Writing Life

According to CNN a study done by the city of Houston showed that 67 percent of suspects tasered by police were black. The study was commissioned by the mayor back in 2006 and was just released this past Monday. The article quotes Executive Assistant Police Chief Charles McClelland, who said “It’s not a racial issue. A Taser device is no different from a radar gun. It’s race neutral.”

This is one of the most pathetic and untrue explanations I’ve ever heard. A radar gun is used at a large distance where an officer can’t necessarily see into the vehicle being targeted. Depending on the technology used in the radar gun, it’s got a range from 1/4 mile up to 2 miles. That’s certainly not the same as a taser, which has a maximum range of about 35 feet in police models and about 15 feet in consumer models. Deciding to use a taser can be race neutral, but this report seems to poke large holes in that point of view.

Compounding this racial component, the study “also found that no policy exists as to how many times a Taser may be used on an individual.” Tasers are not non-lethal toys; they’re weapons that can and have caused unnecessary deaths of individuals.

We need more studies like this, here in Maryland and in every jurisdiction that uses these lethal weapons. Racial profiling in traffic stops was disregarded until studies showed it was true. Death penalty cases also are skewed toward minorities and the poor. Studies like this can help shine a light on these modern problems and push those who say there is no problem to confront the true reality.

A Minnesota man was tasered and killed by state troopers during the aftermath of a traffic accident on I-694. Police say he was “uncooperative” but would not elaborate on what that exactly meant. The trooper was put on leave and an investigation is planned. I’d like to echo what Amnesty International’s Midwest director Dori Dinsmore said in response to more than 290 tasers deaths in the United States: “We believe that they should be used as an alternative to lethal force, not as a tool to ensure routine compliance.”

For US Presidential
* Barack Obama wins Dem nomination
* Democrats win White House
* Rudy Giuliani loses nomination battle

For US Congress
* Eric Massa wins NY-29 seat
* Dems win more Senate seats (a given)
* Dems win more House seats (pretty certain)

For Maryland
* Equality continues to grow for transgendered persons (expanding this)
* Death penalty ban passed by State Assembly
* More progressive tax changes

For Howard County
* End/curtail police taser program after January
* Successful modernization of Downtown Columbia
* Making the county affordable for all who live/work here

For me
* Full-time fiction writing
* Contracts with one House and one Senate candidate
* Continued work with awesome local official

I saw this piece from Daytona Beach about another taser incident. No one died in this confrontation, but it appears the officer jumped the gun, as it were, in deploying her taser. Verbal noncompliance is cause for being shot with 50,000 volts of electricity? This is insane. There has to be another way. In fact, before tasers, there was. No one would have condoned shooting this customer with a bullet-filled gun. So, why would it seem okay to shoot her with an electricity-filled gun. Shouldn’t peace officers work to diffuse situations rather than escalate them?

The Frederick County affiliate of the NAACP has launched a petition drive to call for an investigation into the taser death of one man and another incident involving a high school student being tasered. You can find the petition at their website.

Frederick police held a news briefing yesterday about Jarrel Gray, the man who died after being tasered several times by police officers during an early morning fight. (Just to be clear, the fight wasn’t between the man and the officers, it was a neighborhood fight.) The Gazette newspaper published a piece on the press conference. The police are still investigating whether or not the taser use was justified and there’s another investigation into the man’s death. They’re hoping to have some conclusions in the next few weeks.

But something in the above article, as well as a wire report snippet in today’s Washington Post, struck me wrong. To quote the Gazette piece:

Preliminary toxicology reports show that Gray had no narcotics in his system, but his blood-alcohol level was .18. The Maryland legal limit for intoxication is .08 if driving a vehicle.

Now, as I noted above, Mr. Gray was in a fight that police came to break up. He wasn’t driving. Nor had he been driving, nor was he in a car, nor was he about to get into a car, nor was he planning on getting in the car.

It’s fair and good reporting to mention blood alcohol content, but these news reports immediately pair (or should I say impair) it with driving under the influence. Communities seem pretty uniform in their distaste for and denunciation of those who drink and drive. Through simple word play, the writers have subtly framed up Mr. Gray as an undeserving drunk driver instead of someone who drank too much that night but wasn’t driving before or after the incident. They’ve set him up as an unsavory character by definition, rather than investigating (a) the details of what happened, which have changed when reporting how many times the taser was fired, and (b) whether the situation warranted such a rise in escalation as to shoot the man with a taser gun.

One of the most liberal places in Maryland, and the country, Takoma Park City Council and its Mayor approved adding 16 tasers to the police force. Kudos to Free State Politics for this tip:

the council and Mayor Porter unanimously approved the police department’s request to purchase with grant money 16 new Tasers, which will enable all future patrols to be armed with them.

I’m not sure if tasers have been used here (as they have been in Frederick County), but if/once they are, I’m sure there will be some concern raised in the community.

As I’ve posted before, I’m most upset about the escalation of force in using a taser. As they become more popular and ubiquitous, the probability that an officer will use a taser goes through the roof. It will lessen the chance of talking through a situation, even though that requires a more concerted effort by the police.

Ok, if you live or ever plan to drive in Utah, you really want to read this article. Utah officials, responding to this incident, have said that the officer felt threatened and acted reasonably. If you watched the video (from the officer’s patrol car dashboard camera), I don’t think you can even remotely say that the officer was threatened in any way, shape or form.

I don’t have much information on this story from Ohio, but I wonder if Utah officials would think this was reasonable too? And what’s there take on the death of someone tasered in Maryland. Also see this blog post I did for more back story.