6th Grader Tazered in School

Here are some links.

The first one is a video of a local news report. Notice one of the moms interviewed does not see a problem if it's done "properly."

IMHO these things have no place in schools. And police should only use them as a last resort to protect themselves, never to gain compliance as many forces are doing.

People need to bare in mind these damn things can kill you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIIoIjECmNg

http://www.examiner.com/a-430081~Police__Officer_who_Tasered_6th_grader_acted_properly.html

"JONESBORO, Ga. - A school resource officer acted properly when she used a Taser on an 11-year-old boy, police said."

A few more:

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/clayton/stories/2006/11/29/1130mettaser.html

http://www.news4jax.com/news4georgia/10429359/detail.html

:wtf:

regardless of their duty assignment. The DARE officer at my school carries a gun.

officer". It's "resource officer". They're necessary to keep the children safe. Even grade school children in suburban/semi-rural districts with very low crime rates (like here in OK) need to have resource officers in their schools.
Get with the program, you hear??


(Still one more reason I'm glad my kids (like yours, apparently) don't go to school.)

....and the rapist in Colorado who took the girls hostage, are you really that shocked?

:shrug:

Gee whiz. The British police didn't carry guns in downtown London until just a few years ago.

. . . that the student wasn't white.
Bet .50 that he was on Rx drugs, prescribed for ADHD or something like that.

And whatever Rx drugs he might be on, it was a case of 200+lb boy vs 85 lb girl. A girl who according to the reports he'd bullied prior to his attack, and who he attacked when she requested that he do the honorable/right thing.

You might blame his parents. You might blame his doctor. He is old enough to bear his own portion of the blame, and anyone who says otherwise is just contributing to the problem of youth violence. IMHO Kicking young arses is best way to keep 18+ YO arses out of the "Bluestone College."

The kid was a damn bully--just like the fucking Chimp in the White House.

I wrote that before reading the report. I didn't know about the 200 pound part . . . but a 200 pound 11 year old. Holy shit.

If the cop felt that because the kid weighed 200 pounds that he physically might be threatened trying to aprehend the kid, then this seems appropriate. But most sixth graders aren't this big, so this story headline is a bit misleading.

I think the key question is on whether police officers are getting a bit too lazy and using tazer guns when they don't have to. Like some have said, tazer guns CAN be lethal in some cases, and therefore could be more deadly force than simply trying to overpower an individual, especially if they are what MOST sixth graders would be in terms of size of body, etc. On the other hand, if an officer feels that he/she isn't able to overcome an individual due to strength size differences and might put themselves into a pretty dangerous situation apprehending such folks, then tazer seems appropriate.

It's like overprescribing drugs that doctors do many times these days. Sometimes, not giving patients any sort of medication is better than giving them some that might have other harmful side effects, if the original ailment can be overcome with bed rest, ect. or other means. Doctors get lazy sometimes too. Similar issue here.

Which is unfair. Apparently the officer was a five foot tall woman,(we don't know her race) trying to stop a 200 pound male from pummeling an 85 pound female.

I'll take that .50 bet. I looked up the demographics on Jonesboro. Poor area, middle school is mostly minority. I've always thought that middle class and wealthy whites were more likely to run to the doctor and get Ritalin whenever junior starts bringing home Bs and Cs. I doubt a poor black family (if that is the case here) would be spending the extra money on ADD drugs, assuming that they even have a healthcare plan.

I responded to this emotionally without knowing all the facts, such as the kid weighs 200 pounds(!!).

That said, can you imagine a child getting tasered, say, at a school in Bel-Air, CA or a similar very rich and very white neighborhood?

with what color the kid is or what meds he may or may not have been on.

Thanks for pointing it out.

I'd have tasered the fat little bastard, relocated his 'nads to a point between his ears with my boot and repeated the process on his parents.

O.K. hyperbole over.

"IMHO these things have no place in schools. And police should only use them as a last resort to protect themselves," OR to protect others.

Normally I would consider tasering to be excessive. But a female cop likely weighing in at 120-150 lb, vs an out of control 200 lb kid in a physical altercation would quite likely have resulted in serious injury to her if she restrained herself and the same to him if she used her night stick (her only other reasonable/workable option) to stop him. CS would likely have hurt the girl too, and I don't hold much truck with the idea of collateral damage.


