Selling With Torture
by digby
I’ve often observed that taser torture is now used as entertainment. This may be the first time I’ve seen it used to sell something:
Funny, funny stuff. Maybe next time they can have the cop beat his friend over the head with his nightstick. That would be funny too. Or how about if the friend opened the door and the cop just put a bullet between his eyes. What a hoot that would be.
A 25-year-old Sultan man died after deputies stunned him with a Taser during an incident early Saturday morning in Gold Bar.
The case is now under investigation by the Snohomish Multiple Agency Response Team. It is the second Taser death this week in the Puget Sound region and the fifth death caused by a violent encounter with police.
The latest drama unfolded at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday when two Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies were sent to the 500 block of 1st Avenue West in the Gold Bar to check out a report of a disturbance.
The 911 dispatch center had received calls about a man, later identified as Adam Colliers, 25, of Sultan, running up and down the street yelling and disturbing residents.
When the deputies arrived they were immediately confronted by Colliers, who charged the deputies and fought with them to the ground, said Sgt. Robert Goetz of the Everett police.
One of the deputies stunned Colliers with his Taser. The man stopped struggling, and then deputies discovered he was not breathing.
[…]
Residents said Colliers was well-known in the neighborhood. He frequently stayed over the weekends at a home in Gold Bar where he cared for a quadruplegic man.
Sharon Williams, the sister of the quadruplegic man, says Colliers had gone to bed but then began acting strangely.
“He started rambling on about different stuff, and it just kind of got worse. Next thing you know, he’s in and out of the house, and he was yelling,” Williams says.
But she and other neighbors wonder why it was necessary for the deputies to use a Taser on Colliers, a small man who weighed only about 120 pounds.
“They’re trained to take people down. Why not that first? The guy didn’t have a weapon,” Williams says.
Hey, they’re using these things on 10 year old kids, epileptics having seizures and bed-ridden grandmothers, so it’s fairly clear that judgment is no longer part of the job description. It’s stun first and ask questions later.
Plus it’s really funny. Especially when they die.
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