "real" criminals. Give me a break. I'd venture a guess that the officer shouldn't have resorted to force, but I imagine the woman in the car was probably not the upstanding, innocent member of the community you immediately assume her to be. I doubt she was caused great "pain and suffering", but I bet the dollar signs were dancing in her head.
And yes, Bathroom Ninja is right. The "suspicion of speeding" phrase refers to the fact that you are innocent until proven guilty, either by court proceedings or by admission of guilt.
And Monando, #5? Give me a break. The race card? I'd expect people here to have more intelligence than that. Is it totally impossible for people who aren't white to commit a crime?
Yeah - I appreciate that the cops weren't tasering her for refusing to sign the ticket; they were doing so because she resisted arrest (which is obviously a more serious charge).
But how embarrassing - three cops couldn't arrest one visibly pregnant women without using their tasers. I'd hate to be them in their locker room...
As a writer, I often end up having to imagine both sides of an issue to present it dramatically. If it were, say, a tv crime series, and they were charged with assault, in court, I'd have their defense attorney suggest that they couldn't be sure it was a real pregnancy and that their special Department of Homeland Security training forced them to consider she might have been packing explosives instead...
To which my prosecuting attorney would reply : "So you're trained to fire 50,000 volts into high explosives instead?"
@Jparenti:
You imagine that? Why? Because the police manhandled her, she must be a criminal?
Does that mean you volunteer to be tasered now? After all, you doubt tasers cause great pain, right?
@Colin:
yes, but resisting arrest is not illegal if the arrest is unjust in the first place. Failing to sign a ticket was not an arrestable offense, as was pointed out in #27 and #35. And she wasn't using violence at the cops or threatening them with violence either - she was telling them she was pregnant.
@deen: I allow the possibility that she did something that warranted the use of the taser. You do not allow for the possibility that she could possibly have broken a law. You assume that since she was manhandled, the cops were in the wrong. I see your point, though -- there's precious few examples of why a person sitting in a car needs to be tasered. I do not claim, however, that NO examples exist.
As far as being tasered, I can say that I have already been tasered before. It hurts like hell, and then when it's over, it's over. I wouldn't particularly like it again, but I do doubt that there was lasting damage or continued pain and suffering.
I see examples of this all the time. The upstanding member of the public makes a huge case against the police because they know that people don't like cops. Failing to sign a traffic citation may not be a crime, but if the woman started throwing a fit, attempting or threatening to injure the cops, or making a move to do so ARE offenses that warrant an arrest and DO warrant the use of force if necessary.
We don't know the specifics of the case. We have the word of the cop against the word of the woman. In these cases, it is more likely that a random member of the public will side with the civilian. No one ever finds the cops useful until they need them -- and then they can't get the job done fast enough. It is the utter disdain for law enforcement that angers me. All I ask is that we remain skeptical and refrain from immediately placing blame upon those who were in fact cleared by the court of wrongdoing.
You need to ask yourself why that utter disdain exists.
Here is a hint. The police might well be to blame.
So those tough american cops have only one way to control a pregnant woman in a car with her son, and that is by manually restraining and then tasering her?
Who the fuck are you're trying to kid here ?
Jparenti | April 1, 2010 6:52 AM:
Strawman. Deen did not claim certainty that the woman in question was innocent; Deen used a conditional.
@Matt Penfold: Are all cops absolutely great? No. Are all people absolutely great? No.
My point is that you can't immediately jump to the conclusion that the cops did the worst possible thing in the situation. Don't forget that this woman was speeding in a school zone, and then argued that they pulled over the wrong car, and THEN refused to sign the ticket (despite the fact that every traffic citation I've ever seen states clearly that signing it is not an admission of guilt).
Lots of cops are too heavy-handed. And lots of members of the public are idiots who don't understand the profession.
Also bear in mind that the woman wanted to be able to sue the individual officers for monetary damages, and was refused by the court. The possibility must be examined that she did this for a quick buck from a municipality that would settle quickly instead of fight a legal battle. It's far more common than you think, and that scenario has to be examined, too.
@Rorschach: You paint a picture of a burly, overbearing cop, and a weak, defenseless pregnant woman. Could it be possible that the cops saw her going for a pocket and thought she could have a gun? Could the woman have attempted to get out of the vehicle and the cops had to react because she could have been armed? We don't know. I don't doubt that using a taser was extreme. What I doubt is that the woman was faultless and the police were evil.
I'm not kidding anyone. However, anyone who starts to complain that this happened because the woman was black, that police are all extreme in their use of authority and are excited at the possibility of using weapons, and claim that the woman couldn't understand the ticket are kidding themselves.
Jparenti,
So you agree that the reason so many people distrust the police is because the police have shown they are not to be trusted ?
The strawman feels your pain.
I didn't.
It's a strawman army by now.
I have not seen anyone here claim this.
@Rorschach: No, you didn't say that she got into this because she was black. Go to comment #5. The woman herself was the one who claimed she didn't understand the ticket, by not signing it. The ticket itself says that signing it is not an admission of guilt, it's proof that you received it.
As far as strawmen go, I have no clue where you're going with that. I'm postulating situations in which everyone's gut instinct to blame the cops could be wrong. I should stick to the specific case I guess. I'm questioning the generalization applied to cops most of the time.
You could, however, be a lot nicer about it.
@Jparenti:
Follow the links. Read the article. Read the court opinion (PDF).
Nonsense. She has committed a misdemeanor by speeding and not signing the ticket, but nothing that she should have been arrested for.
She has permanent scars from the burn marks. The judges admitted as much (they just didn't think they were bad enough).
Accept that none of this has happened. Why are you making up stuff that has nothing to do with this case?
No, you are asking that we deny what happened according to the judges that ruled against this woman. And the court didn't clear them of wrongdoing, they only ruled that what they did wasn't bad enough. You're not being skeptical, you're being prejudiced.
Under Washington law, an officer may detain an individual for committing a misdemeanor in his presence. And yes, she can be booked, because she also obstructed justice.
The burns that were sustained (I have yet to see if photographs of said burns were admitted as evidence) did not qualify as excessive due to previous rulings. I will, however, concede that point, but I certainly don't think that minor burns have impacted her life in a way that entitles her to a large cash settlement -- she does in fact concede that she resisted the officers' attempt to serve her the citation and broke the law by doing so.
I'm not being prejudiced. I am simply pointing out that immediately rallying against law enforcement is not a proper position to take. That is what I have seen. Too few people bother to consider that the individual who was supposedly wronged could have caused the problem in the first place. I also do not think calling the police officers racist is correct. See comments # 5 and #15. This woman should not have been tased. She also should have signed the ticket.
Whenever the police, or indeed anyone, uses violence it is for the person using violence to justify its use, and it should be presumed that violence was not justified unless good reason is provided.
She was under no legal obligation to do so. If the Officers told her she was, they lied. If they lied they should have been sacked.
I bet Ensign Redshirt got a nice pat on the back from Captain Kirk.
Jparenti,
That you are arguing on the basis of things Rorschach didn't say?
Your "posulate" is noted, but irrelevant here.
Correct!
Then answer Matt's question #52.
cop = thug with institutional legitimacy
But you think that immediately jumping to the defense of law enforcement is a proper position to take? But that's exactly what you did, wasn't it? Without even reading about the case first, you were defending the police with nothing more than made up hypothetical situations. I don't think you are in a strong position to criticize others for jumping to conclusions.
