Dog Walker Tased by Park Ranger

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You have to realize you live on an island. you are more protected. We have borders with Drug Smuggling criminals coming across and hiding out in remote places. Forests are one of these places they hide. So yes, we probably should have armed Rangers.

 

you think that true? it is easy to smuggle into the UK and likewise we have lots of moors, fen, farm and national land which is used for organised crime.. strangely enough though, parkies dont deal with it, the police do.

 

"Ranger" is a generic term used by the park service to basically cover all employees -- from the person who greets you at the entrance of the park, to the guide describing the 'wonder' you happen to be looking at, to cavers, to the trained fire fighters, to the trained law enforcement officers (hint: these last ones are the ones with weapons).

National parks are used by a wide variety of people, including poachers (who obviously are armed) and drug dealers growing stuff for future sale. Park rangers (law enforcement kind) deal with these people and have a definite need for weaponry.

 

Well, based on what Ive read above, they should find a new recruitment method for these armed people, an intelligence level above sub-normal and fcuking useless would be more appropreate.

I would also like to point out that unarmed police in the UK deal with armed poachers and drug dealers, yet its quite rare to have a firearms incident requiring armed police.

 

So it's okay to ignore instructions from authority and not expect consequences so long as you think the thing you're doing isn't serious enough to be an issue in your opinion?

I'm not sure I like that idea. It's not good for people to decide how serious or minor their own issues are while doing them and ignore authority on it.

I mean how many dogs have bitten people? It's reasonable to want to stop the man and it's unreasonable than he ignores you.

The taser was overkill but I can't run to the man's defense on this.

 

I would like to see a video of the guy getting tased ... it might be good for a laugh.

But joking aside, I do agree Shoshino that it was probably overkill. But we really won't know and only have second hand accounts.

 

I read that the park has long been used for dog walking, and was popular locally for off leash walking. Point is, the Park Aervice was the new owner, and with that, off leash walking became prohibited. In particular, there were no signs prohibiting off leash walking in the area. The dog walker basically learned first from the park ranger - and must have felt harassed.

I remember one evening when I was going out with friends. I was late and they already were in the club. I got here, and what I saw was two cues, one going into a backyard, and another to the club. At the cue to the backyard some security guys were louting around. Security of that club wears some sort of uniform dress. They didn't. So it's a different club I thought. I was listening to my mp3s and cued myself in at the 'right cue'. Next thing that happens is that some guy grabs me by the shoulder, yelling at me. Feeling harassed, iirc first thing I say to him is "WTF is your problem a**hole?". I am not normally like that.

We didn't communicate well after that start. After a lot of 'You looking at me, at me ...?' I eventually learned, not from the goon, who was livid and kept feeling challenged, but from his more adult supervision, that it was in fact one cue, and that he was outsourced security to the security of the club. There was no sign for where to cue. How should I have known? Should I have explored the backyard first? I did get an apology in the end and I did get into the club to meet my friends. But after that episode, I don't go there any more.

The point I'm making is that most trouble starts off with dysfunctional communication like that. Cops must know that and exercise self restraint, or so the theory goes. She should have warned the man and left it at that when he leashed his dog.

 

As I said, I don't think either person was acting properly. However, I have to ask again - does anyone know if law enforcement officials in the US can detain you without telling you what you are being detained for?


Also - when the point was made about dogs being dangerous, I couldn't help but think of this here. Unfortunately, the article only mentioned they were small dogs, not their breed .

 

That's what I was trying to say as well. I'm not saying everyone should submit to authority at all times, but generally speaking, it's not a good idea to cop an attitude with a cop. If the guy didn't just blow the ranger off, chances are none of this would have happened.

While it's clear the guy didn't expect the ranger to act as she did, clearly he should have anticipated some type of reaction if he just blows her off. All I'm saying is a little politeness out of the guy and he probably would have been on his way in a couple of minutes.

 

I tried not to go there . So now these are weapons of terror? DAMN YOU, TERRORISTS! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL! IS THERE NOTHING YOU WON'T STOOP TO?

Perhaps... perhaps it's true. With great sadness, I must present to you other enemies of freedom, justice and the Our-arian way:



Edit: do they have kennels in Gitmo?

 

The problems here are imo that the cop overreacted very seriously, probably for having been 'disrespected'. She could have, if things had taken an unlucky course, just killed the man over that - for walking his dog off leash, and for being uncooperative by giving a false name.

What is beyond me what she asked the man his name for. Since the Park Service was the new owner, and there were no signs about dog leashing informing walkers, it would have been her job to inform him about the new rule - not to fine him or whatever. That, too, has overreaction written large all over it.

Another aspect that I find peculiar is philosophical. That would be the shrugging off of this as 'his own damn fault' for not listening to a law enforcement officer, however nutty. I think it is worthwhile to remember, in particular in the age of 'national security', 'threats' and 'law enforcement', that cops are civil servants, and that they must not have an adversarial relationship to a population proper, that has to be prevented from constituting 'threats' like unleashed dogs, and to 'enforce' laws, like the National Park Service ordinance that dogs be leashed, with the use of force. It's the same madness that has manifested itself in nonsense like 'zero tolerance policies', that treat any transgression, however minor, with the full force of the law.

