Have you read about the latest police tasering to make waves on the news and on YouTube, the one mentioned by Sorro not long ago? I was just reading up on it online when, suddenly, the realization hit me like a taser to the back:
The taseree and the pregnant wife are friends of ours.
They moved out of town about a year ago so he could take a job around Vernal.
They are intelligent, educated, immensely friendly people.
I'm amazed by this. Bewildered. It's not every day you find out the faceless person in the most recent police-maltreatment story is someone you know, someone you've gone to church with, babysat for, been to their house for a Christmas party.
Suddenly they have a face.
Holy crap.
Needless to say I'm mad. Even before I knew who they were, this looked like another overreaction by the police. I'll admit that Jared definitely didn't help the situation, but did he deserve to be tasered? Isn't that reserved for someone who is wild, frantic, beyond reason? He was calm, rational - maybe even moreso than the officer. I'm one who usually gives the cops the benefit of a doubt, but now I'm just disgusted.
What is the procedure here? Is not signing your ticket so grievous an offense that a tasering is justified? Are you even required by law to sign the ticket? Doesn't the cop have to tell you how fast you were going? I really want to understand this - does anyone know the protocol here?
Here's the video:
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4 years ago
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8 comments:
THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!! When I was 19 I went through something like this with the Provo police. It was a police brutality issue...anyway needless to say this kind of stuff infuriates me!
You know, I hadn't seen the whole thing until now. Now I see that the cop is just being an ass.
Okay, the guy didn't follow the cops instructions, but seriously...
The guy asks a couple of simple questions, the cop refuses to answer (which makes me think that the guy wasn't even speeding in the first place).
The guy was not threatening anyone.
The guy was not read his rights.
This whole thing is just stupid. The cop needs to be fired, and the PD needs to pay this guy whatever he asks for when he sues.
Not to relate everything to Ron Paul, but this is the sort of thing that happens when most people accept that the government should be allowed to chip away at our rights in exchange for our "security".
Think about it, though. What do people do when they really want to protect something, like a large bag of money, for example? They hire private enterprise to do it.
The police are given far too much power to violate rights in "protecting" us, but they don't even accomplish that task. Instead of catching killers or solving real problems, they act like the monopoly they are and prey on the easiest targets - innocent citizens - to rob for the government with petty fines.
To think NWA had it right all along.
Here's what I thought:
Some cops are out there actually trying to help people....and some, like this guy, are out there just for the power trip. It seems they need to train officers on common sense and rationalization instead of just shooting at targets and running through obstacle courses.
It's good to know cops are out there arresting the real bad guys. Meanwhile your next door neighbor is cooking up some more meth with his 14-year old girlfriend he met on myspace.
My wife and I were leaving a gas station in Taylorsville to head back to Logan, and right as we pulled onto I-15, a cop pulled us over. He had been following us since we left the gas station.
I asked him why he pulled me over and he said that my insurance has expired. I showed him our card that said we were covered and he said "Yeah, well, it could have expired and you could have just kept the card."
So the next day I had to have our insurance company fax a letter to some obscure department that said we had always been covered and our policy hadn't lapsed recently, etc.
I don't know if he thought I had stolen the car, or what, but when he first came up to the car and looked in and saw me, my wife, and our baby asleep in the back, he had this "oops" expression. So rather than swallow his pride and admit he made a mistake, he had to fabricate some bogus excuse to give me a ticket.
Idiot. I guess no matter what line of work it is, you get good ones, and complete morons.
Technically according to Utah law an officer has 2 choices when someone won't sign a ticket:
1. Write "refuse to sign" and they are served.
2. Arrest them.
My biggest beef with this cop is that he just made every other officer's job harder. What's worse is that UHP has dragged their feet on disciplining him.
Oh my gosh, I cannot believe this. It is just another example of police brutality. This is what happens when the wrong type of people go into law enforcement. I was under the impression that it was their responsibility to keep the peace, not add to the mayhem. This officer needs to lose his job he is obviously in the wrong line of work. I hope that the Masseys sue and win.
As a side note I am totally against the use of tasers. I believe that they are a dangerous weapon that should not be used unless absolutely necessary, and by people who understand what the potential complications are. In just the past week or two I have watched three incidents of people being tasered; this one, a pregnant women (cnn.com), and one of a man who died from it (cnn.com). If you did not see this you can look it up on CNN.com or youtube.com. A non-english speaking man was stuck at an airport for more then 10 hours. After losing his temper the royal canadian police were brought into the situation. It ultimately ended after he was tasered and he died.
I don't know whose bright idea the taser was, but shocking people is not exactly safe. We do this in the hospital to stop a patients heart from beating.
Yes, he repeatedly refused to obey orders by a law enforcement officer. What is complicated about that?
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