Ah yes, blame the victim. Even while conceding that she shouldn't have been tasered, you still want us to entertain the possibility that it was her own damn fault for being tasered? Sorry, not going to happen. Guess what? If she shouldn't have been tasered, but was tasered anyway, the only one to blame for that is the one doing the freaking tasering. Which happens to be the police in this case. Deal with it. Stop the victim blaming.
I'll admit I'm in no mood to wade through the comments today, so I'll just leave my opinion and I'm sorry if I'm being repetitive.
PZ, I couldn't agree with you more. Tasers are simply hand held torture devices used to torture suspects into compliance. They are not used in place of guns or beatings, they are used freely on the assumption that they are OK, in situations where a far less painful approach would have worked. These things should be banned or a very strict policy on their use needs to be created.
Haven't these people ever heard of conflict resolution?
And why is it such a big deal whether or not she signs the ticket? As you say, implement additional fines for refusal to sign, but you can't torture someone into signing something. It invalidates the signature anyway, legally speaking. A lot of people have mistaken ideas about signing a traffic ticket, so maybe we should abandon that practice altogether, or educate people about it. What if I sit there and read every word on the ticket, fine print and front and back, which is clearly within my rights before signing something? Will I be tasered? Arrested? What if I say I want a lawyer to review it before I sign it, or I don't understand it and won't sign something I don't understand? What if I were largely illiterate or didn't speak English? Does it make sense to sign something I don't know what says on the word of the person asking me to sign it? I guess so if my alternative is being tasered.
I still wonder about this. I think that's true in some cases, which I find almost comforting. In others, people have been suckled on authoritarianism for so long that their response would probably be more like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdFLPn30dvQ
which is scarier.
I read something recently about the large and growing numbers of female police in Sweden. Is that remarked upon there?
I think the judges ruling in these sorts of cases should submit to tasering. But the people administering the taser should be cops who think the judges are tweakers, just so they make sure they don't go too easy on them.
Or maybe they should just watch an episode of COPS to see the men lying on the ground, unable to rise, with taser wires sticking out of them, crying like a baby and begging the cops not to do it again while the cop insists that they stand up (which they are clearly in no condition to do) or they will be tased again. If that's not torture, I don't know what is, and we televise it daily. What a country.
Dean @45
Thanks for informing me about how law stands with resisting arrest.
Did you bother to read the rest of that post where I made it perfectly clear I do not agree with what these idiots did?
Do you not remember saying this ?
"They were doing so because she resisted arrest (which is obviously a more serious charge)."
Only you did say it, and you were wrong. There were no grounds for arrest. All subsequent events arose from the woman's refusal to sign the speeding ticket. Since she was under no obligation to do so, the police had no further business with her.
At first I was horrified, but after reading the court transcripts the officers' conduct at least makes some sense.
Still, I am uncomfortable with police using excessive force in any event that isn't protecting themselves or another person, and I do believe this was excessive, despite the courts ruling. I cannot imagine that was good for the baby and I think the police should have thought outside of the box here instead of resorting to the taser.
In Australia I believe the taser has a camera which has to be switched on if the taser is to be used. This would prove whether or not the incident qualified for excessive force.
Reminds me of an incident in New Zealand last year where the cops tasered an 80 year old woman.
For those of you who believe the police were justified please read this story from CBS news.
According to this article not signing a traffic ticket is not an arrestable offense in Washington state; it is not illegal to resist an unlawful arrest.
The argument made by lawyers representing the police suggests they took the action they did out of fear over what she MIGHT do in the FUTURE.
This is the same reasoning President Obama used in attempting to convince America it is okay to detain certain Guantanamo prisoners indefinitely.
Tasering can very easily result in death (and I highly doubt that there have been tests to determine effects on foetuses). It should only be used as a second-to-last resort. In other words, when shooting a person is the only other available option.
I didn't want to read the article but I'm hoping that the prosecutors will appeal the decision.
I think the judges ruling in these sorts of cases should submit to tasering.
Scalia, Alito, Roberts, and Thomas first. They seem to be the most fond of allowing the cops to do whatever the fuck they want.
@Ibis3 #70 - I absolutely agree with you. Also, they are going to appeal the ruling.
That's freaky! I was actually in the car with someone who was stopped just south of Seattle for speeding and who refused to sign the ticket for the same reason. This was before tasers were used, and they escorted our car to the jail and gave the person the option of signing the ticket or spending the night in jail. The ticket was eventually signed and nobody was hurt by their actions. I can only imagine the horror that would have ensued if tasers had been standard issue. Tasers remove a person's right to nonviolently protest police action. They should be illegal.
Having previously spent 30 years in the UK Police (I retired last century) and all of it unarmed, I find it quite frightening just how far the US courts allow the Police to go. I still remember the Rodney King debacle when 5 or 6 Police officers got away with quite serious assaults on an unarmed man when they should have been sent to prison and sacked.
Unless the driver in question, in this case, totally lost it when the officer first spoke to her I cannot for the life in me see any justification for using a taser. Like somebody in an earlier post I also suffer from cardiac arrhythmia and one or two age related challenges which would not be helped by a severe dose or electrotherapy, I'm glad I live over here and not in the US.
When I read that she was tasered 3 times in her car with her arm held behind her back and that she was pregnant I checked the date and thought, "This has to be a not-so-good April Fools piece." But no, it checks out.
Maybe this will lead to a Brooks warning along with a Miranda warning: "You're advised to do whatever the hell the cops tell you to do and not complain. If the cops are in the wrong don't expect justice or an apology."
On a related note, the Canadian author Peter Watts http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/the_privilege_of_authority.p… should have been given a Brooks warning. He has been convicted and faces up to two years in prison. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/03/19/watts-convicted.html
@Colin in #66:
You're welcome. Yes, I did in fact read the rest of it. And? Did you read all of my response? Where did I ever say that you agreed with the officers' actions? Maybe I seemed stronger in my reply to you than I intended, for which I will apologize. However, I think that probably was mostly due to the unfortunate fact that it appeared right after another reply aimed at someone else that did deserve to be a bit more barbed.
I'm in Oz, not US. I have only been giving a speeding ticket once. Driving distracted (my bad) along a well known stretch of road where they had just lowered the speed limit. The cop explained my error and gave me a ticket. I didn't have to sign anything. I has a month to pay up or contest it in court. I just paid.
Tasering a pregnant woman should be forbidden. Has anyone been able to test the baby's response? Is it brain damaged? Heart damage? What if she miscarries? The baby will have been shocked as well.
These guys where not apprehending her for a violent crime, just not complying with a piece of red tape associated with a penalty for somewhat dangerous behaviour. If that escalates to violence then the police must be able to show that they did everything possible to avoid that and that it was justified. The law cannot possibly work any other way.
These guys where not apprehending her for a violent crime, just not complying with a piece of red tape associated with a penalty for somewhat dangerous behaviour.
In cop-world, not complying with an order--no matter whether it's given legally or illegally--is a violent crime. Don't question with their power. Pisses 'em off more than anything. They are they law, after all.
Sure, we need law enforcement. But anyone who trusts the police needs their head examined. There is absolutely no reason, in history or contemporary practice, to do so. Hope they do their jobs, but never, ever trust them.