Possibly the real problem here is that a couple of hefty male teacher could have done something with no harm to anyone (except possibly the kid's pride). However if they had, a (potentially) crippling lawsuit against the school would have been almost inevitable.

I recall when I briefly worked as a school cleaner and a similar situation arose. I did intervene and literally sat on the kid until a teacher arrived. I had strips torn off me by the mob that placed me in the position (it was a traineeship and they could have been held liable). Fortunately the kid was the brother of a friend and nothing ever came of it.

I think I would have used the taser as well

tasers can kill but so can 200 pound kids

hell, any size kid can kill another one

These tasers are just tools for lazy pigs to become even lazier. They just bark commands at a suspect, and if they don't immediately comply, they apply the taser, for control and for amusement.

Tasering a child is unforgivable unless she was about to shoot herself or someone else. It should be a crime to taser someone under 15 or so.

There is a huge problem with all of these non-lethal devices that are being developed. They make lazier cops. They make for more controlling police forces. And they make for much more frequent use of force by police.

I can easily see a day soon when Taser offers a half powered device like a cattle prod that would be used to mildly shock people for simple crowd control.

What should be emphasized in the case above though is that Tasers are NOT non-lethal, so using them at all is the same as shooting at someone in that you can in fact kill them by using the device. It should be used with much more discretion than it is currently.

The kid was 200 lb. A much smaller child was at considerable immediate risk. Despite attempts to reason with him and direct warnings he persisted in his assault. He attempted to resume the assault as soon as he recovered (apparently within seconds) from the first tasering. This kid was seriously wigged out. If he had caused permanent to the girl the cop/school would have been in even more shit. Damned if she did. Dammed if she didn't. The cop had seconds to act and took the option that minimised the risk of further harm to the REAL victim.

The likelihood of harm to someone (including his victim) in a physical takedown would have been fairly significant. The risk of lasting harm from a tasering is not zero, but is a damned sight closer to it than from attempting physical restraint.

What would you suggest? Pile 3-400 odd pounds on top of him AND the poor girl he's beating up on? Wait for him to calm down/run out of steam? Attempt to snatch the victim away? All three significantly increase the risk of further harm to the victim.

Beating up someone less than half the size of the attacker isn't?

I am typically quite opposed to use of tasers - but this would be one of the exceptions.

Because they didn't use a taser and couldn't get this jerk off her in time, how would you feel? Some other posters on other threads said that using a baton would be preferable. That would cause severe bodily harm to the boy.

What is the big deal about using Tasers? If I had to be tasered, or beat with a club, tazer away! Police officers test tasers on each other, they don't beat each other up with clubs. Why is that?

Right now the little creep is in Juve Hall, with no broken bones or missing teeth. The girl is conscious and alive. Everybody wins. The Taser was used properly, saved injury for both parties, and ended the conflict. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

that kid outweighs me. he jumped on her (the 85 pound female victim) a second time to keep beating on her. zapping him with the taser is a no-brainer.

The kid had escalated things to the point that
using FORCE was necessary and appropriate to
protect the little girl.

This isn't a case of some thug cop Tazing someone
just because they could, like some we've seen.

They could have prevented this. Tasering anyone is wrong.

If I were the parent of the small girl, I would be sending a bouquet of roses to the officer.

And, I'd be sending authorities to look into what kind of home life that boy had. What kind of upbringing does this boy have, to make him behave like a wild animal? His parents should be ashamed.

I would be filing a massive lawsuit against the school for putting my kid in danger.

...and then go on the old "I hate the pigs" rant that's become all too familiar around here.

It's funny how you just ignored the part about a 200 pound boy assaulting an 85 pound girl. I guess that's the last line that you'll allow someone to cross.

N/T

I'm in education. This is just one more example of how our schools are turing into war zones and not places of education. I'm not commenting on the tasering, but the entire situation. It's just very sad to me.

How stoopid were these adults that they kept these kids together in the same room to solve their problem? Good heavens, even a first year teacher knows to make sure they are calmed down before they try to work out the conflict.

I don't say this often, but in this case, I do hope the parents of BOTH of these kids file a killer lawsuit.

Hey KT! How goes it? :hi:

Where were the adults? Why was the police officer the only one doing anything? Maybe she should have tasered the adults, too. (JUST KIDDING. NOT REALLY.)

