Well, the Iraq is F**ked Part II post is damn hard, but between making turkey chili and making room in the garage for another motorcycle (you know they breed when left alone, right?) I’ve been dinking away at it.
In an effort to work my way through writers block, I think I’d jump onto a couple of newsworthy stories and see if I can piss a few people off in anticipation of my pissing them off about Iraq.
The police have been kinda in the news for two use-of-force stories this week; at UCLA, the PD shocked a noncompliant student while being videotaped, and in Atlanta, a 92-year old woman was shot to death by police after she opened fire on officers breaking her door down in serving a “no knock” warrant.
I’m going to grade these as 1 for the police and 1 against.In the case of the UCLA event, it’s simple – the guy was obligated to show his ID proving he was a student – a policy that’s in place to keep coeds from being raped and students from being mugged in libraries that are open late at night. He had the ID, but decided he didn’t want to show it.
Library staff asked him to show it or leave, he refused, the campus police were called, they apparently asked him to show it or leave, and then – something happened – the cell video that’s widely circulated begins with him screaming “Don’t touch me!!” and the officer saying “stand up!”
So we’ll assume that either the officer put a hand on him to begin to move him along – which I’ll presume happened after he was asked to show ID or leave and refused – and he hit the deck and began to passively resist.
The officers used a TASER on ‘drive stun’ – basically a shock rod that hurts, but is not disabling to try and get him to comply, and a scene broke out.
I’ll note that the officers are widely accused of threatening to tase students standing by who asked for ID information, but the video doesn’t show it. I’ll wager that the officers have audio of the entire encounter, and can’t wait to read the full transcript.
So – did they use excessive force?
Well, what else were they supposed to do? The reality is that anything else they might have done was in fact more likely to result in injury to the student – plus possibly officers – than what they did. An armbar or wristlock easily can result in a fracture, displaced elbow, or shoulder injury to the person it’s done to. Having enough officers there to pick up a resisting – and possibly kicking and flailing – adult male suggest that you’d have 8 – 10 (two for each extremity) and the odds of injury there are also pretty high.
Go read this study (yes, it’s hosted on the TASER corporate site) and notice that there were fewer citizen complaints, fewer injured arrestees, fewer officer injuries post TASER deployment. And that ‘drive stun’ was 75% effective in getting arrestees to be compliant.
Absent some facts not in evidence today, I’m gonna call this one a tempest in a teapot, and the student the “Drama King of the Month“. Next time, just show your ID or leave, OK?
Next to Atlanta.
Here the facts are also pretty much agreed-to. Three narcotics officers , in plainclothes, but with raid vests with “POLICE” on them, executed a no-knock (or not-much-knock) raid on a house in a sketchy neighborhood in Atlanta. The homeowner – a 92-year old lady – greeted them with gunfire, they returned fire, she died & they were wounded.
All of which pretty much sucks.
Here, I’m going to wag my fingers at the PD.
I’ve commented on the overuse of SWAT and felony stops before, and it’s an area where I’ll claim some small expertise – I’ve done a bunch of dynamic entries in training (and resisted a few – also in training), and actually think I’m pretty good at them.
And I think they are insanely dangerous.
Not as insanely dangerous as entering a room with an armed bad guy without using those techniques – but pretty darn dangerous on their own. As I’ve said in my earlier post:
…the dumb but critically important fact is that any time guns come out, the potential for tragedy is there. As soon as this became a felony stop (where the responding police draw weapons in advance, and generally act as though the people being stopped are True Bad Guys), the door to a tragedy was opened. Officers have negligently (I never use the term ‘accidental discharge’ in talking about guns; it is a ‘negligent discharge’) shot the people they were handcuffing, or themselves, or their partners. The people who are stopped sometimes are uncompliant and do things which make the officers believe that a gun is being drawn. There are a million ways for this to end badly…
Add that to the small but significant chance that a disoriented, frightened homeowner might just reach for their gun and shoot back.
Radley Balko – who has been beating the drums on this issue for a while – points out that SWAT rolls over 40,000 times a year in the US, primarily to serve what are perceived as ‘high-risk’ warrants.
Patterico and he are in the middle of a small pissing contest on this issue, and sadly each of them is further away from the core issues than they ought to be.
