Sunday, November 25, 2007

Tasers and training

The current rage of the Lefty Libs is to cry about the use of Tasers by Police officers. The technology of patrol car cam and freedom of information laws makes the case for increased training of police officers in the use of force and what type of force for different situations.

From the few examples being shown on the internet, there seems to be a great reluctance to touch a subject being arrested and/or a great reluctance to getting uniforms messed up in the process.

I was a police officer in the 70's. We did not have fancy toys or bullet proof vests. What we did have were slap saps, short billy clubs and kubatons (a keychain billy-club). We learned there was a difference between inflicting pain and incapacitating a person when using these tools.

With a lot of practice we became quite efficient at taking all kinds of people into custody with minimal effort. If you were not good at learning the skill set you got your ass beat. Then you had to work harder to take that person into custody.

You also have police officers that are on power trips. They intentionally say or do things to incite a violent reaction of a citizen contact. This type of officer thinks they have the right to do this just so they can administer street justice and prove they are in control.

I am also happy to say these officers are in a very small minority.

1 comment:

David 2 said...

They may be in the minority, but unfortunately they are the ones that also get the media's attention.

You can condemn the media all you wish, but when the only thing you see is nothing but abusive cops who flaunt their authority around like Cartman on "South Park", it doesn't look good for ALL police officers.

What's worse is when that officer's abuses are so prolific that he actually has a support staff that goes around cleaning up his messes. That was the case with one police officer in Chicago, who blatantly and mercilessly pummeled a small female bartender simply for cutting him off. Not only was his abuse caught on surveillance camera, but less than an hour later, while the bartender was still nursing her wounds, his "clean-up crew" showed up and tried to offer her money to stay silent... and THAT was also caught on camera!

It's hard to say that those kinds of cops are in the minority with that kind of corruption being shown on the nightly news.