What happens in my classroom is my responsibility, like it or not, to vary degrees. If there was something this obvious going on, why were the adults seemingly helpless?

Why do they not supervise the kids as closely in middle schools? Our kids know we watch them like hawks. We had this conversation because one of our former kids who is in middle school this year came walking in our building the other day. I was in the office when he came in and I called the middle school and they didn't even know he was gone!! It is a good 30 minute walk and they didn't even know he wasn't there!

Turns out he had gotten mad in class and walked out. I guess that teacher hadn't even reported he was gone. :crazy:

I just don't get it. I know where every single one of my kids is at all times. And I know what kind of mood they are in too. When they are upset like this kid who got tasered, I give them space and let them calm down so I don't have to taser them when they attack someone. (JUST KIDDING ABOUT THE TASERING, FOLKS!)

I will say the same things I said in that long thread yesterday. First of all, tasers don't belong in school and NO ONE should be tasered, especially an 11 year old boy.

Secondly, the school fucked up. These kids should have been kept apart until they were certain that both of them were calmed down and ready to discuss their dispute. This kid didn't just all of a sudden snap and attack this girl. He had to have been visibly angry. And he should have been allowed to calm down first. Then there would have been no need for a taser.

"The male student literally jumped on the girl and started hitting her about the face and head," said Charles White, coordinator of communications for the Clayton County school system.

"He did not comply with directions to stop and physical efforts to pull him off the girl were unsuccessful," said White. "Finally, as a last resort, a school resource officer tasered the student in an effort to prevent further injury to the girl."

<end snip>

Seems like they did everything they could to get the boy off the girl, and nothing was working.

and the kids were taken to an office to talk it out. No way did this kid just snap. I know kids. The way I see it, this kid had to have been visibly angry as they walked to that office and/or once they got there. It may have been just a look on his face. But no way was he the picture of serenity and then just snapped.

The mistake they made (and it is a BIG one) was not separating them until they were BOTH calmed down. That is just so basic; the teachers should have known better and the cop should have known better. We are trained to read kids and we learn it really quickly on the job.

This attack could have been prevented. Then there would have been no need for a taser.

there was no real indication that it was going to get violent until it did, and then it got violent in a big way.

What would you say if you were one of those adults?

Based on my nearly 3 decades of working with kids this age (half of that time with emotionally disturbed kids) I will bet my meager teacher paycheck that this kid was visibly angry. And of course the adults will deny that.

Where were the adults? How in the world did it get to this level without someone seeing this signs?

Too young to have learned to hide his anger yet. Heck, I know adults who can't do that. LOL

Nor are the rest of us.

Pure speculation here: If other speculations in this discussion are true perhaps the girl used the "N" word once in the front office and that is what touched him off. Perhaps the school has some ridiculous touchy feely, conflict resolution/anti-bullying policy that flies in the face of common sense. Perhaps the teachers/cop had some weird naive idea that kids still respected authority figures. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda only matter now in terms of making sure that such an incident is never repeated.

In this case, however, for whatever reasons, the conflict DID turn dangerously violent. The cop appears to have used the minimum amount of force necessary to minimise the harm to all parties involved. AND here in a forum given to strongly protesting authoritarian excesses, the general consensus would appear to be that the force used was appropriate to the situation.

So I'll once more ask the question: Given the situation of an out of control 200 lb plus kid violently assaulting a far far smaller child, what would or could YOU do that guaranteed minimising further harm, particularly to the victim of the ongoing assault?

Remember the kid shook of the first taser jolt, so any response on your part will have to overcome that degree of "out of it"ness. I hope your insurance (medical and liability) is up to date, because odds are you will need both.

If not, I think you're going way too far in your speculation.

I said it was pure speculation, based upon the speculations of others in this discussion. Perhaps the kid was high on ice or PCP. Perhaps he's big not because of twinkies but because of 'roids and it was 'roid rage. As I said. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. All I was attempting to point out, is that there are any number of possible reasons for the kid suddenly flying off the handle without prior warning signs, or for the situation to reach the state it did due to stupid/misguided policies. Without further facts I give no special credence to any one of dozens of possibilities.

However, even just hypothetically guessing their race(s) may be seen as offensive.

See response #2 and my reply #4. Ethnicity is irrelevant. And even if the trigger proves to be use of the "N" word, it does not excuse the actions of the boy. Hell, perhaps, the boy is a redneck KKK wannabe and he assaulted the girl for being black and daring to get him into trouble.

