Good Lord. Woman Handing Out Samples at Va. Costco Shot Dead by Police After Acting Strangely

[Sheldon Cooper]

72. I think it is poor training, and a few other things.

I think cops just taze people now as their first resort, instead of the old days when they'd wrestle them to the ground and cuff them. Or, as someone upthread mentioned, throw a blanket over them to subdue them. They dont' want to risk personal injury, or perhaps the perp grabbing the cop's weapon, so immediately the taser comes out. I don't want to see cops injured either, but tasers are problemmatic.

For starters, a taser has to make good contact with the perp in order to be effective. Second, like you, many people are hearing impaired, and some are of lower intelligence, and aren't capable of hearing or understanding commands. They stand there, looking bewildered, and because they didn't obey the cop that very instant, they're tasered. Next, once the perp is on the ground, their body is feeling the effects of the taser, and they are thrashing or unable to physically respond to a command such as 'put your hands above your head'. Their muscles simply won't cooperate. The cop views this as disobedience and taser them again and again. When they can't respond immediately, they just shoot them.

If they see anything in your hand, anything at all, they assume it's a weapon and start blasting away without even trying to discern what the object is.

Then they write up their report to indicate that the perp had an unknown object in their hand, did not respond to commands, could not be subdued, so we shot them. It's so damned stupid. If they had more common sense training and less of a paramilitary mindset, they could at least try to stop all these unnecessary murders.