From Watts' blog about the conviction (v. #76):
@Matt Penfold: Darn, am I being way too nice in apologizing? There goes my Pharyngula-cred ;)
Matt :
Matt, I was responding (in a general way) to earlier comments that conflated "speeding" and "resisting arrest". My point in doing so was that the officers claimed she was resisting arrest. That was their justification. Of course it's extremely likely that they're completely without any legal ground.
My humble apologies for any confusion I may have caused anyone.
Ibis3, it sounds like Watts got a moronic jury. I hope he appeals.
Oh, c'mon. Since when does a little tasering hurt anyone?
@Deen
No, you didn't say that I agreed with the cops. I apologise. I did indeed take that the wrong way.
Maybe, just maybe this will get me out of the frying-pan:
@Deen, @Matt:
I meant that the cops (may well have ) thought they had justification to arrest her -- in this thought of theirs, of course, they could be (and probably are) completely wrong.
Now, given that these cops - with an obvious defect in their training / ability to interpret law - felt that they had to arrest her, they then proceeded to arrest her.
There IS no justification for what they did. Obviously.
My point (which is the remainder of comment #42) is that -- even given that they wrongly thought they had to arrest her -- three grown men decided to use tasers on a visibly pregnant women.
And that they would be subject to mockery amongst other cops in the locker room.
I was ridiculing them, not presenting a legal argument. I was pointing a further embarrassing error they had made, to add to the list of all the other errors they had made.
Patently, I was unclear earlier about this. For a writer, of course, that's fairly unforgiveable sin, so I won't ask for forgiveness.
This assertion appears to be incorrect. While failing to sign the Notice is not arrestable, failing to sign the Citation to Appear for not signing the Notice is arrestable. She claimed that she believed she was being asked to sign the former, the court decided to assume she honestly believed that she had been asked to sign only the former. It seems that the police had asked her to sign a citation but in a possibly unclear manner (both were referred to as tickets in testimony by all parties) so she may have believed she had only been asked to sign the Notice.
From the footnotes to the appeal.
Hmmmmm....woman stopped for speeding in a school zone. Officer writes woman a ticket. Woman refuses to sign ticket. Since a citation is basically a bail notice wherein the signatory agrees to either pay the citation, argue it in court or go before a mediator and is released on their own recognizance, not signing it means you go to jail. Woman is asked to get out of her car and refuses. They attempted to remove her from the car and she wasn't going, so they used the level of force necessary to remove her from the vehicle. Instead of poor, innocent bystander getting zapped, you have someone guilty of four offenses (speeding, failure to sign, failure to obey the lawful order of a police officer and resisting) and who's also in possession of a deadly weapon (the vehicle).
Here's a much better way to handle it--you speed, you get caught, you sign the ticket. Ever-so-much easier on everybody. And all the hurrah about her being pregnant--a) the officers didn't *know*, all they had was her statement and b) stating how it could've been damaging for her unborn child is pretty ironic when she obviously didn't care about endangering other people's kids by speeding through a school zone. Sorry, P.Z. SPD has done enough stupid-ass, unconscionable things that they deserve to get reamed for. I don't think this was one of them.
Brett,
Why did she have to sign anything at all ?
Did the police provide her with independent legal advice at the time they requested he to sign ? If not, then they were acting unethically. It is unreasonable to demand people sign legal documents under pain of arrest. There is a name for that, it is coercion.
It is the law in Washington state. The code and penalty of arrest are given under the signature line if I recall correctly.
Then it is an idiotic law. Requiring people to sign legal documents under pain of arrest is coercion, be it legal required or not.
You don't have this right. It wasn't very long ago that cops tazered an injured boy with a broken back for being non-responsive.
http://www.ky3.com/home/video/25829234.html
He didn't stand up when ordered. Guilty of being injured when found by a cop is a good enough reason to taser 19 times.
"His dad says the use of the stun gun delayed what would have been immediate surgery by two days.
"The 'Tasering' increased his white blood cell count and caused him to have a temperature so they could not go into the operation"
I wish there was a hell those cops could poof to, but it would at least be nice to know they were fired and will never have access to tasers again. Sadly they are still out there, being useless bullies and making the world worse.
Oh here's a police quote:
“It's a big concern for the officers to keep this guy out of traffic, to keep him from getting hurt,” said Rousset.
The irony here makes me sad, really sad. Keep him from getting... hurt!?!?
Dicks hate policemen and it's truuuuue
You don't fight justice it'll fight you...
Are you fucking serious?
I think this is the relevant law:
By not signing, you are "canceling" the traffic citation and thus guilt of a misdemeanor. The signature supposedly means you received a copy of the citation, not that you are guilty of something.
I would not trust the police to properly explain what my signature meant on any document. They have been know to lie after all.
Yes, that is a serious statement. Cars are considered deadly weapons (this I know of personally too *sigh*).
Matt @90 : Idiotic law or not, anyone who's ever been stopped for speeding is very grateful that option to avoid an immediate arrest and subsequent court appearance is available.
What would your alternative be?
I seriously have to wonder why we force people to sign the ticket on the spot. It's just stupid. It creates these situations when people are confused, misinformed, illiterate, or can't read English suddenly find themselves guilty of a crime because they don't want to sign something they don't understand and end up tasered. You don't have to sign a parking ticket on the spot. Just hand her the ticket and move on. I don't think for a second that this is really about anything other than a cop who was having a bad day and decided to take it out on this woman because he couldn't force her to do something. Nothing pisses some people off more than realizing that they don't really have any power, such as when someone simply won't do something they've been told to. It probably didn't help her that she's black (an assumption I'm making based on the fact that the name of her daughter's school had "African American" in it, maybe I'm wrong).
And I'll tell you this, if I found out some cops had tasered my pregnant wife and I couldn't get justice in the courts, I'm not sure I could be restrained from doing something monumentally stupid. At the very least I imagine I would spend the night in jail after I walked into the police station and personally told them what idiots, thugs, and small dicked petty tyrants they were.
Just issue a ticket maybe ?
Seems to work in other places, so there is little excuse to employ coercion.
Why not have the police in the US follow practices the civilised world uses ?
@Colin - My alternative would be to hand them a ticket, and let them not sign it. It should still be perfectly valid, they should still owe the fine, and the same penalties apply for not paying it. You don't sign a parking ticket, so obviously we can get around any legal technicalities. What is signing the ticket for? To prove you were actually there? Fine, take a picture of the car and driver and license plate.
So if you're stopped while driving a car, you are then in trouble because...you have a car. *headdesk*
She didn't get out of the car. Would you? If you were facing down two possibly belligerent officers who are already acting in a threatening manner, you're 7 months pregnant and worried that you might get physically tossed around, wouldn't you stay put? Maybe throw the keys out of the car to remove the "threat", but I wouldn't want to get out either.
It is not just people who are confuses, misinformed, illiterate or non-English speaking. It is anyone who does not want to take the Police's word over what they are signing. Which really should be everyone.
Here in the UK the Police issue tickets for speeding, and other road traffic offences. There is no need to sign anything, and unless the Police consider your driving to have been totally reckless you will not be arrested. You will be sent a summons to appear in court within a week or so. You have the choice of contesting the charge, or admitting to it and paying the fine. If you choose the latter there is normally no need to appear in court unless you have had enough other convictions within the previous 2 years that mean you are at risk of facing a ban.