Let’s be clear – even the best-trained officers (and most officers engaged in these kinds of raids are typically less well-trained than I am, for a concrete example) are going to be adrenalized as they stack up outside the door. And when they go in, they will be handling loaded weapons, safeties off, and pointing them at people. Some significant percentage of those guns are going to go off. If they’re 99.99% good – and that’s a big number – if there are 40,000 raids, 40 people a year will be killed inadvertently.
So is there something else that could be done? Why not stand off and ask for compliance? There’s a judgment call to make – an armed suspect shooting out of a house isn’t remotely a Good Thing. But neither is the string of negligent shootings by officers of other officers, suspects, and random homeowners in the course of dynamic entries.
There’s no correct answer here, just a balancing of risks. Right now, the officers are all too willing to take risks with citizen’s lives. This is out of the legitimate belief in the primacy of officer safety, and in the less legitimate fact that being on SWAT is seen a a cool posting in all police departments that I know of, while being good at talking suspects down seldom gets headlines or wins medals.
Does it matter if the woman’s nephew or neighbor was selling out of the house? I don’t think so. I don’t even think it would matter if she had been selling out of the house. It’s kind of like David Koresh and Waco; if they’d waited for him to walk out of the damn building and arrested him, they could have had tactical superiority without burning the whole damn building down.
The raid – and the thousands like it every month – raises a few simple questions. Here’s a simple one. Why didn’t the officers – who had a battering ram – have ballistic shields? Why don’t the police have better training and tools?
Why isn’t some basic risk analysis done to decide which warrants deserve no-knock warrants (and yes, there are a lot of them that really do), and which ones don’t.
Standing off and asking for compliance means that small quantities of drugs will get flushed. But as I mentioned to Patterico when we discussed it, if there is a small enough quantity of drugs that it can easily be flushed – why are we risking people’s lives doing a dynamic entry?
I’ll suggest a further issue with the militarization of the police. When I lived in Paris, one of the creepiest things was seeing the gendarmes standing on subway platforms with subguns slung over their shoulders. They made it very clear that the state was prepared to use overwhelming force when it chose to.
Yes, the state does have the ability to bring as much force as necessary to win. But does every interaction with agents of the state have to make that quite so clear?
The gendarmes were armed with automatic weapons as a legacy of the OAS campaign of assassination and armed insurrection with military assault rifles.
After which the assault rifles never went away.
A lesson there somewhere.
SWAT is militarized because crime is militarized. AK-47s sell for $50 in parts of Africa, there are so many. Blame the USSR.
You’ll have militarized police unless America first engages in horrific bloodbaths ala the Tokugawa Shogunate and then seals itself off for 300 years.
Profanities do nothing to make a weak position stronger.
Potty talk is an indication of weakness, in this case supported by a frank admission that Armed Liberal’s effort to rethink Iraq is not going well, and a thread begging for fodder for conspiratorial and anti-conspiratorial thinking on Iraq. (link)
I think the following things are important:
A
1. The Iraqi people have turned decisively against the Americans, blame them for the unsatisfactory state of affairs in Iraq, want them out, and approve of attacks on them. This means the population of Iraq should be reclassified as hostiles not friendlies, “power to the people” means “power to our enemies,” and unless we are prepared to fight the kind of war that beats a hostile population, we are bereft of a plan to win the war.
2. Iraqi armed forces have been raised in such numbers as to remove the possibility that material forces are the problem or the solution in Iraq. If there was a reasonable number of Iraqi soldiers and policemen that would win the war, it would now be over and won.
3. The Iraqi government supports and is supported by terrorists, and has washed its hands of the Americans. Also, no better government is on offer.
B
1. The American people have turned decisively against the war, with moderates rejecting Republican candidates in a democratic landslide partly concealed by incumbency protection and luck. (Jay Cost has posted on this.)
2. Militarily and diplomatically, the Americans still see Iraqi security as their problem, not the problem of Iraqis. No number of Iraqi forces do anything to reduce the call for more American forces. Rather, the call to go big increases. Also, there is talk of more training for Iraqis, even though bad guys trained at American expense are a large part of the problem.