I wasn't flaming you or anything. :-) I agree that race (and so far, no one here knows what race(s) involved) is irrelevant here.

I would have made sure the kids were not in the same room. Then no attack would have happened and no taser would have been necessary.

I also think it is funny that the teachers here are the ones condemning the actions of the adults. Usually we are the ones defending the school in these kinds of stories. That oughta tell you something. :)

I have a teaching license in 2 states. There are certainly other actions before resorting to tasering, but I think this story shows that some children are not able to function in a regular school setting. To me, that's the saddest part. Schools are becoming increasingly violent, and I'm not talking about tasers. I mean, the students themselves are becoming uncontrollably violent and aggressive.

They don't all of a sudden snap and become violent.

Please answer the question I asked.

What would YOU do if FACED with the situation of a 200 plus pound kid, totally out of control pounding on another kid weighing 85 lbs?

Neither would any other competent educator. Do you get it now? It's about prevention. These folks failed miserably.

No one has taught tougher kids than I have. But I have NEVER had a kid all of a sudden snap and beat the daylights out of another kid. And I have never worked in any school where that happened.

But if that did ever happen, no, I wouldn't taser him.

they fail.

And you are still dodging the question. What would YOU do, IF forced to deal with a situation where one kid is being beaten up by another kid two and a half times their size? I'll bet that if it were an adult beating on a kid, you'd have no compunctions about applying a baseball bat or similar to the back of his/her head.

I can not conceive of a workable intervention that does not carry an appreciably greater risk of harm to either the boy or his victim than tasering. That you won't answer the question asked, and instead repeatedly tell us that you are such a great educator that you would see it coming and take steps to prevent it indicates that you too have no good answer.

Sorry if that offends you. :eyes:

What does offend me is mealy mouthed dodging of questions that you apparently find unsolvable.

You have repeatedly told me/us your preventions strategy. And it's the same one I would attempt to use before a situation got out of hand. Fine. We agree there.

Now what exactly (or even generally) is your intervention strategy. So far it seems that it would be let one kid maim/kill the other and then hand the whole problem to the appropriate authorities. Good cop out. Ruddy poor strategy.

Let's put it in weasel free terms. You are on playground duty. You see a bunch of kids disappearing behind the toilet block/gardener's shed. You suspect something is up so you go to investigate. You might even send a student off to fetch help because you fear something worse than a pack of cigarettes or a dirty book. When you get there, you find one huge kid in an uncontrolled rage beating the crap out of a little kid.

NOW WHAT WOULD YOU DO? What is your intervention strategy? It is now too late for prevention.

"As best you see fit according to the situation." is not good enough.

And again, I don't allow my kids to to be out of my sight EVER, not even on the playground. So that situation would not happen.

Sorry but prevention is much more important than intervention. And it works.

You do not allow your kids out of your sight EVER. What a ridiculous statement/claim to make. For this to be even remotely true: Either you teach in a very small school set in the middle of a barren paddock; or you refuse to take responsibility for any child not in your assigned class(room). And even then it's a virtual impossibility.

I've undertaken childcare training and even at a ratio of 8 kids to one adult it is impossible to catch everything, every moment of the day. One child cries out, you turn to look and immediately Billy clonks Betty on the head with a wooden truck behind you.

Of course prevention, when and where possible, is the ideal to strive for. I've already agreed with you on that. However, sometimes things do go pear shaped, no matter how heroic the effort one puts into preventative measures and the only option available is to intervene before things get even worse.

And we now have your bald statement that under such circumstances, you would willfully abrogate your immediate and obvious responsibility in order to seek out another onto which to unload that responsibility.

In the specific circumstances of the OP and the hypothetical scenario I outlined, you by your own words (there is no other possible interpretation) would allow one child to: in all likelihood seriously injure; probably maim; or even possibly kill another, because you won't/don't resort to violence. But of course that would never happen because YOU are such a perfect educator that such a scenario could never arise on YOUR watch.

And when a cop finally did arrive on the scene, would you attempt to restrain them if (s)he pulled a taser and attempted to use it? Well no, of course not. YOU don't do violence. I can only surmise from your words in previous posts that you'd reach for the phone and demand that cop's immediate sacking and punishment for failing to inhabit your fantasy world.