I think the reason to sign is to prove that the ticket was actually issued to the person. Think about the alternative - an officer could watch someone drive by, let them go but write up a ticket for whatever misdemeanor they like, and then sit back and let the person end up in violation for not appearing in court or paying the ticket, when they didn't even know one had been issued.
But it should be much clearer as to what the signature means.
@Brett Dunbar:
But according to the dissenting judge, there wasn't a reason to issue a Citation to Appear to begin with.
By the way, the footnote just above the one you cite says:
**Pssst**
check the date people.
People get tickets in the mail for speeding based on mounted cameras/radar on the side of the road, FFS.
Yep I'm pretty sure that's the case too.
While I have had my run-ins with asshole cops, by and far most cops I've encountered or known personally are just out there doing a job.
Now do I think that a job affording the authority it does attracts personalities that will abuse said authority?
I think that a good case for that could be made.
Do US patrol cars not have video that would take care of that ?
@Matt Penfold:
Supposedly this situation was fixed in 2006 (from the opinion document):
What if it's your identical twin? There have been a lot of criticisms and cases against snap-and-mail tickets. So far they're holding up, but a signature is still a more easily verified way to prove that the person knows about it. I don't see any problem with requiring a signature; what I see a big problem with is requiring a signature that is unclear as to what it means. (and using any force AT ALL to try to enforce it, of course)
@Carlie and Rev. BigDumbChimp - I just don't see a need to prove you actually gave someone the ticket. As SCOM (#105) says, people get tickets in the mail all the time. And of course, there's no proof anyone was given a parking ticket then either. You're really worried about cops claiming to have issued tickets just to get people to pay fines, given all the other ways cops could set people up? I think it's pretty minor and if you must alleviate it, have a policy that a second notice must be mailed to the individual before they can be prosecuted for a failure to respond. Then it's at least as good as the ticket mailed for a red light stop. This isn't the first time someone has been tasered over this, the last one I heard about was an elderly woman. Seems like we've created a problem for no reason.
@Brodieman - Check the date on what? The story in the link was posted on March 29th. I don't think it's an April Fools joke. And as I said, I've seen a similar story from nowhere near April 1st of an elderly woman tased for the same offense.
Ah, here it is:
HTML fail. I swear I clicked Preview, not Submit.
http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2009m6d2-Texas-cop-Tasers-greatgrandmother
@Brodieman: except that this news was already released on March 26th.
That's an awesome psychic skill you have there being able to determine I was "really worried".
I was just agreeing that is the reasoning it is done.
Does anyone know if there's actually a legal requirement to sign the ticket at all? Can the cops just give it to her and move on even though it is unsigned? Her lawyer seemed to hint at that option in his statements. Can the cops ignore the lack of signature and do they know they can?
@Rev.BigDumbChimp - Note the question mark. No psychic powers or determination are implied in asking a question. Besides, it was really addressed towards Carlie's complete post, but I'll never make the mistake of trying to address two similar comments with a single response again.
Funny, i was just reading a stat on this the other day which I will now try to recall and will flub the numbers miserably.
If I remember correctly I think that something like 25% of patrol cars had dashboard cameras up until recently where the number has increased to somethign like 50%.
Let me find a link.... Yes as of 2003 it was 54% in cities with more than 250k (who knows with small town USA though I hear that traditionally more rural Sheriff offices utilize it more often) so we can guess it is probably more than that now.
I for one thank the dashboard cam for getting me out of a DUI that I was going to get despite passing every single one of my roadside tests. and blowing just at the limit. The cam and the cop's lapel mic recorded him making comments about finding a Dead Kennedy's and a Grateful Dead cd in my truck and he "could have guessed that, just look at the guy". The recording of my roadside tests and the bias exhibited by the cop (who not so un-coincidentally was training someone and had the most DUI arrests in Teton county) did it. The judge was not happy about it.
So the dashboard cams, should they be present can in fact help solve these issues and many, many others.
Yep, you are correct.
my bad
The "a few bad apples" excuse which is always trotted out by apologists for piggery does not ring ture with me.
Having lived in a mostly-black neighborhood (Powelton Village) in Philly when that fascist lunatic Rizzo was mayor I had bountiful opportunities to observe the behavior of Philly cops, and those observations were definitely not consistent with "a few bad apples", unless the city had a policy of concentrating the unfit-to-be-municipal-dogcatcher into a single district, because their behavior was too broadly and consistently spread among the group.
For the authoritarian-follower fucknozzles who want to whine about "playing the race card", one interesting thing that I noticed was that there was an absolutely consistent, high-predictive-value correlation between race and the behavior of a cop. It depended on what color the cop was. It worked like this:
Black cop: normal guy who wants to get his job done with the minimum of hassle, clock out and go home.
White cop: dangerously unstable belligerent meathead who is actively looking for an excuse to hurt someone and knows that he can do anything he wants with complete impunity as long as he doesn't do it to anyone from a higher socioeconomic class than himself.
The problem was not one of " a few bad apples", it was with the entire culture of the Police Department and had its roots in the cultural pathologies of the white working class. White cops were pretty uniformly drawn from neighborhoods where they absorbed bigotry and belligerence with their mother's milk and never had any experiences that might teach them that these attributes were not virtues.
Add to that an administration which was absolutely dependent on that same demographic for its political support and you had a recipe for a situation in which the Police Department earned- I say, earned, son- a reputation which was so bad that the writers of "Barney Miller" could use it as the basis of a gag and expect that the entire country would understand the joke.
As long as we live in a culture that continues to consider brutalization an acceptable method of childrearing we will continue to manufacture these maimed personalities in bulk, and as long as we have no reliable means of, nor the will to, keep them out of positions where they can inflict their deficiencies on others we will make no progress towards a less-brutal society.
Apologists: "a few bad apples" is a lie. Stop using it as a distraction from what the real trouble is.
BDC,
Why are breathalysers not used in the US ? The would seem to be far more reliable than some kerbside test.
Or, like, in that Columbo episode with Dabney Coleman?
;)
*still waking up*
Huh?
They are (in combination). That's why he mentioned "blowing just at the limit."
Sorry for the wrong and outdated information above about the law in Washington State.
The correct law pertaining to traffic citation receipts in Washington State was and is 46.61.021. Further investigation reveals that the mandatory signature part of the law was repealed in 2006 as follows:
Here in the UK if you are below the limit on the kerbside breathalyser test you are free to continue on your way, unless there are other reasons for the Police to detain you. If you are at or over the limit you are arrested and taken to a nearby Police Station where you have the choice of taking another breathe test (actually two, the lower reading is the one used) on a more sophisticated machine, or providing a blood specimen. If you are under the limit on the second test you are free to go, otherwise you will spend the night in custody prior to being released on bail pending a court appearance.
CanonicalKoi | April 1, 2010 11:24 AM:
For the 93rd time, she was 7 months pregnant. If they claimed not to know, they lied.
@SC OM
Much wittier than any response I would have come up with. Well played.
@aratina cage - This would appear to indicate that they could have simply handed her back her copy of the unsigned ticket and everyone gone about their day. Wonder how aware they are of that and how in line police department policy is with the law?
Of course ignorance of the law is no defence, even for the Police.
