Tasing a ten year old... Wow!

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Whether or not we were there it is truly sad (and pathetic) that a mother is willing to have her child tased. I'm not sure if the woman was clueless or desperate -- I thought the father was the primary custodian, which is probably best for the safety of the child.

 

T2, you're still making a lot of assumptions. A severely disturbed child (and this one did kind of sound like it, most kids don't kick a cop in the nads) could definitely warrant a call to the police, and even force to take the child in (be that physical or electrical is the issue).

 

From what I see, a disturbance was reported and the police responded, the officer was assulted and the suspect was arrested with minimal force and no injuries.

 

I'm not sure anything even needs to be assumed really. Tasing an unarmed child is in my opinion cathegorically wrong. Restraining an unruly child with force can be done quite efficiently with minimal risk of harming the child by anyone who has any training in it, a police officer certainly should have more than enough training in restraining to be able to do so. Tasing the child was unnecessary and irresponsible. Hopefully the cop is fired or atleast suspended without pay for a while and the mother loses all her custody rights.

 

you talk about assumptions yet everyone keeps talking like she's a little toddler, she's 10 - and I still dont understand why people think its ok to taser an adult but not a teenager, 10 yearolds are fitter and healthier then 40 yearolds who have been smoking, drinking alcohol and eating unhealthily for over 20 years, probably developing cancer, heart problems and god knows how many other health conditions.

 

A ten-year old is by definition not even a teenager. I'm not sure about your expiriences with ten-year olds but to me any adult with any training should find very little difficulties in restraining one. Their physique is far from fully developed and they are certainly weaker than any but the sickliest and most elderly of adults. A police officer should not fit that cathegory under any circumstances and should have next to no difficulties in restraining one physically without the need to resort to tasing.

You're right however on the first point that tasing should be the last resort even on adults, I do find it a bit disturbing how prone American cops seem to be in the use of the taser. In Finland tasers are typically used as the final resort before shooting.

 

Talk about unnecessary force. That is shocking (no pun intended).

 

In the UK tasers are only deployed by firearms officers, but there is a small handheld taser (which you have to physically jab the target with) which is now becoming available with special training.

Ive often said that US police are poor considering they police a country like the US, very quick on their guns instead of their brains, same with the taser, ive seen alot of footage where officers taser people repeatedly.

I have a different experience with 10 yearolds, they are getting bigger and bigger, hell, when I was 10 I was twice the size of my mother, proof of age in the UK now requires that if a person doesnt look over 25 they should be asked to prove their age, for products you can buy when your 16, because today they look older and develope earlier, there's a girl down my street, fully developed (if you get what I mean), I think she's 11, just started secondary school, if she told me she was 17, I would be able to tell the difference.

 

You are making quite a few assumptions yourself. The father said his daughter had emotional problems. Maybe it was a code word, but it wasn't necessarily. How many kids who've seen their parents divorce don't have some "emotional problems"? If it isn't OK to assume from her age that the kid would have been small and weak enough to detain with minimal force, then it definitely isn't OK to assume a mental illness or defect like autism from her father's innocuous statement.

 

For those who continue to use the term non-lethal about tasers, I'd like to point to T2's post a while back :

And I agree with most people here, it's NOT acceptable to tase a 10 year old girl. Unless tests can prove me wrong, their bodies are not as resilient as an adult body.

To me, the force a police officer can use is the same used by the suspect. Meaning if the suspect has a gun, the officer can draw his. To me, the use of tasers is for situation where the suspect has a close range leathal weapon (other than Mel Gibson) , like a knife. Even then, I'm not convinced that the taser is the safe tool it's advertised to be.

To me, there is *no* way a 10 year old girl can overpower a police officer. In which case she does attack him, then the proper response is to hold her on the ground. And I highly doubt a broken arm would result...

@Shoshino : It's funny you keep saying that we don't know what happened, but you say the journalist, who interviewed the parties involved, chose to not include facts that would paint the officer in a better light. Isn't that making assumptions?

 

I understand that we weren't there. Fair enough point. However, I cannot postulate any realistic situation wherein tasing a 10 year old would be a viable option.

