BART police pull Tasers, will retrain officers

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(04-15) 18:47 PDT OAKLAND -- The BART Police Department stripped its officers of Tasers on Thursday, days after a sergeant fired the electric darts of his stun gun at a 13-year-old boy fleeing from police in Richmond on his bicycle, sources told The Chronicle.

BART officials, who said officers would be retrained to use the devices, attributed the decision to the Richmond incident as well as a recent federal court ruling that narrowed the circumstances under which police can use Tasers.

The officials said they could not comment on the Richmond case, citing privacy laws that apply to internal investigations. Interim Police Chief Dash Butler said only that the incident accelerated plans that were already in progress to retrain officers and update policies on the proper use of Tasers, which BART police began using in December 2008.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/15/BAK81CVF03.DTL

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However, the Taser missed the fleeing boy, and Tasing suspects who run away is unlawful in the first place. Also, BART plans on keeping Tasers on the opposite side of officers' strong sides, for instance right-handed officers must have the Taser on their left sides of belt.

and have yet to tase anybody, although i have gained voluntary compliance upon drawing a taser and presenting it on several occasions...

and i have criticized officers who i believe overuse tasers

but imo this court case takes it too far

it is now not authorized to tase a fleeing violent assault suspect.

for example, man punches wife in face resulting in black eye.

he flees upon police arrival. as he is scaling fence, officer tases him in back.

no longer justified. imo, that should be justified. tasing to stop the flight of a violent suspect? absolutely. but no longer kosher w/in use of force continuum.

and fwiw, i've been tased twice.

i took one dart in the right shoulder, then the circuit was completed by drive stunning into my left calf.

this created a very large distance between the contacts which makes for the most effective tase, since it affects a larger amount of muscle mass.

i am also about 220 lbs and a competitive strength athlete, and the more muscle you have, the more effective the taser is.

but yes, i had officers hold me up.

in my scenario given, it would be in a back yard and the guy would land on dirt

regardless, i'd be completely justified in tackling the guy and ripping him off the fence and throwing him to the ground.

how is this LESS likely to result in injury than a tase (to officer OR suspect?)

here's a hint. wrestling with perps can cause injury. heck, i had to wrestle with a guy once and he stopped BREATHING. that sucked.

it's not tiddlywinks. it's real life.

But my perception is that these devices aren't only used in the way you describe. Some officers seem hell-bent on using them for entirely sadistic purposes.

Were you standing nearby with a taser while some thug substantially larger than me was pinning me to the ground and making a nice meal of me I would be very glad to see you and probably initially very happy for you to use the taser. I don't know what guidelines your department has issued on their use so maybe this is a bad example. (Has each scenario been thought out? To me it doesn't look like it. Maybe they should be.)

Were you standing nearby with a taser and decided to zap and cuff me for fun or because you just didn't like the look of me I don't think I'd enjoy that at all.

Please don't think I'm accusing you of things, I don't know you from Adam, but please also don't try to tell me that there are no sadistic policemen.

It comes to this - are we willing to let a lot of policemen electrocute people, guilty or otherwise, for fun or for some sense of revenge and then clear up the mess afterwards in the courts, providing the tasee has the money, or is there a better way? Personally I'd rather the bad things in the world didn't happen in the first place than clean up the mess afterwards. Why give sadists the opportunity to screw with us?

Aside from all that the innocent will pretty much always presume innocence, particularly if, like me, they have a history of physical suffering at the hands of abusive authority that's too fucked up to even let you cooperate with them without using you as a lightning conductor for some kind of personal issue. I hope you understand that the numerous taser objections you see on this site are usually not to policing per se but those incidents where the policing of a situation doesn't make sense or seems to have made things worse rather than better.

some officers misuse tasers.

that says nothing about the court case though, which outlaws taser use in a specific circumstance that (imo) is quite justifiable and is a net benefit to society. is it better to tase a violent crime suspect as he flees, or that he get away? i know the answer to that

tasers are also a use of force option that has (generally speaking) more accountability and more forensics to prevent against misuse. EVERY time the trigger is depressed, it records the time and length in the internal memory, available for download. contrast this with a baton, for instance, or a fist.

i have never seen an officer tase somebody for fun, or where it was not legally justified. i have seen officers use tasers in situations where i would not have used it. there is a difference.

regardless, the instant case now outlaws use of tasers on fleeing violent suspects. iow, assault suspects, etc.

imo, that's RIDICULOUS.

in a one or two officer present situation, it's safer for the officers and suspect. if the officers even CAN jump the guy, he;s more likely to get hurt in a drawn out fight. and if he grabs at a gun or something, likely to get shot

nobody disagrees that some officers have misused tasers. from the data i;'ve looked at they have still been a net benefit to society, officers (less injuries in agencies that employ them), suspects (ditto) etc.