Yep. After I blew curbside, they then took me to for a blood test (at the hospital being this was a small town in Wy) which came back still right at the legal limit of .08%. Following that I spent the night in the pokey.
Good times.
so can't stand the "we shouldn't assume the cops did bad!" defense.
because as a matter of fact, I think that's precisely what we should do, in a way. As Walton noted above, modern societies are structured in such a way that certain groups are given additional rights/authority for law enforcement, because without these additional rights/authority, they wouldn't be able to do so. As a consequence of that though, we are creating breeding grounds for authoritarianism.
Pretty much the only way to keep the authoritarian crap to a minimum is to couple the additional rights/authority with additional responsibilities and greatly heightened scrutiny, and require justification of their actions beyond what we'd expect from a regular citizen.
so yeah, when a cop uses violence, the assumption should be that it wasn't warranted, unless conclusively proven otherwise. and despite the court-ruling, i really don't think it was proven otherwise.
Sorry to be clear it was right above the limit of .08%
DWB, anyone?
I see Deen #108 already identified my mistake and noticed that the mandatory signature law applies in Brooks' case because it happened in 2004. So unfortunately, Gus Snarp, the police officers had the legal backing to detain her. Just look at how awful the pre-2006 law was (the part struck out):
Ugh.
Seconded.
@aratina cage - One wonders if this case inspired the 2006 changes. Sometimes people have the correct response to unfortunate incidents.
Well to some extent in many locations this already happens with Police Citizen Review Boards.
On paper, that is.
I'm just failing to see how this affords protection to people. In trying to avoid a situation in which cops can set people up, they introduce a system in which cops can still set people up, but now people are required to acknowledge the cops' claims, under threat of arrest and/or tasering! Also, I don't think tickets work like that. The ticket books (and I assume radio reporting) are controlled, with carbon copies going to various people, which results in automatic actions - mailing notices, etc. Or at least that's what I think the situation is.
It could be and if nothing else should be, Gus. The system was ripe for abuse all along, and tasers seem to have tipped it over the edge.
I think that is correct as well
This is from some Law Enforcement forumn
So it appears that it is a promise to appear in court to answer the charge. I guess it is similar to signing a civil summons. IANAL.
More from an "answer" site. Makes more sense if the law is written this way. DISCLAIMER: that does not mean I agree just that if the law is written this way then it makes sense.
But if they can have camera (and EZ pass? or is that an urban legend?) tickets where you don't deal with a person at all, I don't see the basis for the requirement in the situation in which you do. It doesn't make sense, and it opens the door to all sors of abuses. Aren't there other kinds of citations issued to people not in their presence? And since these don't involve court but simple fines if you don't fight them, why do you have to sign anything saying you'll appear in court?
Record it, send notices, and deal with it if people then don't pay.
I think the whole showing up in court thing is a bit archaic. I hear about people going to court over traffic tickets, and I think: "what a waste of time and money". When I was growing up I never heard of this, people got a ticket, and they paid it. Now it seems everyone is challenging tickets, but that may be geographic. Anyway, my point is, why are tickets written as summons to appear in court? I got one once that was written that way and it freaked me out. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to just pay the fine or not. It read as if you had to go to court, rather than you had the option to go to court and attempt to fight the fine. So signing a document saying I would appear in court would still have been awfully weird to me. I signed that ticket really without reading it, or I might have been thrown off too. I also didn't notice the part on the back in fine print that said I could just pay the officer in cash on the spot, which would have been convenient since I was three states away from home, but which seems like a much more likely opening for abuse than having an unsigned ticket.
Well I know that they have traffic light camera tickets. And those have pretty much been established as a huge payday for the municipalities that install them. I know they mail you a copy of the ticket (usually running red lights) and a photo of your car running it.
So not sure why having you sign a ticket when there is an actually officer involved vs. the mail in is any different.
Maybe its a leftover practice before there were camera based tickets.
Who knows. I sign every time I've had to because IMHO your best chance of beating a ticket is in court, not with arguing with a cop.
I've never understood states that do this for the same reason you mention.
What state were you in?
@Rev. BigDumbChimp - South Carolina. It was also about 15 years ago, so times may have changed. I was just stunned when I was looking over the ticket when I got home and it said I could have paid cash on the spot.
Yikes, that's where I am.
I don't think they do this any longer, but I'd have to verify that.
@Rev. BigDumbChimp - Well, if I remember correctly, it was very fine print in a light color on the back of the ticket, but it was a long time ago.
Ah, I see the difference now. I'm saying that I could see having a signature simply as receipt of delivery, not as an acknowledgment of any wrongdoing. However, the way most people see the sig. is as the latter rather than the former, which is the big problem and police should have to properly explain the purpose of the signature (sort of like Miranda; if they don't explain, they don't get to charge). I do have a problem with mailing tickets for the same reason; things get lost in the mail. If you can't prove that the person knew about the ticket, I don't think you can hold them responsible for showing up to defend themselves against it or paying - I view the signature as protection for the person charged rather than for the policeman involved, because then they can't be charged with failing to appear in court for anything they might not have received.
@Carlie - But I can be held legally responsible for all sorts of things they can't prove I knew about when they send it in the mail. I'm expect to pay my bills on the assumption that they didn't get lost in the mail. I am expected to show up for jury duty on the assumption that my notice was not lost in the mail.
But you sign up for those services, and there's a reasonable expectation that you know those bills are coming and would search them out if they didn't come because you know you have that obligation. Tickets you wouldn't have any clue even to look for them.
I also think those should be sent with a required signature of receipt. There are some areas where this is required; subpoenas have to be hand delivered, right? Same idea.
Not. I got an automated EZ-Pass ticket last year. We had one in the car and were sort of holding it up against the window while rolling through designated lanes (NJ) and for one didn't get it up in time. They send you the little timestamped photo, it's all neat & tidy.
No, that's not the issue I'm addressing.
But you get jury summons and other sorts of citations in the mail. You usually get more than one notice - there's a series of increasing urgency. If precautions are taken to ensure that notices are sent, I don't see the small possibility of people not receiving them as warranting a required signature, especially when there are automated tickets sent in other circumstances and when the requirement can lead to this sort of situation. And actually, the main thing they should focus on is providing evidence that you were doing what they said you were, not when they informed you that you were caught.
Except that this doesn't seem to be how it plays out in practice.
Well, it depends how valuable your time is. :) If you don't have to take the time from something money-making, I think it's usually worth it.
I was talking about something else. A couple of people have told me that since it records the time you go through, if you reach the next faster than you would going the limit you can get a speeding ticket.
@SC OM - That sounds like an urban legend. A good idea, but an urban legend. It makes me think of truckers. They have to keep log books of how many hours they drive and not go over 10 hours without an eight hour break (with all sorts of bizarre calculations to keep it from being so simple). You would think that they could have a look up table and say, hmm, you're in Topeka, last log was 10:00 in Omaha, and you've got no second driver. You're either keeping fake books or doing 90, therefore here's your ticket. Would work better if computerized.
The lesson I take from all this is to deal with police officers the same way you deal with a strange dog. Always remain non-threatening and speak clearly without raising your voice. And hope they don't come after you anyway.
ok seriously this conversation is dumb, i've felt a taser before as part of an educational course and while it hurts pretty bad, the effects wear off. it's a device the police use to keep us safe and above all to keep the criminal safe from himself
That loud sound you just heard was the point sailing far over your idiotic head.