3. Allies, even the best, are not liking this, and are making other plans. Tony Blair is not long for politics, and has made his peace with a changed Iraqi war policy.
All of this, in my opinion, calls for rethinking.
None of this, in my opinion, calls for a gutter mouth, empty truculence, or rethinking the war in terms of accusations of dishonesty.
The thread that connects these things, I believe, is when exactly government should be using force- because once that decision is made there is _going_ to be mishaps, abuse, and just plain bad luck. Nothing can prevent that, its a statistic certainty in a nation this large.
So. The case of the college kid left little room for doubt. His ‘crime’ was small, but its was not something that could be ignored for both safety and law and order to be secured. I think grabbing a ratty little agitator in a hammer lock and frog walking him out of the library (as bouncers do on a nightly basis the nation over) would have been a simpler and wiser solution than the Taser.
Taser’s are meant to replace batons, and this was not a sitation where that level of force was appropriate. Tasers are unpredictable- far more unpredictable than 4 officers dragging a kid. Taser can kill people, more people percentage wise than a half nelson. I dont have data, but that seems pretty likely. Furthermore whatever setting the taser was on, the ultimate purpose of the weapon is incapacitation. That seems incongruent with using it to get someone to stand up and walk- taking into account the unpredictability of the tool in differing circumstances. Pick the kid up and take him away. Why reinvent the wheel and risk his life?
As far as the SWAT teams go- this is yet another symptom of madness in the drug war. It is the _government_ and its policies that have made violence synonimous with drugs- and they then have the call to pull crap like this and plead self-defense. Of all the crap going on our country (and all the hyperbolic hew and cry over the Patriot Act) the simple ability of the government to kick in a door in the middle of the night is what i believe would send the Founders into a tizzy. Citizens are placed in an impossible position. Someone breaks into your home in the dead of night and you must instantly decide if you want to risk death by not defending yourself or risk death by defending yourself- all in a split second with no prior training.
This is clearly a case where force is egregious. Why in god’s name cant the warrant be served when the suspect is walking down the driveway? Because that would preclude fancy, exciting SWAT raids that make good headlines and provide bigger budgets than simple patient police work do. This war on drugs is beyond disasterous. Its become a narco-industrial complex with a will of its own. Things happen daily in the drug war that would cause the Left to melt down if they were carried out against terror suspects. Rightly so in this case.
I for one, do not beliee the majority of Iraqis want the US to leave before the situation is stabilized.
Add me to the small group who are sniffing at the details of the Atlanta story and wondering if they add up.
We’re told that an elderly lady shot and killed 3 cops in quick order. They had an arrest warrant. She “greeted them with gunfire”, in AL’s words. As a gun owner and firm advocate of our right to self defense, I also firmly believe we are all responsible for our use of our guns.
AL wonders why they cops didn’t just stake out the house and arrest the guy on the sidewalk. I wonder why too — and I wonder if it isn’t because he goes out protected by a bunch of thugs willing to kill casually. A nighttime raid, if successful, might have seemed the less violent option.
All speculation. I do think it matters whether this was a no-knock or a not-much-knock action on the part of the police.
_I’ll suggest a further issue with the militarization of the police. When I lived in Paris, one of the creepiest things was seeing the gendarmes standing on subway platforms with subguns slung over their shoulders. They made it very clear that the state was prepared to use overwhelming force when it chose to._
It would be nice if the gendarmes actually *were* authorized to use those guns in dealing with the epidemic of rapes, anti-semitic violence, thuggery and car-b-ques that add up to a serious challenge to state authority in many parts of France of late. JMO
When I lived in Paris, one of the creepiest things was seeing the gendarmes standing on subway platforms with subguns slung over their shoulders. They made it very clear that the state was prepared to use overwhelming force when it chose to.>
When I lived in London, not that long ago, the Metropolitan Police, that had historically gone along with the British doctrine of no firearms, were considering adopting the H&K MP5 as his primary weapon, (instead of handguns) for them increasingly more numerous armed units. The rationale of this was that the submachine gun (intended to be used in semi-automatic mode) was way more accurate than a handgun, reducing the odds of hitting the wrong target.
We’re told that an elderly lady shot and killed 3 cops in quick order.
