Brickbat: My Bad

Viorel Margineanu / Dreamstime.com

A York County, Penn., police officer has been charged with simple assault for shooting a handcuffed suspect in the back seat of a patrol car. Officer Stuart Lee Harrison says he thought he was reaching for his Taser and did not realize he had pulled out his gun until he heard the shot.

Comments

[Reasonably]

"He is also a certified firearms instructor and a certified Taser instructor for the department."

. . . of course !

[SQRLSY One]

Training from trainers with 5 or more PhDs is required to fix this! And more money of course; that goes w/o saying!

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Actually, it sounds like something that 5 PhDs could make worse.

[Still Curmudgeoned (Nunya)]

Can we get a conversation going about why a handcuffed guy already in the patrol car deserved even a taser shot?

[buybuydandavis]

Awesome!

I missed the punchline!

[MSimon]

The police have to be hard. Things are starting to fall apart.

The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter - pdf. The good stuff starts in Chapter 4.
https://wtf.tw/ref/tainter.pdf

https://youtu.be/GzuviYRse3E - about 3 minutes

[SQRLSY One]

Thanks! I will have to save a link...

Out-take from your source:
Thus, increasing investments in specialized education yield declines in both marginal and average returns.

We have so many highly educated people now, that we have to add butt-tons of complex new rules (and losses of personal freedoms that go along with that, as inevitably as night follows day), so that the highly educated have something to do. So we add more permission-forms to fill out to keep the lawyers busy, and more prescriptions for doctors to write. So the returns on this are actually NEGATIVE!

Case in point, when the toothbrush was invented, no one thought to make them status = "prescription from dentist is required". Yet a toothbrush is far more intrusive into your body than blowing on a "lung flute"! Yet when the "lung flute" was invented a handful of years ago, it is "prescription required" (only in the USA, though). USA has many-many doctors, so we must keep them busy!

To find precise details on what NOT to do, to avoid the flute police, please see http://www.churchofsqrls.com/DONT_DO_THIS/ ? This has been a pubic service, courtesy of the Church of SQRLS!

[SQRLSY One]

Thanks! I will have to save a link...

Out-take from your source:
Thus, increasing investments in specialized education yield declines in both marginal and average returns.

We have so many highly educated people now, that we have to add butt-tons of complex new rules (and losses of personal freedoms that go along with that, as inevitably as night follows day), so that the highly educated have something to do. So we add more permission-forms to fill out to keep the lawyers busy, and more prescriptions for doctors to write. So the returns on this are actually NEGATIVE!

Case in point, when the toothbrush was invented, no one thought to make them status = "prescription from dentist is required". Yet a toothbrush is far more intrusive into your body than blowing on a "lung flute"! Yet when the "lung flute" was invented a handful of years ago, it is "prescription required" (only in the USA, though). USA has many-many doctors, so we must keep them busy!

To find precise details on what NOT to do, to avoid the flute police, please see http://www.churchofsqrls.com/DONT_DO_THIS/ ? This has been a pubic service, courtesy of the Church of SQRLS!

[SQRLSY One]

The squirrels got the SQRLSY One! It's only poetic justice I suppose...

[Fist of Etiquette]

"Officer Harrison stated that he then placed what he thought was his Taser against Smith's right thigh and pulled the trigger. He stated that as soon as he heard the sound, he knew it wasn't his Taser. Officer Harrison then re-holstered his firearm. Officer Harrison stated that it was not his intent to use his firearm. Officer Harrison stated that after the gunshot, Smith sat in the car and asked Officer Harrison, 'dude, why'd you shoot me?'"

I applaud him for knowing the difference between a firearm and a taser is the noise it makes, but he should be FIRED for failing to then take out his taser and use it on a suspect who was resisting after the fact getting shot.

[Vandikar]

hmm, I wonder if a private citizen were to use this line of logic what the outcome would be.

me thinks....attempted murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, etc etc etc etc.

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[Cyto]

Uh... Do we really need to be using the taser on handcuffed subjects that are in the car?