"That loud sound you just heard was the point sailing far over your idiotic head."
what point? that's my whole point is that there isn't a point to meyer's article
771, that is Myers. If you can't spell PZ's name correctly, it brings the rest of your post into question. And the point went sailing over your head.
Ok, I'll bite - so exactly what was the threat in this situation? Why did we need to be kept safe from a pregnant woman who may or may not have gone a little over the speed limit and was sitting in her car, and why did she need to be kept safe from herself?
And you do realize that there are different voltages of tasers, yes? And that different people have different levels of pain tolerance? And that feeling a jolt when you are expecting and braced for it is different than when it takes you by surprise? And that sending a large amount of electricity through a pregnant woman might have some nasty unintended effects?
Because you are a blockhead, you missed the point. Perhaps it would have been better if you hadn't commented at all.
First his name is Myers. It's even right up there where you can find it had you spent even an iota of time looking.
Secondly, abuse of power and over reaction is the issue, not how much pain a taser causes.
Moron.
This is the same basic argument used by the Bush administration to justify all sorts of torture, including, but not limited to, water boarding. If it hurts, but short of permanent injury or death, then it isn't torture. That logic is bullshit.
Heavy-handed, retrograde, and racist nonsense.
Not to mention outrageous.
Also, don't go to a daycare in Indiana:
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/04/01/police-indiana-taser-daycare.h…
From cameron:
As the parent of a 10 year-old, I can definitively say: Oh HELL no.
SC:
That is actually an urban legend, and un true. The said the same thing back when they introduced the paper toll tickets with a magnetic stripe on the back. It wasn't true then either.
Re Sven:
Are you saying you got a ticket? If you did you can dispute it as you have a valid EZPass account, even if it did not register at that toll booth. The transponder just makes billing easier, but is not absolutely necessary, they can just look up your plate and verify your account just as easily as sending you a summons. In fact they routinely match the transponder to the plate anyway to prevent people using stolen transponders in unregistered (with EZPass) vehicles.
augustine771 said:
It's been quoted before by Feynmaniac above, but again:
[emphasis added to the parts you should compare]
And of course what the others said about this not even being the point. The point is that they used unnecessary force and that something doesn't have to give permanent effects to be torture/assault/etcetera.
jpatrenti@#46:
re RBDC @141:
Most places require that it not just be a photo of the car, but that the face of the driver be visible.
Red light cameras were first, speed trap cameras are also coming to America after being in Europe for quite some time. Newest Garmins even include databases of speed cameras in their GPS's now.
oops, blockquote fail. Since I started by posting the entire paragraph I was referencing, it should be easy to parse, if anybody cares to.
@augustine
Unless you die.
1. This was not a criminal. This was a pregnant woman who didn't want to sign something the cops were trying to coerce her to sign.
2. There was no one's safety at risk (except perhaps pedestrians if she really was speeding, but then they could have arrested her for reckless driving, so that was obviously not a concern).
3. Police should be held to the highest standard when it comes to the use of reasonable force--for the safety of all of us, civilians and police alike.
4. Using a Taser is to risk serious injury and death. Is her compliance in signing a traffic ticket worth her life or the life of the foetus she was carrying?
Back to the subject at hand...
It is absurd to require a signature or even to take possession of the ticket (you often see on "amazing police video" type shows people tearing up their speeding tickets) Police should just explain that they are being given a copy, and if they fail to comply with the terms on the ticket, a warrant will be issued for their arrest, etc. But in no way does refusing to sign or destroying the ticket represent a threat of harm to the officer that warrants a forceful response.
It is an amazing story of unintended consequences (all these stories of taser abuse), I think. It seems like such a good idea to give police officers a non-lethal weapon for defense, but appears to have instead given them an easily abused weapon of offense. If these officers did not have a taser, would this situation have escalated like this? I just don't believe thay would have instead dragged her from the car and beaten her. But taser is so easy and said to be so harmless that it gets used at the least provocation. We really need to start instituting some strict guidelines on their use.
This says it all.
The thinking here seems to be anyone who gets it deserves it and is a criminal. This whole thinking is messed up.
regardless who it was the procedure is legitimate for law enforcement and i think that while they went overboard for the woman they should retain the right to use the taser as a nonviolent method of detaining criminals
also some of the weaker forms of interrogation used by the cia were sugar and sleep deprivation. its not toruture, your argument is absurd
Really? Ask the people subjected to it.
you dont have to ask the people its not torture okay. sugar deprivation is not torture.
OK, now say it one more time but this time use ALL CAPS... that will make it true, I'm certain. Isn't that how it works in your world?
Assertion = fact.
Repeated assertion = unquestionable fact.
Good luck with that method...
No, your inane and insane definiton of torure is absurd. Typical of idjit losers like you to switch things around, and deny reality. Your opinions have been absurd ever since you arrrived. You have nothing cogent to say, nor any evidence to back up your inanities. Your opinion is now in the negative as far as credibility goes. Time to go away troll.
Sleep deprivation is.
What other gems of stupidity are you going to subject us to here?
So far you've demonstrated an acute ability to
1. not understand the posts you are commenting on
2. make wildly idiotic and baseless comments
3. refused to address your idiocy when called on it
4. blatantly lied and created straw men of what other commenters here have actually said
What's next?
@#172 How can it be "legitimate" and "overboard" at the same time?
Oh, and read through the comments (and Dr. Myers' article again while you're at it). No one has said that Tasers -- which are, by the way, not "nonviolent" -- should never be used in any circumstance. Using them during a traffic stop on an unarmed, nonthreatening citizen is unwarranted and the police in this case should be disciplined and held liable.
The only possible mitigation is that this incident occurred in 2004, perhaps before awareness and proper training might be expected to have occurred. Maybe.
And no, "detaining criminals non-compliant suspects" is not a sufficient justification. Try this instead:
I'm not even going to touch your absurd statement about torture.
P.S. The shift key is the one right below the enter key on your keyboard.
HTML fail. That should have been "detaining criminals non-compliant suspects"
Oh dear. Let's try one more time: "detaining criminals non-compliant suspects".
oh barf, a torture apologist.
and I bet it's not child/spousal abuse if you don't leave bruises, huh?
oh barf, a torture apologist.
We shouldn't expect anything different from contemporary American conservatism.
I don't see why you'd assume that. Bruises aren't permanent harm. They heal. Hell, even broken bones don't leave scars, as long as you keep them from piercing the skin.
I gave up reading the comments about two thirds of the way to the bottom, sorry if I'm being redundant.
Above it was asked why so many in the US hold the police in utter disdain. I would use the word contempt, personally, but that's beside the point.
The reason so many of us don't like the police here is because they are the public face of Prohibition. It's called The War on Drugs now, but it's really just Prohibition 2.0. There are nearly two million people in the "justice system" in America right now, about half of them there for non-violent possession or sales. We incarcerate more people than any other nation on earth, both in gross numbers and by percentage.
Prohibition enriches organized crime and street gangs while inflating the homicide rate in any country touched by the black market inevitably created when the policy was enacted. It encourages corruption at all levels of government. Not only that, since Richard Nixon declared war on drugs (really drug users), about ten percent of the country are enemies of the state -- it used to be a rhetorical truth, but go look at how many times (and how fucking indiscriminately) the police have used SWAT teams to arrest anyone suspected of involvement in the drug trade over the last decade. It will shock you.