Actually, we’re told that an elderly lady shot and wounded three cops. Mrs Johnson was the only person killed.
Mark – you’re misunderstanding how the Taser was used. Tasers have two modes – “probe” mode, in which barbed electrodes are fired at a person, and when they hit, a disabling shock is applied – when someone is hit in this mode, they usually truly can’t stand or function for a few minutes – and “drive stun” mode, in which the electrodes on the Taser are directly applied to the person and it hurts like heck. But is not disabling, and doesn’t lead to injury or death.
Four officers slinging the guy puts officers at risk, but even more if he struggles at all – and this guy didn;t seem to be in the midst of a planned and preagreed “go limp demonstration” – the officers will use force – an armlock, wristlock or other (in essence jujitsu) martial arts hold to restrain his morion and ensure compliance.
Injuries – both to the arrested and to the officers – are much higher in that case than in the case where compliance is obtained using “drivew stun”.
I don’t think we have to call off the drug war in order to reduce the use of this kind of police force (although I’m not a huge fan of the drug was as practiced today).
A.L.
_”drive stun” mode, in which the electrodes on the Taser are directly applied to the person and it hurts like heck. But is not disabling, and doesn’t lead to injury or death._”
Well, I dont know if there have been any studies on that. The taser used in any mode isnt supposed to lead to permanent injury or death, but we know that isnt the case. The point is passing electricity through a human body is an unpredictable affair
_”Four officers slinging the guy puts officers at risk, but even more if he struggles at all”_
I am very concerned with the safety of police officers- but just as in the case of no-knock raids at some point we have to ask ourselves why the safety of police officers trumps the safety of citizens so often. Follow that logic far enough and why not have cops taser people for traffic tickets- just in case. For that matter there is something disturbing about beat cops given license to use a pain inducing device to compel citizens into complaince- its a scary precident. “Hey you’re cars double parked- gimme two seconds- ZAP”.
_”Injuries – both to the arrested and to the officers – are much higher in that case than in the case where compliance is obtained using “drivew stun”._”
I don’t know that to be the case. Like I said, miscreants have been (and are) controlled by simple holds for centuries with good results. If four trained men cant get a weasely college kid out of a library without passing voltage through his nervous system, i think we have a bigger problem to think about. We arent talking about the UFC championship here. Tasers were meant to be used to replace the potentially lethal force of a baton (or firearm), not the very well known and extremely _unlikely_ to be deadly use of simple restrainment.
_”I don’t think we have to call off the drug war in order to reduce the use of this kind of police force (although I’m not a huge fan of the drug was as practiced today).”_
Perhaps not, but I don’t think there is any doubt that the drug war has a momentum to it that tends to create these kinds of unintended consequences.
“restrainment.”?
I’d like to say i just made that word up but i think Rick Moranis uses it in Ghostbusters 2.
Achillea, correction noted. Thanks.
Student was an Iranian. Nuke his ass. Muslim “youth” coming to the United States and then dissing the cops. And while we’re at it, nuke his parental units, too, for not raising him properly.
* * *
I don’t know that the Iraqi people have turned on Americans and want us out of the country, and I’d also disagree that Americans have “turned decisively against the war”.
I think the Iraqi’s have given up on our intervention and are going into their fallback mode – which hasn’t work for them before but at least they’re familiar with it – of relying on their tribes for everything. They accept that there just aren’t enough Americans to protect them all, and they can see how much hatred there is amongst themselves that has nothing whatsoever to do with America or our little war.
Americans, on the other hand, aren’t clamoring to get out of Iraq. The message I see from this month’s election is that what’s being done isn’t working, so change it. I don’t think there’s an overwhelming mandate on *how* it should be changed, but something different needs to be done.
As far as I can see, both the Iraqi’s and increasingly American public opinion seems to be for American soldiers to get the hell out of the way and let the Iraqi’s fight it out among themselves. Oh … and it would be nice if the Americans could keep Syria and Iran out of it while the Iraqi’s kill each other.
I don’t see us leaving Iraq and giving up that toe-hold in that part of the world. But I also don’t see us going ahead with a campaign to “win hearts and minds” while the Iraqi’s are so distracted by stabbing each other’s hearts and blowing out their brains.