That is what they pay me to do. Yes it is possible to catch what they are doing. My kids are not preschoolers. They don't bop each other on the head with toys. As I said earlier, at the age level I teach, we deal more with threats (mainly perceived rather than actual) than with attacks.

I am a 50+ year old woman. I would never be able to pull a 200 pound kid off of another kid. So I keep my eyes on them and yes, I focus on prevention so I don't have to intervene. But to answer your question you keep throwing at me, in the rare likelihood I was faced with such a situation, I would call the cops and insist that the offending child be taken away in handcuffs. Sorry but that would be the best I can do since I am no Rambo.

I also suspect that the other kids would jump in to break up the altercation. They usually do break up fights and do it without getting hurt.

Oh and I never called myself perfect. You did that. Yet I sense you would recommend I quit teaching since I can't pull a 200 pound bully off of a victim. :crazy:

BTW, you never did work with kids once you had that training, did you? :)

They pay you to do the best you can, not to be superwoman. The preschool example was just simply to show, the impossibility of your statement. Whether by design or circumstance, kids are infinitely capable of escaping supervision long enough to get into trouble.

And I accept that you would have great difficulty manhandling a 200 lb kid, particularly one who has totally wigged out. What I do find difficult to accept is that you won't do whatever is within your power if that means violence on your part, and yet you will allow violence, whilst condemning it, provided that violence is supplied by someone else: A cop, or somewhat worryingly your students. I'm sorry, but if that is what you appear to have just said, and any subsequent condemnation of the method by which the desired outcome is achieved, makes you look like a hypocrite twice over.

Fair enough in a normal school yard fight, kids are pretty good at stopping fights, or at the very least ensuring that the proper rules of engagement are adhered to, whilst they cheer the combatants on. And they can exact harsh justice when those rules are broken.

However, in the scenario that happened, and the one I posited, circumstances were anything but normal. The kid was reportedly beyond all rational control and a (presumably) innocent life was at risk. I suspect that if other kids tried to intervene in such circumstances they would be sent flying like ragdolls, or might possibly find themselves the object of the larger child's refocused rage.

And a 5' tall cop, probably weighing in at only a little more than half the kid's weight would also find themselves in trouble if they attempted a physical intervention unless they went in hard. Hard enough to cause likely serious physical injury, and possibly death.

Somewhere along the way something went terribly wrong, somebody screwed up royally, for reasons right or wrong, or maybe something just went spang inside the kid's head. Except for the postmortem, the why is unimportant, what mattered is what was going on then and there and stopping it in the quickest and safest way possible.

The use of a taser against a child is less than ideal, always regrettable at the very least and to be condemned in far too many circumstance. However, in this case, as it has been described, I'm damned if I can envision any intervention that wouldn't have carried an appreciably greater risk of physical harm to one or both kids.

And no I do not think you should get out of the game because you are incapable of pulling an out of control, overweight bully off another child. I'd be hard pressed to do so myself. I do however, question your commitment to your charges, when you see your only option is to allow an assault to continue until someone "qualified" to intervene can be fetched.

Sometimes we have to make the hardest judgment calls of all, something which you appear to be unwilling to do. WORST CASE SCENARIO, I believe you need to be willing to kill the attacker to save the life of his victim.

In the case like the one under discussion, where a "qualified intervener" was unavailable, I suspect an old fashioned yardstick applied in a very old fashioned manner with maximal force might have worked, or at least drawn the focus of his rage away from his victim. (Sometimes we have to take one for the team, even if it ultimately means our jobs.)


And actually you did strongly imply that you were perfect or close to it, by stating, essentially as a fact, that you would NEVER allow such a situation to develop and repeating the claim when I called bullshit. I do know what you meant, but it is NOT what you actually claimed. One other thing that can be strongly inferred from what you have said, is that to date you have been pretty damned lucky and have never been forced into a situation where there are no good options, just a choice between bad ones.

Like you, I too would do my damnedest to prevent bad things happening. Unlike you, (apparently) I HAVE been forced to make the choice to risk injury to a child in order to prevent almost certain greater harm. It wasn't a fight, but a 12 month old baby wandering into the path of a swing. I was briefly distracted and there she was. I threw myself on my face and slammed my palm into her chest, throwing her a good fifteen feet. Luckily she landed O.K., but I would still have been pleased if I'd broken bones, since when I picked her up, I discovered that the seat of the swing had taken a perfectly circular disk of skin off her cheek.

