Torture yourself for charity: the new American safety net
by digby
Electro-shock for a good cause:
A police chief of a small eastern Indiana town who was shot by a stun gun at fundraising event to buy a new squad car says he raised about $800 in cash and received a $25,000 pledge from a Texas company.
Knightstown Police Chief Danny Baker says he’s been receiving calls from all over the country and expects to collect more money. His goal was to raise $9,000 so the town of about 2,100 people about 25 miles east of Indianapolis could lease a new squad car. He says he might be able to get a second car.
He says the feeling of being hit with 50,000 volts of low-amp electricity Wednesday night felt like someone hitting him in the back of the head repeatedly.
That’s interesting, isn’t it? Apparently, this police chief must think it’s ok to inflict what feels like repeated hits to the head on anyone who doesn’t comply with an officer’s orders. (I assume he thinks that’s ok, since most police officers do.) And yet, if police were to actually hit everyone from five year old kids to bedridden senior citizens over the head repeatedly I don’t think people would think it’s such a wonderful new policing technique.
It’s the fact that it’s high tech, sanitary and doesn’t leave many marks that makes it so grand. Sure, it kills a few people, just like hits to the head do. But it’s done from a distance and is much more clinical. If I were given to hyperbole (which I am) I would have to evoke Hannah Ahrendt here. This is an example of the banality of evil.
It’s lucky this police chief wasn’t among the thousands of the people who die from taser shots, isn’t it? Boy would that have been embarrassing …
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