Finally, I think the whole Shiite/Sunni hatred thing may be spreading and we can look forward to seeing similar outbreaks of cross-Muslim violence in other states of the Middle East, too … real soon now. I’m pretty sure it’ll be fun to watch.
Mark, did you look at the study linked in the post?
A.L.
A.L. says we don’t have to call off the drug war.
Why not? All it does is leave us with the original drug problem plus a criminal problem. Ever study alcohol prohibition in America? It is my current belief that the vast majority of Americans slept though those classes.
In addition “addiction” as we know it is an idea that was made up in the last 200 or so years. So far there is zero science backing up that idea. You heard me right. Zero.
Dani Molintas has written a rather lengthy piece (for a blog) on The History of Addiction. The short version? People in chronic pain chronically take drugs. The pain in question comes from things like PTSD, bipolar etc.
So what is the science behind chronic drug taking? First the NIDA says the problem is in part genetic. So right away you have militarized genetic discrimination. Way cool and totally moral, eh? Then you need some triggering event. What kind of event? Something traumatic. About 70% of female heroin users were sexually abused as children. So we are making war on abused children and the adults they become. Way cool and totally moral, eh?
I guess punishing the genetically different who are also abused children is the American way. (note to A.L.: I’d love to see your post justifying that. It ought to be a real keeper.)
As to raids: the raids will end when we understand “addiction” is superstition.
You got that right: superstition.
We are acting like a South Pacific tribe enforcing tribal taboos. Buying protection against the drug demon with the lives of innocents. All gussied up to look like science. “Addiction” is science. Cargo cult science. Which pretty much mirrors the “demon rum” period of American history. In fact the drug war is a left over of that period.
Milton Friedman says that drug prohibition is a socialist enterprise (price supports for criminals) and that it is immoral to kill 2,000 innocents a years in drug raids and drug war cross fires to keep people from hurting themselves (if they are actually self medicating as I show – it is even worse).
So A.L., show me your science. Read the NIDA’s latest on genetics (Google – NIDA genetics). Read Dr. Lonnie Shavelson. Then get back to me. I can’t wait.
Any one who supports the drug war and knows what I and others have shown is morally culpable for the deaths of the innocents in the drug war. So A.L. who killed that 92 year old woman? You did. By supporting the prohibition policies.
AL, i had not, but now i have. Ok, there are several issues with it. First, it is a study of a single police division- done internally, and with nothing stated about controls. Essentially its a nonscientific study. That doesnt mean its worthless, just suspect. Has the study been controlled for the crime rate in the area? Are there other programs being implimented that could impact excessive force complaints such as the additional training tasers require itself?
Secondly, nothing is seperated between times when deadly or extreme force is being replaced with Tasers (which is of course a good thing), and when Tasers are being used when arguable a less forceful mechanism such as physical restraint would be used. That distinction is basically what i am arguing. Obviously if you taser someone instead of shooting them you are reducing violence. In my opinion when you taser someone instead of picking them up and applying a wrist lock, you are applying _more_ force. I dont think this video gets any coverage if a cop puts a resisting trespasser in a hammer lock and drags him to the squad car.
And again, the point is if you are going to start zapping people to make the cops lives easier, where do you draw that line?
One more plea, if i can strike an emotional note here: Imagine what the civil rights movement would have looked like in the 60s if the cops had tasers. I just flat out dont like the idea of cops having magic wands that inflict pain on people to force compliance. There is simply an unsettlingly fascist element to it.
Imagine what the civil rights movement would have looked like in the 60s if the cops had tasers.
hmmm.
Interesting question.
What if Dick Holsom, Al Butler, Don Forsht, Ellis Duley, Cecil Miller, Gene Same, and Hershel Garner had had tasers?
Here’s my point- i have no problem with using the Taser as it was originally meant, ie in a situation where a gun, a baton, or even mace would be used. And those things are used when cops confront a situation that is beyond their ability to handle with a high degree of confidence using only their strength and numbers and training. This was not remotely one of those situations. Yes, there is an unlikely chance a hundred pound hippie could manage to injure 4 cops, but if our standard of safety is that high we should just start issuing cops automatic tranq dart guns and tell them not to get near anyone conscious.
