I'd heard that a lot of departments are also using Tasers ahead of direct contact / wrestling / hand to hand. The rationale is that it cuts down on officer injury and usually on suspect injury except in cases of underlying medical conditions or recreational pharmaceuticals.

What they are really hoping for, though, is for a breakthrough in Darth Vader remote choke hold research:

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It is difficult to imagine what crime would have been committed if in fact there was neither negligence nor intent.

There's a human factors problem at work. Tasers should feel different than guns, maybe by being held with the palm horizontal instead of vertical. They should look different, though I guess they already do to a degree. They should actuate in a different way, with a thumb instead of index finger or something.

This is the sort of problem that led to pilots raising the landing gear instead of the flaps during the landing roll on certain models of Beechcraft aircraft.

My department allows use of tasers before hands on.

Tasers have two primary methods of deployment:

1) Shoot with the barbs. This is electromuscular disruption and actually causes the exterior skeletal muscles all to spasm to a varying degree. With the "best" spread between the barbs, the subject will lose control of those muscles and be incapacitated for the length of the stun, which is 5 seconds, more if the trigger is held. After the cycle is completed, the subject should be able to function normally, although there is often lignering pain and stiffness in the muscles. (My calves hurt for 3 days)

2) "Drive Stun" - or place the probes forcefully into the subject and actuate the trigger. With the probes so close together this will be more of a pain compliance technique. ( I have used this technique and have seen it used to gain compliance from a subjects who have refused to be handcuffed.) It is effective to varying degrees. Like other pain compliance methods, it's effectiveness depends on several factors - including the state of mind of the subject, thickness of clothing, & placement on the body (larger muscles work better).

Backup officers should be able to grab the subject and manipulate his arms for handcuffing during the stun as long as they don't get caught in the wires or come too near the Taser contact point.

(There is a third method called the three-point-stun, which is a hybrid of the first two and has results similar to the first method)

The Taser is a great tool for law enforcement. Locally, since we see the same people over and over again, we generally do not have to deploy the taser as often. Once they see the red laser, a lot of our bad guys comply. I much prefer the taser to the baton or pepper spray.

My taser is carried in a cross-draw set up. I never carry my pistols that way - on or off duty -. Some of our officers use weak side draw and some use my method.

From the tone of some of the other posts, you might think I wzs defending the officer's actions. I was not. I was simply offering a possible explanation.

Carry one or the other period. There have been to many mistakes because both have been on the duty belt (And I was real nice on how I said that).

Tasers ought not to have the same ergonomics as a firearm, with a handle and trigger layout. A overhand grip layout, with a top mounted trigger button, would work just as well, and leave the operator in no doubt which implement he was using. Too many of these mistakes seem to be happening. Eventually, a good lawyer will convince a jury that the whole thing could have been avoided by the Taser company, and give ownership of it to some victim's family.

There is the political question also, as to whether it's best to give an additional ready implement of torture into the hands of government agents, but that's another line of argument.

I cannot picture this "redesigned" taser with a top mounted thumb-activated trigger. Are you guy's talking about something like a garage door opener button? How would you put a trigger guard around it to prevent NDs?

I think the pistol has gone through many design iterations in order to achieve a safe, secure, and user friendly form and function.

Officer involved has resigned from the force, which the article points out effectively ends the internal investigation:

http://cbs13.com/local/bart.shooting.officer.2.902521.html

Sad situation all around, as the TASER mix-up theory promulgated here seems to be the most likely scenario.

Thinking through chunkstyle's idea, I immediately pictured a guarded toggle to activate the Taser

and maybe a pair of flashlight stye push buttons
Pushing one botton (either) for the "Drive Stun" pushing both to shoot the prongs . . . of course here I am thinking something flashlight sized and shaped.


On the other hand.


I'd be all for removing cops handguns and going taser only as a sidearm. Just take the pistol off the duty belt altogether, with the expectation that the shotguns and carbines will be coming out of their racks a whole lot more often. I can't think of a thing a pistol does that a carbine or shotgun doesn't do better . It'd be kinda like stepping in the P.C. dirrection of kinder and gentler British Bobbie style cops, while still letting them keep their teeth and perhaps encouraging appropriate tool selection. While we as citizens have a reason to go about with pistols, for our own protection . . . namely pistols are easy to carry on one's person without undue effect on daily activities & easy to conceal so we don't upset our neighbors too much. Pistols are always a compromise in terms of weight, size, firepower, round count, etc. Uniformed police officers go about their duties with the expectation that they are armed, so concealment is obviously not an issue . . . why should they have to compromise? Why not go in with the better tool in the form of carbine or shotgun.

Certainly you wouldn't mistake a firearm for a taser, if your taser is a pistol (shape) and your firearms are all long guns. In the age of taser, just what is the purpose of the pistol on the policeman's duty belt? Maybe it is time to reform police tactics and load out.

Well, the dispenser of all holy writ on handgun knowledge, Jeff Cooper, makes the distinction that generally a handgun is a defensive weapon and a rifle is an offensive weapon.

So then a patrol officer should take the shotgun from the rack when approaching a vehicle to write a traffic ticket, Sounds handy. What should he do with said shotgun while haveing to go hands on or while cuffing a subject if thats the ways things should turn?

Man - this whole incident is going sideways - http://sg.news.yahoo.com/ap/20090109/tw ... e00ca.html





Now this:

Here's yet a third video on the incident. This actually made me kind of queasy.

Oscar is the 2nd suspect from the left and is obscured by a cop for most of the video.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...MN2N155CN1.DTL

Chronicle Staff Writers

Thursday, January 8, 2009

A protest over the fatal shooting by a BART police officer of a negro mushroomed into several hours of violence Wednesday night as demonstrators smashed storefronts and cars, set several cars ablaze and blocked streets in downtown Oakland.