I understand what i'm posting on look if we are in imminent threat of an attack on a mass scale and we have a foreign insurgent who we know is connected to the plot, should we just read him his rights. I mean even if we shouldn't use sleep deprivation and other stuff, shouldn't we at least do something to illicit a response? loop a bad song or something harmless like that?
oh look, a moron.
torture doesn't produce reliable information, so torturing someone when information is necessary is just counterproductive gratuitous violence.
on the other hand, being nice and getting through the martyr defenses does work, so actually we should be treating suspects as well as possible. but that doesn't satisfy the brutish revenge-thirst of conservatives, so they don't listen when CIA interrogators themselves tell them torture doesn't actually work for information gathering.
it really says a lot about the mind of the conservative American, that he'd immediately jump to negative treatment even though it's known to work less well (if at all) than positive treatment.
Yes, you're commenting on a story about police officers who used inappropriate force.
.... or, apparently not.
But ok. Torture of "foreign insurgents" it is then...
I've heard very little evidence that supports the idea that torture is an effective means of extracting information.
If you torture me and tell me to confess something or tell you something, I'll eventually say what I think you want to hear to make you stop torturing me. That doesn't provide you with reliable information.
Then there is of course the ethical questions... which really ties in with the national security that you're so keen on torturing people to protect.
I am no supporter of torture and I would say that people who enthusiastically support torture are not my friends. The same works on a national level - you should remember that the best way of maintaining security and avoiding war/acts of terrorism is to not make enemies.
Torturing prisoners does very much to tarnish a country's reputation and does not help in keeping relations friendly. Whatever gives their politicians something they can throw at you to say "Look at that! They are unethical and oppress people, we'll have to go in and get all Operation Iraqi Freedom on their asses and do some explosive liberation" is bad for you.
Laugh and the world laughs with you. Tell the world that you think that it is perfectly ok to torture foreigners if you suspect that they are a threat to national security and the world gives you angry glares and is all the less likely to take your side in a disagreement.
Altogether too many incidents of police using tasers on people who just ANNOYED them.
Thanks, Gus Snarp and SteveM. I questioned it (especially since I don't know anyone who's ever received such a ticket), but it sounded plausible.
Torture is torture fuckwit, and whatever we do to our alleged enemies, we give them green light to do to us in return. You have no idea how morality reality works. What a loser 771. Learn to think thing through before you open your mouth and embarrass yourself like you have...
Yes right. Well the wee problem was that the transponder we were using was not registered to the vehicle in which it was being used. So the ticket was to me, the plate owner, for using the EZ-Pass lane without a transponder. Just to clarify. Not that it turns out to be relevant anyway.
Sorry. That was my fault - should've been more clear when I asked the question.
Another person who thinks that torture actually results in good intel.
Yep, a dumbass.
You may larf at the christoloons with their "end-times" notions, but the signals that the rest of the civilized world (South Australia in my case) are receiving is that the political elite of the US of A have achieved their goals beyond a wet-dream.
Leo Strauss would have a hard-on reaching from here to Seattle. His private version of 1984 is embedded in most of yankee-land, (mainly courtesy of the apparatchiks that Reagan allowed to control him).
The final days of US hegemony, both imperial and financial are upon us, folks.
We are witnessing the very poor cousin of the fall of the Roman Empire.
You read it here.
"You may larf at the christoloons with their "end-times" notions, but the signals that the rest of the civilized world (South Australia in my case) are receiving is that the political elite of the US of A have achieved their goals beyond a wet-dream.
Leo Strauss would have a hard-on reaching from here to Seattle. His private version of 1984 is embedded in most of yankee-land, (mainly courtesy of the apparatchiks that Reagan allowed to control him).
The final days of US hegemony, both imperial and financial are upon us, folks.
We are witnessing the very poor cousin of the fall of the Roman Empire.
You read it here."
Hey we have a liberal douche to balance out the conservative ones now!
Also Off-topic poster is wearing a sweater :-p
Pretty much the only way to keep the authoritarian crap to a minimum is to couple the additional rights/authority with additional responsibilities and greatly heightened scrutiny, and require justification of their actions beyond what we'd expect from a regular citizen.
so yeah, when a cop uses violence, the assumption should be that it wasn't warranted, unless conclusively proven otherwise. and despite the court-ruling, i really don't think it was proven otherwise.
Yup.
What's always interesting about these kinds of debates is that some folks actually believe the "To Protect and Serve" they see on TV cop cars. There's a reason so many folks are suspicious of cops, and that's because they know that "to protect and serve" is more PR than actuality.
This is particularly the case for American communities of color, and queer communities. Historically, the police have worked hard to keep these communities down. The "service" they provided was keeping "those people" in line. Nothing to do with law enforcement, and everything to do with social enforcement of racial and sexual hierarchies. That's why they raided gay bars (and still do) and stop people for driving while black.
Cops are not a friend of the people.
I used to hate it, but am beginning to love that I hardly have to comment here since someone else will destroy the idiotic arguments at least as well as I. I go away at night and instead of finding that some idiot has overwhelmed all the reasonable discussion, he has had his ass handed to him on a platter.
Look at the bright side, they don't seem to just beat offenders to death anymore!
Hey.. If the brownshirt fits..
As a person who has had dozens of encounters with police in primarily roadside situations and never been tasered, I have to suggest that being polite with the officer reduces one's chances of being tasered substantially, whereas being an ass seems to increase them greatly.
And while I'd agree that the taser is used far too often in the US and Canada, every tasering incident I've read about has a common theme about Joe Public being a jackass immediately prior to getting tasered. I have yet to read about "Bob was just standing there, quietly minding his own business, when Officer Schultz tasered him." Nor have I read "During a routine traffic stop, Richard was complying with Officer Smith's instructions, when Smith's partner tasered Richard."
Lipping off at cops only makes things worse, never better. Why give them an excuse? It makes more sense to take their few minutes of shit and deal with them in court if it comes to that, which, oddly enough, it never has.
I am sort of curious about the mechanics of how her arm was held behind her back while she was sitting in her vehicle.
I assume she was pushed forward into the steering wheel, or sideways into the passenger seat. As some one who has been pushed nearly flat in a front seat of a car by an angry person I can say it is not at all beyond the realm of possibility. Twist the arm sharply and the person will fold forward to ease the pain. Then push the arm behind their back. From this position you can inflict a lot of pain if they struggle. For bonus points shock them with a painful instrument multiple times.
Generally true, but with individual exceptions, of course. Not enough of 'em in my experience.
richardrob & Evolving Squid: Suggestions to be polite with cops, while practical, do nothing to solve the problem at the heart of this issue.
Exactly why, other than to avoid the appearance of being an asshole, should I be required to treat a police officer with courtesy and respect -- especially if I find what he/she is doing detestable? Why should any interaction with any government representative require me to walk on eggshells, so to speak, to avoid violence?
Asked another way, since when is simply being an asshole is a crime?
Putting on a badge and accepting the duty of policing your fellow citizens means you've accepted the fact you must deal with people, often when they are behaving at their worst. Sometimes you get to be a hero, but TV dramas aside, those instances are few and far between. The vast majority of a cop's dealings with the public do not result in accolades for the officer. This is not a secret and shouldn't be a surprise for anyone choosing law enforcement as a career.