When we give the police license to use the Taser to compel the behavior they want, we are opening a nasty can of worms. What would happen at a sit in? Yes you need to move people, but would you smack them with a baton? So why are you inflicting serious pain to force them to move? Had that been available in the Civil Rights Era South, we would have pictures of blacks being tasered hanging right next to fire hoses and dogs.
I recognize that is inflamatory, but i dont think its dirty pool. Hard experience has taught us ways of dealing with peaceful protest that differ from dealing with rioters or out of control meth heads. The executive hands of government should not be in the business of compelling behavior (certainly via pain!) unless there is direct life and limb on the line. Technically cops can arrest me for all sort of things, but they arent supposed to be able to force me to do anything without a court order. I understand that isnt really the case in our day and age, but when we get down to the level of giving a beat cop virtual carte blanch to inflict pain whenever they deem it expediant to compel action, we are pretty far down the road.
Here’s my view on the shootin in Atlanta. She was a homeowner. Unknown persons kicked in her door. She acted in self defense. She was murdered.
The persons responsible, both those present and those who authorized it, should be tried for violations of her civil rights and manslaughter.
Any argument that they were “following procedure” circles right back around to the idea that the procedures violate the Bill of Rights. No system that results in the death of citizens, even if they are guilty of minor drug charges, is morally defensible.
#18 from Mark Buehner,
If meth heads are fair game for tazering why not consumers of alcohol?
Its my understanding that many law enforcement officers are trained in the use of non-deadly force by having that instrument directed at them. I know this has certainly been true of tear gas since I had to pick up my brother from the acadamy on the day he got tear gassed. In future law suits for excessive use of force, they wanted the officers to be able to testify that they had experienced the pain, but that it passed.
I am not sure about tasers though, but it seems that the logic should hold the same. I would feel much better about the judgment calls if the cops knew what it felt like and were not simply becoming fascinated with the reaction of nerves and sinew.
A brief google shows that the Austin police train with tasers that way:
bq. _As part of their training, cadets are hit by Tasers. The four cadets we’ve been following for several months, Caudill; Jane Pacifico, 24; Jay Swann, 36; and Angela Racine, 33, are passing in all areas. They won’t soon forget Taser training, though._
bq. _”My whole body locked up,” said Caudill, a former major in the U.S. Marines. The probes, which connected with her ankles, sent a powerful shock up her legs to her head and out to her fingertips._
bq. _”It was painful. I couldn’t move,” Caudill said. “But as soon as they (the probes) were removed, it was over. There was no lasting effect.”_
http://www.austinpolice.com/cadet.htm
_”If meth heads are fair game for tazering why not consumers of alcohol?”_
They could be, its a matter of circumstances. Its a medical fact that certain substances can put a person into a state of almost superhuman strength. Its all about context. If two officers are trying to subdue someone that is lashing out violently and appears unlikely to submit, of course a taser of mace could be appropriate.
For that matter cops cant be expected to determine what substances a person may be on. But if someone is simply sitting on the ground refusing to comply and has shown no aggressive actions, i think it should be a flat policy not to inflict anything more than the absolute minimum force on them. Cops are called upon to determine and apply relative amounts of force every single day, I dont see why we are trying to take that judgement call and apply worst case scenarios to every case just because they have a wonderful new tool that supposedly inflicts no lasting harm.
AL,
You didn’t even pose the question of whether or not the UCLA campus police go through the training of being shocked by Tasers. You also seem to completely dismiss the accounts other students provided about the incident, such as that the student was already leaving when the cops showed up and grabbed his arm. You might also notice in that video that it appears that at least one other person was recording it on their camera phone, so there may be other sources of recordings. I have found at least a couple of mentions in a few minutes of googling that indicate the officer who tasered the student has a history of at least being accused of abusive behavior. Maybe that is incorrect, or maybe he has just been unlucky enough to need to use force in multiple situations, but your post doesn’t even pose the question. What is your source that he had his ID?
And I really could care less if the pain of a Taser stops once the juice isn’t being applied. Pain is pain. You make a lot of assumptions here in favor of the officers. I would think at least the reactions of the students on the video would give you some pause as to where they perceived the real threat to lie in that situation.