“You’re a FUCKING COWARD!” - Man Tells Off Cop Like You’ve Never Seen

So much for “peaceful streets project”. There’s no need to scream and curse and call people names. This is not how you protect yourself from police misconduct. It’s a bad example to give to people, though I admit it’s a little funny.

But even if I agree with what the guy was yelling about, he put himself in danger and gave too much information to police. He had no business opening his mouth. You can’t convince a cop that he’s working for a criminal enterprise while he has you detained. Giving him that information at that time is fruitless. And he’s only using it to mount an attack against you. Every word out of your mouth is a potential bullet that he can take and turn it back against you.

If those police officers arrested him, or cited him for anything, he would have a hard time finding sympathetic jurors when he’s screaming like a lunatic.

This kind of behavior is counter productive to the police accountability movement.

As activists warned when cops were first authorized to carry tasers, police aren’t restricting their use to situations in which their own lives are at risk. They are using them sadistically, punitively and unconstitutionally when civilians fail to obediently comply with their orders. The most recent case involves a recent brutal attack on a 44 year old non-English speaking woman who tried to buy more than two iPhones at the Apple store in Nashua, New Hampshire. Owing to her limited English, she had no idea what store employees or the police wanted her to do. You would think two big burly cops could think of a less painful and dangerous way to subdue her.

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In a case last year in Austin, cops repeatedly tased a man who was having a seizure, even after he was lying on the ground handcuffed. It caused him to suffer a heart attack that left him with brain damage.

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Then there’s this woman in Studio City who suffered cardiac arrest after police repeatedly tased her for refusing to allow traffic cops to search her purse. As cardiac surgeon Dr Kathy Magliato, president of the California chapter of the American Heart Association, reveals this isn’t the first taser-induced cardiac arrest. As most result in death (yes, tasers kill people just like guns do), the victim is extremely lucky to be alive.

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What’s wrong with this picture? All this suddenly makes me realize that the 99% are nothing but a bunch of lab rats to the ruling elite. They apply their psychological contingencies to get us all revved up to consume. When we fail to do so exactly the way they prescribe, they punish us with electric shocks.

After reading about the Chinese woman, I wouldn’t be caught dead (excuse the pun) anywhere near an Apple store. I’m not Pavlov’s dog and I refuse to be conditioned to run out and buy every new electronic gadget Apple comes out with.

Tazered for not Giving Their License Fast Enough

Police Departments Uphold Use of Tasers in Traffic Stops
Police in Utah and Texas do not significantly punish police officers who use tasers on motorists accused of nothing more than speeding.

Police officials in Utah and Texas have cleared of wrong-doing officers caught on video using tasers against motorists accused of nothing more than speeding. Last month Jared Massey, 28, obtained and posted a YouTube video that showed him being tasered twice in the back by Utah Highway Patrol Trooper John Gardner while asking questions about why he was stopped (view video). In a press conference Friday, Utah Highway Patrol Superintendent Lance Davenport announced the result of its official inquiry into the incident.

“We have found Trooper Gardner’s actions were lawful and reasonable under the circumstances that he found himself in,” Davenport said.

Davenport did not believe the trooper violated a Utah law that requires a policeman to “inform the person being arrested of his intention, cause and authority to arrest him” (Utah Code 77-7-6). Gardner was placed on paid leave after a number of threatening, anonymous comments were left about him on various websites. Police in Saint Louis, Missouri took no action after similar threatening comments against a motorist were left on an unofficial police website used by Saint Louis area officers.

A second traffic stop tasering video recently surfaced in Austin, Texas. It showed a November 23, 2006 incident where Corporal Thomas O’Connor both stopped and tasered a driver within less than a minute. In May, Acting Police Chief Cathy Ellison imposed a three-day suspension on O’Connor for his conduct during the stop of motorist Eugene Snelling, 32, who had been driving his mother to a Thanksgiving meal that afternoon.

O’Connor claims he had paced Snelling, who was driving behind O’Connor, at 70 MPH in a 65 MPH zone and decided to pull him over because he had placed his rear license plate in the back window of his vehicle. Fifteen seconds into the stop, the following exchange occurred.

O’Connor: Let me see your drivers license and insurance.
Snelling: Whoa, whoa, whoa, let me get it.
O’Connor: No! Not, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa.’ Drivers license and insurance or get out of the vehicle.

O’Connor then ordered Snelling to “step out of the vehicle” while the trooper pointed a taser at the motorist. Seconds later, he fired while Snelling’s mother, in the passenger seat, watched, horrified. In a copy of an internal affairs interview redacted by police, O’Connor admitted to medical problems that suggest mental instability. (View interview, 470k PDF)

“Maybe I did come across as abrupt,” O’Connor said. “It’s 1:10 in the afternoon and I have [redacted] so I hadn’t eaten. And that is a problem when you get [redacted] is you’re, it makes you kind of edgy.”

Despite the light sanction he received, O’Connor wrote a memo to Chief Ellison that stated, “I must respectfully disagree with your decision that I violated ‘Use of Force’ policy.” O’Connor remains on active police duty.

Scott Sheeley filed a federal complaint last week in Austin, TX, requesting a jury trial against two police officer who shocked him with a Taser. In May, Sheeley unsuccessfully asked for a settlement of at least $1.5 million to cover the costs of medical fees, attorneys and emotional damages.

The case involves a police response to a 911 phone call last November. Police responded to a request for medical assistance for Sheeley, who was suffering a seizure at his home in Austin. When officers Chard Norman and Kevin Sederquest arrived at the man’s house, they allegedly used violence to restrict him from movement, constrained his ability to breathe and repeatedly shocked him with a Taser gun.

The officers controlled the man by “pushing a knee on his back while he was in handcuffs, causing his head to be pressed against the back cushion of the chair, all while he was still convulsing,” the brother of the victim, Dustin Sheeley wrote in a complaint against the state.

Police continued to Taser the man, even after the brother told them not to, and even after the convulsing man was handcuffed. The 50-year-old was left with wounds on his shoulder, back and under his left armpit.

When paramedics arrived, Sheeley was injected with Haldol and Ativan – drugs which are used to control psychotic disorders and anxiety and which can also cause seizures and sudden death, the plaintiff said. The victim then had a heart attack.

“As a result of being improperly restrained, in particular after concurrently having received Ativan and Haldol, the plaintiff suffered respiratory arrest and ceased breathing… As a result of the respiratory arrest, plaintiff suffered cardiac arrest,” reads the formal complaint against the officers.

It took paramedics 11 minutes to revive the man and bring back his pulse.

Sheeley says he suffers and continues to suffer from respiratory arrest, cardiac arrest, loss of heartbeat, loss of oxygen, Taser wounds to the torso, abrasions to knees and elbows, brain injury, loss of vision, headaches, broken ribs, physical pain, continued seizure and severe emotional anguish.

The man claims the police violated his Constitutional rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

“Mr. Sheely’s injuries were severe and impact him daily,” defense attorney Leslie Lienemann wrote in the complaint. “He is still receiving medical care for a number of medical symptoms and will continue to do so.”