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It damages your credibility.
Please try to maintain civility when you engage in argument.
Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they are patronizing you, abusing you, or expressing offense with you.
I read none of that in paulsby's post.
However, I read a lot of it in yours.

"Ive met hundreds of you and you're all fucked up."

I'm probably closer to your point-of-view than paulsby's on this issue, but expressing yourself like a lunatic makes you seem...well...like a lunatic.

try youtube.

i would expect nothing less

You can't shoot a fleeing suspect in the back, right? Then what makes you think you get to do that with a taser?

first of all, guns are deadly force and are thus subject to tennessee v. garner.

tasers are NOT, since they are not considered deadly force.

your first error.

they are completely disanalogous. fwiw, i TEACH the law of deadly force as well as firearms instruction. you have NO idea what you are talking about.

second of all, you CAN shoot a suspect in the back, in numerous situations. again, like most people who have never studied the law, but get their knowledge of it from teevee, you believe myths.

i quote tennesse v. garner (a case that found unconstitutional a tennessee law that allowed shooting practically ANY fleeing felon. t v. g specified when such force was CONSTITUTIONAL...
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=471&page=1
"such force may not be used unless necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others. Pp. 7-22. <471 U.S. 1, 2> "


one example: a guy who had a warrant out for murder had been making threats to kill the witness. we found him driving his car in the very city where the witness lived. we pursued. he crashed. he ran. we chased him. could we have shot him in the back? absolutely. we didn't. we chased him until he tripped, then two of us tackled him and arrested him.

fwiw, a tasing, like a shooting, is a SEIZURE and thus falls under the "reasonableness" standard of the 4th amendment. a shooting however, is deadly force, and a tasing is not, thus OBVIOUSLY the rules are different.

It was my understanding that the police could only taser people who were about to do bodily harm to others.

No more tasering simply because they think the person is mentally ill. No more tasering for a civilian refusing to immediately obey a command.

But that doesn't mean that the people you cite in your example could not be tased.

we just had a bunch of training come down from our legal unit in regards to this decision.

the bright line is clear- if the person is fleeing, EVEN IF THEY COMMITTED A VIOLENT CRIME, you can't tase them.

(again, in some circ's, you can shoot a fleeing suspect with a FIREARM, and i am not referring to those circ's, but just yer garden variety assault etc)

i don't have the case law handy (i guess i could look it up) but our legal advisor was crystal clear on this
like i said, i've carried for 4 yrs and haven't tased anybody, and i have arrested for everything from rape, to robbery, to assault, etc.

but imo it's a bad ruling

imo, it will also be overturned

When this case went to court, the attorney of the P.D. officer who was on the defensive cited among his many reasons for tasering someone, a police officer's evaluation that a person is mentally ill.

If that stands in place (i.e. the police can taser someone just because they appear "mental") I will be upset. Especially if it is combined with the notion that police can Taser a person, then start issuing orders. (All the forensic shows I watch, the head detective, or FBI agent or whoever is in command, explains that OFTEN a person CANNOT respond to an order after they have been tasered - the body can convulse and how can you obey someone when your body is responding to the tasering?)

Every year, mentally ill people who are of no danger but to themselves (and sometimes minor property) are tasered to the point of death. Or shot.

Also people with diabetes go into the "mental derangement" area when their blood sugar is out of whack.

I was really appreciative of the Ninth District court of Appeals ruling on this. especially in light of the fact that just weeks later, a seventh month pregnant woman was tasered in State of Washington for refusing to get out of her car.

I have become more afraid of the police in this country than I am of the bad guys. And I am a white, middle aged woman with no previous criminal history. I can only imageine what younger people of color
have to face.

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- K&R

for summarily executing someone.

Talk about instruments of evil--that and the infrared weapons and the noise blasters and...

Tasers are being misused. Let's face Tasers are a lethal weapon.

i've been tased twice, fwiw.

i know SCORES of officers who have.

none of us would volunteer to be shot, which is deadly force.

also, fwiw... here's my prediction. the scotus will overturn this case. i'll stand by for that to happen.

nt