She would almost certainly have been dead if I hadn't acted, and yet I have been told in all seriousness, during my training as a child carer, that inaction and dealing with the aftermath is a legally far safer option for me than any intervention that might foreseeably cause injury that might be attributed to my actions. And to add insult to the unnecessary injury done the kid, having allowed them to come to harm, as a trained first-aider, I may now break as many ribs as necessary, keeping them alive until the ambulance turns up.

SCREW THAT!!! And screw the Stella class litigiousness that the leads to such thinking. My first and foremost duty is to my charges, as I believe is yours and any other carer's/pedagogue's. And if that means doing harm to prevent greater harm then so be it. I'll deal with the lawyers after I'm done saving a child's life.

And finally, I guess we can both make unfounded assumptions about the other. Since as a matter of fact, whilst I have not worked in a formal child care setting (except for work experience, where I was given glowing assessments) I provided it privately for some fifteen years or more prior to my training, and have continued to do so in the five years since.

is an increasingly serious problem in this country. Why isn't anyone discussing that?
Kids like these will likely spend most of their lives incarcerated.

He, like many here, are worried about what is happening to our kids. Where is all this anger coming from? What can we, as adults, do to help them? How are we going to figure this out? And, sadly, is it too late at this point?

I think the rise in population makes these stories common now. And the growth of media needing to fill time does it too by making it public. Were reporters in the 40's or 50's running down to the school to find out about the big dust-up in the lunchroom?

I'm just not so sure these things didn't happen 30, 40, 50 years ago too. You just didn't hear about it because like teen pregnancy, it wasn't reported. You could send a troubled boy away to a reform school just like you could send a pregnant girl away to "visit a sick aunt".

I think the advantage we have now is we need to respond to this and get involved in trying to fix the problems.

we just didn't hear about it as often.

As time progresses, one would expect a progressive society to care for their young. It's sad to us that kids are still going through this and very little is being done to understand why. That is where we get the "happening" part of our statement.

and habitat to human poaching and encroachment going crazy violent and even RAPING rhinos?

American families are breaking down and this is resulting in violence.

but I also think many kids today are wired differently from their parents and that a lot of it is dietary.

When I was in school, every year we seemed to have one or two of "those" kids- the ones who were constantly disruptive and a pain in the ass and usually turned into bullies before they dropped out. Now I substitute off and on and most classes have five or six unmanagable little buggers.

I've experimented with my own diet a lot recently and I've noticed that eating junk food has a profound and immediate effect on my moods. When I eat vegetables, I'm chilled out but if I stop for a few days and eat junk I get really aggressive and pessimistic- like the worst case of PMS imaginable.

I've seen what most kids are fed for lunch in schools and it's absolutely shameful and appalling. I know I ate complete rubbish 24/7 when I was growing up and I know it affected both my mood and my ability to concentrate. If anything surprises me it's that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often.

apparently the peace officers are having problems with their "lowest percentile" among them. and y'know, with modern technology we can probably make a safer mancatcher than any of these tazer/pepper/etc. spray things. just make the thing out of high impact plastic with nerf padding. i mean, wouldn't you consider it crazy if animal control ditched their pole leashes and tranquilizers for tazers and pepper spray? why do we find it different for the human animal?

edit: yeah, kid seems terribly maladjusted. but i still think mancatchers and tranq guns would be better peace officer materiel.

A dose sufficient to perform a near instant takedown, would also be pretty close to lethal. And then there is the problem of calibrating dose to the body mass of the target. Tranquilser guns aren't even in the running to the best of my knowledge, not unless there has been a recent breakthrough in anesthetics I haven't seen. Even in the controlled conditions of the operating theater problems happen too often for some people's comfort.

Man-catchers and taffy guns suffer from coming too late to the scene. Tasers were already in use before the issue of lethality was properly assessed. Late comers to the "minimally lethal" party get assessed to death, and even a conceivable (no matter how remote) chance of causing death is enough to kill a good idea. Man-catchers might choke the target if they become entangled around their neck, and taffy guns might cover nose and mouth to suffocate the target. So that was pretty much the end of those ideas for now. You can blame the US legal system for that. If it was foreseen and it happens people are automatically liable. Risks that emerge after use/deployment are handled differently IIRC.