I remember when tasers first came out back in the 70's. The were supposed to be used as replacements for potentially lethal use of force. One specific example was "bad guy has a knife". Now, that one has gone by the wayside - you can't take a chance if someone is holding a knife or even a screwdriver in a nonthreatening way. But there was a specific concern as well.

The concern was that police would over-use the taser, and use it in situations where they would be facing charges for excessive use of force if they used a baton or a gun. Situations like when they had a subject under arrest, handcuffed in the back seat of the car. This was the exact scenario that was posited.... using a taser on a handcuffed suspect in the back seat of the car. Police and taser advocates poo-pooed the notion. It would never happen. Police wouldn't do that. Besides... they would have accountability. They would have training and discipline to ensure that such things would never occur.

Fast forward.... now it is perfectly acceptable to use a taser on an unruly but handcuffed subject. Heck, it is even OK to use a taser on someone who gets a little bit mouthy.

[Cyto]

As we saw yesterday, these days it is perfectly OK with the police hierarchy and the prosecutors if you use the taser 11 times on someone who refuses to show their ID in a situation where they are not required to show ID - even on their exposed genitals - as long as there isn't video proof that it happened.

How come there is never an "I told you so" moment in politics where people who were wrong have to perform their mea culpa and we hold everyone to the standard that was given at the time?

There are loads of such examples:

"There will never be another amnesty."
"He never received a draft notice. If he had received a draft notice, that would be different"
"No more undeclared wars"
"no new entitlements"
"we must balance the budget"
"pay as you go"
....

[Fist of Etiquette]

Tasers are now by policy primarily used as compliance devices.

[Cyto]

Which is precisely what they told us they would never be used for.

[buybuydandavis]

"Uh... Do we really need to be using the taser on handcuffed subjects that are in the car?"

Officer Quickdraw probably didn't *need* all those donuts either, but they're oh so tasty!

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[OldGuy]

now that is some entertaining word salad

[Rich]

Dear Editor -- Please note that OldGuy's comment applied to a spam post which has been removed.

[Cyto]

That helps. I didn't feel entirely incoherent today.....

[Inigo Montoya]

Getting shot point black through the thigh, which could easily mean never walking well again, qualifies as "simple assault?" I'd hate to think what more serious assault would be.

But, hey, at least the handcuffed suspect in the back of the car didn't "willingly consent" to sex. So he should be grateful.

[Jerryskids]

Stuart Lee Harrison? As in Stuart Little and Lee Trevino or as in JEB Stuart and Robert E. Lee?

(Was it here I learned that when the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter premiered in 1975 the Boston ABC affiliate refused to air it because it showed an integrated classroom at a time when Boston was trying to institute a busing program to integrate their schools - nearly 2 decades after Brown? Sure, all the intolerants are down South.)

[Longtobefree]

Yep. No doubt. No slavery or segregation except in the south.
No race riots in Detroit. No segregated school in the North. No democrat ever, ever, looked at skin color to determine a person's worth.

[AlmightyJB]

Hero

[Rockabilly]

God Emperor Trump !!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv1FE88JVps

[creech]

York official: "I thought I was reaching for my commendation pad but pulled out a pink slip instead. Too bad for you, Officer Harrison. [Something that never happened for $200, Alex.]

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Harrison - I'm calling my union rep.

York official - OK, you can have your job back. You can keep the $200.

[Sevo]

Geeze, a mistake anyone could make,

[crufus]

At least the hero wasn't trying to taser him in the neck.

[Rossami]

"Simple assualt"... Somehow I doubt that you or I would be charged with only that after doing the same thing.

[Cyto]

Isn't "grievous bodily harm" one of the things that gets you to felony "mayhem"?

[buybuydandavis]

"I really only meant to electrocute a handcuffed citizen detained in the back of a squad car."

"I can't tell the difference between a gun and a taser."

Strangely, I don't find either of those particularly reassuring.

[jdgalt1]

Even the admission that he intended to Tase a handcuffed prisoner should be enough to get him life in prison.