I love the sound of a Taser in the morning!

[chris russell]

Originally Posted by ParisDakarBmw

Your able to think as you wish, and you can have your opinion. I won't even say that some officers don't use excessive force sometimes, and those cases are truly disturbing, but there are emerging regulations to handle the use of force.

The particular tool in question has been used to save countless lives, and end hostile situations. Of course human life is the most important thing. I do think that a person who argues the use of the most modern "less lethal devices" has a limited point. If someone has already met the criteria on the use of force continuim, and has to be handled, why would you prefer a lethal device instead?

If someone is in a psychotic state, and shows the ability to harm themselves, and others, why not use a less lethal device? What other alternative would you suggest? Lock them in the room, and come back 6 hours later? No. How about allowing the person to wreck the entire emergency room so other people are denied treatment? No. How about use the least amount of force to subdue the person, and document the event for the routine internal review? If there is a magic whistle you know of that calms the violent person upon hearing it..........I'd like to know!

If my family members ever end up having less lethal devices used on them, rather than lethal force, so be it. Of course the officer should never do it to punish a person, and that is a different issue. The OP was talking about an incident that ended without anyone hurt, killed, and he was happy it ended quick.

Some people don't like police. That's fine. Some people fail to see that in years past, people would have been lucky to live to see the next day because the devices were not available, and ended worse.

Two things: First, I wasn't writing to you. Second, as you will see elsewhere in this thread, I never said there was no appropriate use for this weapon. In fact I recognize that it can be a useful, mostly non-lethal tool in the right circumstances. The issue I brought up was entirely to do with the fact it is used much more often inappropriately, and that I objected to the jovial, har-de-har stance of some of the posts here, including the original one. These things are weapons, plain and simple. Neither their inappropriate 'deployment', nor even their appropriate use, falls into any context that I see as 'funny'. That's pretty much it.