The problem here is what I've ben ranting about for years, though. Kids today are brought up in consequence free environments. They do and say whatever they <deleted> they please, and anytime they receive any form of discipline, some bleeding heart (that's my phrase for this season) starts whining about abuse. So this kid obviously was used to never being disciplined in any way shape or form (I know this is an assumption, but I've met a lot of really rotten kids) and nothing was working. The mother, obviously frustrated, decided to pull a 180 degree reversal and go from her pattern of 0 discipline to a totally inappropriate form. The cop must also have been frustrated, and possibly a bit of a Stormtrooper Fascist type, so he chose to go along with the inappropriate discipline.

IMHO, that frustration is not sufficient reason for what they did, though. They should be held accountable.

I find it interesting, though, that the girl "became compliant" after being tased. If more appropriate forms of discipline had been used on her earlier in her life, this never would have happened. But the "feel-good, be a friend to your kids and never teach them anything but let them figure it out on their own" crowd is happy and that's what matters to these sorts. Hopefully, the girl has also learned a lesson. But it is more likely that she'll use this for the rest of her life as an excuse to be a defiant, anti-social little brat. A miserabel situation all around.

Last thing -- no way that regular cuffs can hold a small kid -- they're not designed that way, a kid can slip them easily.

 

They have velcro cuffs for children who need restraining.

 

Who would have thought the 40,000 volts designed to make a person in a destructive rage brought on by pcp "compliant" would do the same for a child? This an entirely new customer base for the taser -- put one in every home!

"Parents are you having problems getting your children to eat the right foods for dinner? Not able to pry the little one's away from the TV? Are you getting tired of the constant fighting at bedtime? Well, say good-bye to those little devils and turn your children into angels with the Taser International Home Edition! Meals become a breeze!"

Child: "What? Liver and brussel sprouts?"
Parent, holding the New Home Edition Tazer, in plain sight of the child: "PFZZT! PFZZT!"
Child quickly eats everything on the plate in front of smiling parent.

Child: "I DON'T WANNA TO GO TO BED! I DON'T WANNA..."
"PFZZAAPT"
Scene shows child in bed with only minor convulsions.

"Parenting is tough. Let's make parenting easier together!"​

I still say it's truly sad a parent would encourage a police office to tase their child. Such a person (either the parent or police officer) has no business being around children.

 

Ha! That was sweet, T2 -- reminds me of the "commercials" they had in Robocop.

Some days I dream of using such force, when I am stressed to the gills with the little darlings, but that's why God created time outs and 2 parent families -- so one parent can pick up the slack while the other one takes 5 minutes to calm down. So I've never done that.

 

I find it incomprehensible that a police officer, who is trained to physically restrain and subdue full grown adult men, would be unable to handle a 10 year old girl. Heck, even if she was full grown at 10, a police officer should be significantly stronger than an adult woman. If he is not or cannot, he should not be a police officer.

 

what ever happened to the phrase: "everyone is equal in the eyes of the law"?

 

It's still there and still being misunderstood to mean that the law treats everyone equally no matter what; that a police office can use the same level of force against a ninety year old or a ten year old as he or she would go after a 300 body builder in his mid-twenties -- such an assertation is ridiculous. In reality, the phrase simply means that all people will be tried without prejudice (which can be a stretch at times).

To convolute this to meaning a police officer has the right (even an obligation) to use potentially deadly force against a child is quite a stretch. The police officer was wrong. Period. He should be tried equally and receive equal punishment as anyone else assaulting a child.

 

as far as the law is concerned it to deal with a suspect regardless of any other factors, to bring effective order to a situation with minimum force.

done, effectively.

if this article was "officer beats 10 yearold with his baton" I would have a problem with it.

 

The key words there were "with minimum force." He failed at that.

It was an effective means to control the situation, but also excessive. I hope the mother loses visitation rights and the police officer does jail time -- but I'd be happy with supervised visitation and a simple termination.

 

@Shoshino : Yes, and I would agree with you on that one. However, the choice is not between a baton and a taser. There is a rainbow of different choices for any given situation. The world is not black or white.

I don't believe that an unarmed ten year old girl (even fully developped) would force a police officer into using lethal force. While I wouldn't want to hear about a police officer harming a 10 year old, if the article had said ''Police officer accidently breaks an emotional 10 year old arm while trying to restrain her'', it would have been 10 times better than either the taser or the baton.

(and that is even considering the police officer couldn't have been gentle enough while restraining her, either by accident or by lack of proper training with smaller bodies)