The roving mob expressed fury at police and frustration over society's racial injustice. Yet the demonstrators were often indiscriminate, frequently targeting the businesses and prized possessions of people of color.

They smashed a hair salon, a pharmacy and several restaurants. Police in riot gear tried to control the crowd, but some people retreated along 14th Street and bashed cars along the way.

The mob smashed the windows at Creative African Braids on 14th Street, and a woman walked out of the shop holding a baby in her arms.

"This is our business," shouted Leemu Topka, the black owner of the salon she started four years ago. "This is our shop. This is what you call a protest?"

Wednesday night's vandalism victims had nothing to do with the shooting death by a BART police officer of Oscar Grant on New Year's Day - but that did little to sway the mob.

"I feel like the night is going great," said Nia Sykes, 24, of San Francisco, one of the demonstrators. "I feel like Oakland should make some noise. This is how we need to fight back. It's for the murder of a black male."

Sykes, who is black, had little sympathy for the owner of Creative African Braids.

"She should be glad she just lost her business and not her life," Sykes said. She added that she did have one worry for the night: "I just hope nobody gets shot or killed."

The protest had started calmly shortly after 3 p.m. at the Fruitvale Station in Oakland, where BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle shot 22-year-old Grant of Hayward a week ago. BART shut down the station well into the evening commute, although the demonstration there was peaceful.

However, shortly after nightfall, a group of roughly 200 protesters split off and headed toward downtown Oakland, prompting the transit agency to close the Lake Merritt and 12th Street stations. The group wreaked havoc through much of downtown, drawing hundreds of police in riot gear. It wasn't until roughly 10:40 p.m that police clamped down on the mob, arresting dozens who were cornered near the Paramount Theatre, and bringing an end to the mayhem.

Earlier in the evening, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums met the mob on 14th Street, urging calm and leading them on a walk to City Hall, where he gave a speech.

"I sense your frustration," he told the crowd. "I understand that you've lost confidence in a process because you've seen what you believe is a homicide ... But listen to me, we are a community of people. We are civilized people. We are a nation of laws.

Dellums told protesters that he had asked the Oakland Police Department to investigate the shooting. "I have asked Oakland police to engage in a fair, parallel investigation, the way you'd investigate any homicide in Oakland," he said. "If that leads to an arrest, that's what it would lead to."

"I'm asking people to disperse," the mayor said to the couple hundred people in the crowd. "Let's leave in a spirit of peace."

But soon after, a man shouted "that's the modern day lynching" and the mob quickly continued its rampage, smashing at least seven storefronts on 17th street between Franklin and Webster streets. They also smashed eight cars, including four belonging to the City of Oakland.

Near 14th and Alice streets, Myron Bell was taking dance lessons in "step," a form of dance popular among African Americans, when he looked out the window and saw people jumping on his Lexus sedan.

Bell, 42, came out to find that almost all of the car's windows, including the front and back had been smashed and it appeared that someone had tried to set the car on fire.

"I'm for the cause," said Bell, who is black. "But I'm against the violence and destruction."

Nearby, Godhuli Bose stood near her smashed Toyota Corolla as a man walked by, repeatedly called her a misogynist slur and then added, "F- your car."

Bose, a high school teacher, said: "I can't afford this."

Earlier in the evening, when the mob first appeared downtown, Oakland Police Officer Michael Cardoza parked his car across the intersection of Eighth and Madison streets, to prevent traffic from flowing toward Broadway and into the protest. But he told The Chronicle that a group of 30 to 40 protesters quickly surrounded his car and started smashing it with bottles and rocks.

Cardoza jumped out of the car and said some protesters tried to set the car on fire, while others jumped on top of the hood - incidents repeatedly shown on television. Cardoza said the protesters "were trying to entice us into doing something." A Chronicle reporter saw a fist-sized rock in the back seat.

A group of protesters also set a trash bin aflame, moving it adjacent to the police car.

Police threw tear gas into the group to disperse it, said BART Sgt. Mark MacAulay. After 8 p.m., there were numerous arrests.

"When you get that mob mentality, it can be dangerous," MacAulay said.

Other protesters marched on BART's 12th Street Station about 7 p.m., prompting the transit agency to close the downtown hub station even as it was reopening the Lake Merritt and Fruitvale stations.

The mob blocked the intersection of 14th and Broadway, near the downtown BART station entrance. As police put on helmets and gas masks and stood in a line formation, some demonstrators held signs that read, "Your idea of justice?" and "Jail Killer Cops."

One man lay in the intersection with his face down and his hands behind his back - intentionally evoking the position that Grant was in when he was shot.

Some in the mob wore masks over their faces as they yelled at police. Roughly a dozen stood just a few feet away from police as they screamed at them. Chants included "pigs go home," "the fascist police, no justice, no peace" and "we are all Oscar Grant."

Mandingo Hayes, who is black, said he participated in the protest because "we're tired of all these police agencies getting away with shooting unarmed black and Latino males."

Hayes, 36, downplayed the attack on the police car.

"For a police car to get abused, and for a person to get shot and killed, which would you rather be?" said Hayes, a construction worker from San Pablo.

As the night wore on, Hayes tried calming people down, asking for peace.

The core group of the mob appeared to be about 40 people, several of whom were with Revolution Books, a Berkeley bookstore. A man distributed the "Revolution" newspaper - whose tagline is "voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, U.S.A." - as he shouted "This whole damn system is guilty!"

Soo Jung Sung, an Asian American, didn't understand why she was to blame. She wept as she looked at the shattered front windshield of her Nissan Montero.

Negro? Really? Haven't heard that term in a while.


That has to be a fake name.