Under that premise, walking the 'dog off leash', 'disrespecting' a federal law enforcement official, giving, probably out of mere annoyance, a false name - are all 'breaking the law' (apparently there is no qualitative difference between dog leashing ordinances and the criminal code proper). There is no differentiation whether there was any harm from 'breaking the law'. The law breaking itself suffices to trigger the response. Every transgression is treated equally severe, is considered tantamount to the worst case. Not leashing the dog draws as the same severe response as, dunno, assaulting the officer? And the best the officer can say is that she showed restraint by not shooting him or beating him up by using her taser? Moronic.

I see that as a troubling general development in the US. IMO, America is pissing her vaunted liberty away if she tolerates this for much longer. After all, you already have unlimited military detention without recourse for everybody that the government asserts is a terrorist, secret evidence admissible in court and other fun developments like that.

 

Ragusa, IMO police officers in the US have actually gotten better. This example is a good one because it's really an exception rather than the norm. Millions of police officers deal with rudeness and threats with total professionalism and only occasionally do we see one use extreme force (occasionally is relative here -- with millions of encounters every day we only hear about these things every month or so).

I say they have gotten better because when I was a kid you could expect to get beaten by a cop for doing exactly what this guy did. And I really mean beaten, probably with a nightstick. It was so common that such an act by the police wouldn't have even made the news -- except to say something like "the perpetrator was injured while resisting arrest."

To be honest we, as a country, have a rather violent background when it comes to police. That is changing and for the better. As clarification though, not all police were violent, just that some violence was acceptable.

Perhaps it's just an age difference here but where you look at a few incidents over the last ten or so years and draw one conclusion, I look at a fairly broad spectrum of actions and see something else. I don't argue against the specific issues you bring up but I think you are allowing yourself to be distracted by those issues when considering the liberties of Americans. I think we have greater liberties than we ever have but we need to still improve (as does everyone and every nation).

 

I'm with dmc on this one. While necessarily speculative, I'm assuming that this guy was told about not walking his dogs off leash before - quite possibly by this particular ranger. As such, I think she was going to give him a citation because she knew damn well that this guy was walking his dogs off leash when he had already received a previous warning. At that point, giving a false name certainly is problem, and he was being uncooperative by not doing so. No, the guy didn't deserve to get tased in the back for it. (I wonder if he yelled "Don't tase me sis!")

I guess a subsequent question would arise if you got pulled over by a police officer for say, speeding. If you refuse/cannot give your ID to the police officer (say you just ran out for a second and you left your wallet at the house), what is a police officer supposed to do?

 

Aldeth,
why? Based on what do you assume he was told not to walk his dog unleashed before? There is nothing in the reporting that indicates this, and the park Service didn't say anything about it either. Your takes are as speculative as they are implausible.

If that had happened, it would somewhat justify the officer's conduct - as a result it can be expected to have been brought up by the Park Service do deflect the bad press they got over the incident. They did not say anything like that.

 

I base it on a priori knowledge that police/rangers/etc. do not tase people for no reason whatsoever. I've never be tased, nor do I know anyone who has been tased in the back by a police officer for just walking down the street, minding one's own business. So I made a few assumptions, admitted they were speculative, but I don't view them as implausible - at least no more so than your statement that he was tased for no reason at all.

Look at dmc's statements above - it sums up my take on it as well:

 

No, I didn't say that he was tasered for no reason at all. It's just that the reason may easily be a bad one. Point is, it is at least equally likely that the cop had some reason (If so: What reason: Risk of flight? After that 'crime' (not even a misdemeanour)? After having leashed his dog?) to taser him than that she didn't, and merely tasered him because she had to re-assert his authority after the man turned his back and dared to walk away.

PS: And as for giving a false name - in the heat of the moment, people may just do stuff like that for no reason more nefarious than that they are being annoyed and make a stupid choice in hope that the source of their annoyance goes away that way. It is certainly not an admission of guilt for anything.

In what respect does that justify anything that the cop did, and then there is how that would make use of a taser proportional? Point is, it very likely doesn't. /PS

What it boils down to is giving the benefit of the doubt to the police. While inclined to do so in principle, I don't see much reason for that here. It is simply an arbitrary choice that you made.

 

OK, but that wasn't clear in your previous response. You just said that my interpretation was implausible, and I was just pointing out that it wasn't any more implausible than your interpretation. Now if you want to say that the use of the taser was poor/unjustified/improper, I've long since conceded that point. I was merely pointing out that there may well be more to the story than "tasered for not leashing dogs".

Any one item or a combination of the above. We are not given enough information from the sources to conclude specifically.

Agreed. But that doesn't make it OK.... or um... legal.

It doesn't, and it isn't proportional - but I already agreed to that point.

 

And now something from the other end of the spectrum:

Woman Given Dog-Leash Warning Allegedly Drives Car Into Park Worker

People are crazy.