There is a reason kids (usually) eventually move out of their parents' house -- nobody likes being told what to do.
I don't write this as an excuse for verbally abusing police officers (or any other government official) when you are given a lawful order by one. I write because I believe some posters here have a backward view of the situtation.
Police officers are (or should be) the trained professionals of the group during all police/public interactions. A hallmark of a professional is to behave professionally at all times. For a police officer one would think that means keeping one's cool in situations when untrained individuals become emotional.
When I must interact with an idiot during the course of daily business, when I must deal with someone who chooses to be impolite and discourteous, I often walk away shaking my head muttering, 'Asshole.' What I CAN'T do is pull a taser or gun and threaten that asshole with bodily harm.
Police shouldn't be allowed to do it either.
If anyone is interested, this is the Policy Statement on Tasers in the UK.
While it applies specifically to the West Mercia force (broadly, the West Midlands) it is approved by the central police body (Association of Chief Police Officers - ACPO) and is going to be the same in all important details in other forces.
http://wmp.rippleffect.com/assets/_files/documents/sep_09/wmp__12524148…
Again, just as a matter of interest, in the UK Tasers are classified as offensive weapons and like other offensive weapons (guns, knives, police-style truncheons and batons etc.) are banned to the general public. Members of the police forces have been issued with them but only at Constable rank and above and only after formalised training (with annual refresher training). All firearms officers receive training in the use of Tasers as well.
Re Sven:
[sorry to continue the tangent]
I'm actually surprised you didn't get tickets in the other toll booths where it did detect the transponder and it didn't match the plate. Or at least a "fraud detection" call to verify that your transponder hadn't been stolen.
Anyway, back to the topic...
Because, despite your having the moral high ground, they have the taser and you don't. It is stupid to deliberately endanger yourself with no hope of personal gain. It has nothing to do with the appearance of being an asshole, but rather to reduce the possibility of angering someone who might resort to violence with a little provocation.
There is a time and a place to fight the police, but the time is a trial date and the place is in court. It's never at a traffic stop.
It doesn't have to be a crime, but being an asshole might get your ass kicked (or shocked, as the case may be).
The drawbacks to being an asshole are obvious, what possible benefit is there to being an asshole in these situations?
Of course they shouldn't... but taunting a cop in some way when you know that there's a reasonable chance that the guy could pop off and taser you is old-school stupid.
What the police shouldn't be allowed to do, and what is smart for you to do are independent variables.
Just to pile on in RE this tangental issue -
During witch trials, women under torture went into great detail of what sex with the devil was like. Positions he liked, the details of his genitals, etc.
Either you'd have to assume that:
A) These women did, in fact, have sex with the devil,
or,
B) Torture does not produce reliable information.
Care to give us your opinion on this?
@ Deen
Well, the panel chose to take that interpretation based apparently on the rather confused nature of the testimony given. All parties referred to both the Notice and the Citation as a ticket, convention is that when the facts are disputed you take the interpretation most favourable to the defendant. Which is that she believed she was refusing to sign the Notice not the Citation. While a mistake as to law isn't a defence a mistake as to facts is a defence.
It is legal to arrest a person commiting a non arrestable offence for long enough to missue the paperwork, so the police were within their powers to arrest her, even under the facts she alleged.
Squid said: 'The drawbacks to being an asshole are obvious, what possible benefit is there to being an asshole in these situations?'
Squid, did you infer from my post that I recommend provoking a police officer? All too often, however, the provocation begins with the officer, not the civilian.
Should a police officer expect to be verbally abused while doing his/her job? No, but they are trained to handle such situations, and if they don't have the knowledge and emotional maturity to do so without resorting to violence or the threat of violence they shouldn't be a police officer.
As far as I know there is never a benefit to behaving like an asshole. My point was (and is) there is something wrong when citizens fear representatives of their own government. If a police officer is behaving like an asshole I should be able to tell him so without fear of bodily harm.
And again, I'm not describing the situation as it is, I'm describing it as it should be. That's the problem...
One thing I haven't seen mentioned, which may or may not be relevant; is this issue about the defendant thinking that signing the ticket was an admission of guilt.
The last time I got a moving violation (which was a long time ago, honest), you had the option of signing it nolo contendro and mailing it in with the fine. Perhaps this is what she was thinking of.
[as I understand it nolo contendro is not really an admission of guilt, just "will not contest" but still results in "points" on your insurance, if not on your license]
And now for something completely different...
The title of this posting is all wrong [and I demand Meyers change it immediately (and send me a Canon xT2i)] Clearly, speeding is not the problem in Seattle, but refusing to do the paperwork. So the title should be something like "Don't drop your pen in Seattle"
@Brett Dunbar:
They were in their right to detain her for the traffic violation for long enough to establish her identity and write the ticket. Which they did. They could have left it at that. When she refused to sign a ticket, they had the right to arrest and detain her for long enough to write her a Citation. Which they did. And they could have left it at that. None of this required her to come out of the car. None of her actions were obstructing them in their work to write the ticket and the Citation. And certainly none of her actions appear to be sufficient grounds for bodily violence.
@Evolving Squid:
And might makes right, yes?
Of course, by the time you go to trial, it's your word against theirs. Who are they going to believe? And they'll still have their tasers. Well, maybe not inside the court room, but they'll definitely carry them the next time they'll see you driving out on the highway. Might makes right, yes?
On the whole I agree with the majority on the law but the force used seems to have been excessive. The appeal court decided that even if they hadn't tried to issue a citation they were within their rights to arrest her temporarily in order to issue the citation, even under the facts most favourable to Brooks. She was physically resisting arrest while in possession of a car, which is a potentially deadly device, as well as a possible means of escape.
The law as it stood required her to sign to demonstrate that she was aware that the notice had been issued. There is an obvious potential for abuse if a ticket can be issued without the purported recipient being notified.
I've never heard of being asked to sign a ticket when it's issued to you. Here in Minnesota (and Wisconsin, and New York) you only sign the ticket when you send it in, either to plead guilty or to request a hearing.
I know this because those are the three states I've been cited for speeding in.
Ok, we've all gotten a little off-topic here, but I wanted to say something that I haven't seen mentioned in the debate.
The quality of your legal representation does count, and in this case the woman's lawyer doesn't seem to have it all together if her news statements are at all trustworthy. Apparently, instead of just arguing that the police use of force was excessive in this case (relatively simple to do) she appears to have argued that the police have no right to use any force. Go read some of what she said to the newspapers. No judge in their right mind would ever assent to the proposition that the police cannot use any force to coerce a suspect into complying. Technically they use force when they flash the sirens and pull you over.
I have seen instances like this a dozen times. One side seems to have a really good case, and instead of arguing that case the zealot lawyer steps up and argues that the court should adopt a rule no sane human would ever entertain. Because judges only hear from lawyers at the appellate stage the oppossing side just has to seem reasonable and then the justices have a loon arguing against a reasonable person. You can't help but tend to side with the reasonable person in the room.
No, but might gets to decide how things are done most of the time, right or not.
And Don't write on a desk in New York
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2010/04/03/2010-04-03_student_who_was_a…
Surely detention and restoration would be more appropriate.