First of all, as to DU posters who think the kid should have been tazered - what would you be saying if this kid had died? Just recently a 17 year old was killed by one of these things. (1.)

Secondly, don't be too quick to accept the media's version of what happened on anything. If you're a school official, or "resource officer" you are going to be inclined to embellish the story just to cover your ass. The news reports seem to be just repeating the official version as told to them by the police and school officials.

For example, they said the kid weighed 200 pounds. How do they know? Did they weigh him before they took him off? (I'd be willing to bet he doesn't way that much.) If he weighed anywhere near that, then what we're talking about is an obese 11 year old child, not Mike Tyson.

One of the news reports also said the kid was tazed once, and it had little effect. That is unlikely. Those things will normally drop an adult on the spot, and we're talking about a preadolescent child here.

My point here is that there are two sides every story, and we are just getting one.

Also, I agree with proud2bealib. Inspiring good behavior, and preventing bad behavior, is the way to manage schools. The United States has a very violent, warlike side to its culture. We are often quick to resort to force.

If you as school personnel, despite your best efforts, are put a situation like this one supposedly was, just do what they would have done when I was a kid before they had tasers: pull the kids apart and separate them.

Finally I think NOLADEM makes a good point. Tazers are being used by the police just to gain compliance, not only to protect themselves from violence. This way they "don't have to get their hands dirty." In many cities you're already a point where if you don't quickly, and mindlessly, follow the instructions of a police officer, you could get zapped. If you go on youtube.com and do a search for "tazer" you can even see examples of this.

I don't think tasers belong in schools. They're too easy to get happy with, and they can kill.

And they should only be used by police as a last resort, to protect themselves from attack, with an automatic investigation following.

1. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/31/national/main2139456.shtml

I would have said that it was a terrible shame, but that I was thankful his victim survived.

I would then do my damnedest to figure out what caused the kid to fly off the handle, and do my best to ensure such circumstances could, to whatever extent was practicable, not reoccur. If another's persons actions or inaction were a contributory factor, I would do my best to see them prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Even, or especially if they "have already been punished enough" through the death of their child.


One of the reasons I accept the media's version of events is the way they are bending over backwards not to sensationalise the events they are reporting, and also because there are a large number of witnesses and any cover up would quickly be exposed by inconsistencies in their stories, or more slowly by a curious lack of minor variations.

So what if instead of 200 lb plus he was actually 199? Does it really matter. He is a big kid. A very big kid. Roughly 2 1/2 times the weight of his victim. That much is clear from simple observation, and I'll accept the estimates of people who know/have seen the kid as being somewhere close to the mark.


That the taser had little effect is I believe possible with the grossly obese, because the fat overlying the muscle (which is what is affected by the charge) blunts a portion of the charge.


I agree too with P2BL on working towards prevention rather than cure. And I agree with your assessment of the United States. I could say more than a few choice words (most of them profane and non-productive) on that subject. However, when prevention fails, a cure must be rigorously applied and people must be ready and willing to do so. Anything less only causes more harm and misery down the track.


I also agree that use of tasers for compliance is bad. Taser should only be used when there is a perceptible immediate danger to human life.

The problem lies not in the tool, for which the death rate appears to be 1:1,500 - 1:2,000, a figure that is more than 100 times better when compared to that of police firearms, which is best measured as a percentage. And this when there are many documented instances of egregious misuse. Also many of those deaths are not caused directly by the taser, but because an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances. Circumstances which could well have happened whatever the takedown method used by police.

The is a claim reported in the CBS article that 9000 lives have been saved by taser use. I would presume that this means that in 9000 cases it was determined that without the taser police would have had no choice but to use a firearm with lethal intent.

The problem lies entirely in the inappropriate application of the tool, either through poor training, laziness or sadistic intent. These are issues that must be addressed. However, blaming the tool focuses attention away from these issues, and when exceptional occasions such as this one occur, where (by the reports available to us) the use of a taser appears to be justified, people act according to their emotions, and although they are unable to suggest a viable alternative to the taser's use, the insist that one must exist regardless.


Again, the tool is not the issue. It is the misuse of that too. Tasers belong in any and every situation where they can be use to minimise harm to both the police and to members of the public. And agreed, some sort of review process should follow every use of a taser, both to minimise misuse and also to see if corrective measures might be found to limit their use at a later date.

This is DU, after all.