Efficient Pain

OneGoodMove has video of a protestor being tasered over the week-end. As with all these taser vids, I got a queasy feeling in my stomach when I saw it. I don’t know how many of you have been shot with electricity, but I have had it happen by accident and it’s really awful. Worse than being hit hard. Way worse.

This video shows an unarmed, restrained, female protestor on the ground being tasered. It looks very efficient, very easy, very simple. I’m very suspicious of police having simple, easy, efficient and unaccountable ways of subduing unarmed citizens.

I understand why cops like tasers. It’s a non-lethal way of making citizens immediately compliant. Who wouldn’t like that? But I am viscerally uncomfortable with the fact that police have the unrestrained discretion to inflict serious pain on citizens simply because it does not leave a mark. Just as they should not be allowed to punch a restrained protestor in the face, which would also subdue her, they should not be able to taser a restrained protestor. The law should not allow authorities to inflict pain unnecessarily even if the pain does not result in serious damage. And evidence is mounting that it does.

Talk Left (which has a very handy compendium of information on the taser, here) wrote yesterday about the police who are suing because of injuries sustained when they were tasered in training. And quite a few lawsuits are coming down the pike from others who have been permanently damaged by tasers. The company that manufactures them has been extremely uncooperative and unforthcoming with information. It’s most telling that cops who volunteer to take tasering in training rarely offer to take another one.

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