Tasing a ten year old... Wow!

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obviously I dont know what voltage was put through my body when I was tasered, but it didnt hurt nearly as much as when I put my hand on an unprotected light switch which my brother said wasnt connected, that was 240volts, people told me I was lucky to be alive, but the taser didnt feel a thing like that, of course it hurts, but to be blunt, the humiliation was worse.

 

Shoshino, I will agree with you on this -- children need discipline -- sometimes severe discipline. Without it society starts to go down the crapper.

But a taser on a 10 year old is like using a bazooka to kill roaches.* It's beyond excessive.

 

Here again: It's not the voltage that makes you go ouch, it's the amperes derived from the power output of the thing you're connected to. Of course the Ohms Law applies as well, but given enough power to begin with it's no big deal to drive serious amperes through the electrical resistance of a human body. Even the absolute best case - dry, squeaky clean skin with no skin damage - is only in the range of some hundreds of kilo-ohms through skin. It doesn't really get much higher if measured through the whole body as the blood veins have very little resistance.

Here in Europe, normal household outlets are behind a 240 V 16 A fuse, meaning you're up against three and a half kilowatts if you manage to cross the lines with your own body. And yes, that hurts in rather.. delicious amounts. Been there, done that. Now, were you to try that with wet hands - or even worse, right after eating salty french fries - you'd reduce your own resistance to the point of frying the fuse. It's anyone's guess what happens to YOU at that point, but somewhere between an ambulance ride or a morgue ride would be a good start.

A taser (or tesla coil) delivers lots and lots of volts so your own body resistance matters very little - the only thing really limiting the current driven into you is the POWER output of the device. Which, incidentally, is kept rather low to avoid deaths...

 

yet everyone goes on about "a taser delivers 10000 volts of current through your body!!!!! yadda yadda crap crap, must be awful lethal kill kill people die evil evil"

 

well... because...there *have* been deaths because of tasing? There have been *many* deaths because of tasing?

 

I don't think people are opposing the use of taser because it may be lethal. Its because its used against a 10 year old. I readily admit that a taser may be a necessity in the police force, but unless the 10 year old is waving a dangerous weapon around (say, a gun or knife) or in serious danger of seriously hurting herself or other people the use of the taser was overly excessive in this particular situation.

 

he did try to restrain her, she kicked him in the balls - a red area.

I believe that this taser had multpile settings because it was described as "a very brief drive stun to her back."

Triactus Ill repost this:

from wiki, Ive heared of people being hurt after the use of a taser, from for example hitting their head on concrete, there has never been any real evidence that a single taser blast has caused death or injury, yes there are arseholes who shock people 5 or six times, and for that they should be accountable for their actions.

 

It can only takes 6mA to stop the heart apparently.

Brief only refers to the time it was held to her, says nothing about the power levels.

We also only have the officers view, who was kicked, as described, in a red area, and the mother who advocated the tasering. The officer broke protocol of attaching the camera to the taser, which should have been done before any action was taken. Without following the rules set out for him to use the device - there can be no direct confirmation of it's proper use or misuse as the case may be.

Against someone so young proper protocol really HAS to be followed, taser or not. Surely the police are given similar restraint training as bouncers and the like? I find it difficult that officers of the law are given tasers, guns, batons, whatever - yet not trained in basic unarmed, 'harmless' methods of restraining an assailant. If nothing else than for their own safety.

 

I cant comment on American training, but here there are various cources for door security which have to be passed, and before you can get your own licence you have to be refered by a licence holder who will have to state that you have worked under their supervision for a peroid I forget how long that period is.

The police here have rigorous training and then spend 2 years on the job training with an experienced officer.

A hit to the groin can send a person into shock which can kill, that is why it is a red area, I wear a cricket box on the door for my own protection, but let me get one thing straight, I may be there to protect customers and business property but I come first, doesnt matter if its a 10 yearold (yes we have had a group of kids try to get in once), kicking me there, or a 40 yearold kicking me there I will drive your head into the floor.

 

I can't speak to your country, Peeps, but here in Canada our officers do have a fair amount of training in unarmed techniques -- I know that for a fact as I used to know an RCMP officer, and he showed me several of the techniques they use -- let me tell you, those techniques would certainly work on me!

That doesn't change the fact that tasing a 10 year old is ridiculous, though.

 

8, the number I've heard is 8 mA, but I don't know that it makes much difference. Tasers generally run around 2mA for exactly that reason.

 

Your talking of wiki, and I'm not sure what page you were refering to, so I went ahead and checked it out in wikipedia :

I found this in another wikipedia page :

 

Its on that same page you linked to

under safety concerns, you will also see that page covers the use on children.

but I agree, the taser is a terrible thing, lets start shooting them instead, thin out the population and remove agressive and violent children from growing up to have kids.

 

In non-child cases, I think that the taser is proved as much less dangerous than a gun. But you all know that in my world view, when a responsible adult starts assaulting a cop or brandishing any sort of weapon, I think they should skip the taser and go right to guns -- too many people think it's their right to be arseholes. They need to be eliminated.

 

If your talking about the William Bozeman study, yes it is there. But with other studies contradicting it, don't you think the taser warrants suspicion and further study?

And about the rest of your post, why is the world so black and white with you? As if the choice is between guns and taser... But if a suspect draws a gun to police officers or charges them with a knife and they shoot him, than that's not barbaric, they are defending themselves.

And what does using a lethal weapon on a 10 year old unarmed girl, or anything we have talked about for that matter, has to do with ''thinning out the population'' and ''agressive and violent children from growing up to have kids''? Your sarcasm doesn't help your arguments...

 

I dont have this value for human life that most people do

violent and agressive behaviour can be genetically inherited, cull the mother before the child is born, progressive eugenics.

 

Thank you for confirming any prejudice I might ever have had about bouncers in this thread Shoshino.

 

I don't think there's much reason to continue this thread. Every person with a sane viewpoint pretty much agrees that this was a bad thing.

 

Now that is so wrong I wouldn't even know where to start.

Let's say someone would start culling (what a nice way to put it by the way) then who would judge who deserves to live? Wouldn't the ones doing the culling end up being categorized as violent and would therefore have to be put down? And what if you were among the ones being culled, how would that make you feel?

It's all too easy to advocate eugenics to propound genocide. Lines have to be drawn somewhere.

I don't know if you're only posing as a sociopath or if indeed you lack empathy but that post of yours convinces me that it's better to avoid the Alley.

 

Aik, your post is exactly why this discussion should be continued, Shoshino's post not withstanding. I don't agree that this was an inherrantly wrong thing to do. From all the statistics I've seen, the odds that the Taser would have killed the girl are about on par with the odds that the police officer wrestling her to the ground would kill her, or that she'd die of a secondary infection while her broken arm was being set in the hospital.

Let's face it, nothing is 100% safe. Aditionally, no way to subdue a violent person, even a child, is 100% kind. Even the transition-shock of a tranquilizer dart can be traumatizing, especially to the already-unhinged. There needs to be a certain set level that is determined to be appropriate, and it needs to be plainly written. I can understand that different obvious medical conditions (such as youth, thankfully that one usually isn't fatal ) may change that, but I don't think youth has anything to do with risks of an electrical shock. If anything, I'd guess the 10-yer-old would be less likely to suffer an inadvertant reaction than, say, a 35-year-old on cocain.

As for the idea that a Taser is inhuman, I don't buy it for a second. I've never been tased, but I have been shocked, and, while quite unplessant, it was hardly "inhumane" or "dehumanizing". Plus, it's certainly more humane than masive bodily trauma, even to non-critical systems (read, a broken arm, being shot in the leg, etc).