Park Ranger Girl tasers man in the back for... walking his dogs

[scootrd]

  People do get irrational in regards to their pets.

I know I can at times.
I regard my pets as part of our family.

Our Dog, (My ol Girl) now passed away,  was a great protector of our other farm animals.  A few years ago we had a guy cutting through our back property without asking permission, when she alerted on him and drove off into the woods to confront, he must have kicked her, before I got there. I heard her yelp , but didn't realize her rib was broke
until later after the conversation between him and I took place regarding asking for permission next time.

If I had known her rib was broke at the time , I;m absolutely positive I would have become quite "Irrational" and that initial conversation would have been more of a confrontation and that outcome would have been quite different.

That was quite an expensive trip to the vet, and I know that rib aggravated her for may years after especially in cold weather.

[jlwilliams]

  I read up on cases of self defense.  You can learn a lot from others' experiences, both from the incident itself and from the ensuing court case.  Anyway, one I read about last year was a hiker who was attacked by a pitbull.  He shot the dog.  That lead to the dog's owner attacking the guy and the dog's owner also being shot.  The main thing I got from the story was not to make the stupid statements the guy made in court (he carried a 10mm because he was taught that it was better to kill an attacker so they don't testify against you.  No need for them to testify when you make those statements against yourself on the stand)  As a side lesson we learn that if you have to shoot a dog you may be in a life and death fight with a dog owner.
 
  Dogs fatally attack people more than any other animal in North America (except bees, but that's kind of a different category of animal attack)  Still, dog lovers will often take any example and twist it to be not the dog's fault.  Maybe the victim showed fear, so it's the victim's fault.  Maybe the dog's owner is mean to him, so it's not the dog's fault.  Whatever.  I love my dog too, but the fact is that dogs are dangerous.  This whole Doggy Dude vs Ranger Girl confrontation stems from that simple fact.  Leash laws exist because dogs are dangerous.  Dog people scoff at leash laws because they seem to feel that dogs should run free.  Leash laws are an infringement on the rights of Canine Americans.  Bla Bla Bla.  None of this side track on my part has anything to do with wether or not she over reacted.  My point is that people get all sorts of irrational over their pets and there are good reasons for leash laws.  Neither this Tazing nor the shooting I mention before would have happened if people were more responsible for their dogs. 

[BUGEYE]

Was watching an episode of "cops" filmed in portland Or. where a bad-guy put his hand on the shoulder of a lady cop.  a man cop took him down and the lady cop jumped into the fray with her tazer and kept zapping him and saying over and over, I'll teach you to put your hands on me!!
I started to feel kinda sorry for the bad-guy, but at the same time, it was kinda funny.

[Cuts Crooked]

I notice the article above carefully avoids mention what percentage that is of total uses .

[Cuts Crooked]

I also have to wonder how many lives tasers have saved........how many got tased and jailed, instead of shot and killed?

[BUGEYE]

Hey bugeye...I wouldn't think it was funny_ _even if it happened to you...Just joshin ya..
I think this weapon is pretty serious business, particularly with the LEO mentality we are seeing more and more of....
 

I notice the article above carefully avoids mention what percentage that is of total uses .

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A point, but does it matter? Probably 500 more killed by tasers, than before they issued them...
BTW, cause of death is a funny thing on a death certificate as you know....data could be much higher tazer implicated causes. But yes I would like to see the detailed data.
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TM7

A tazer would probably cause my defibrillator to fire and the double whammy would kill me.
I very carefully avoid confrontations with cops.
I think a tazer has it's uses.  some people are just too violent to subdue with normal tactics, so taze'em or shoot'em.  I don't think the ranger in question should have zapped the dog-guy unless he was being threatening.

[Cuts Crooked]

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OK sure, we need to drill down on this and find out. And also finding out if  tazers just lead to more charges and jailing unto themselves. Afterall, once that tazer is pulled out and fired...the citizen HAS to be charged with something; otherwise tazer use would be unjustified and an assault with a potentially lethal weapon.....so in this tazer age we need to look closer at this weapon and consider all the implications.
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..TM7

Too bad......but a taser is still considered to be "less than lethal" by the courts. Doesn't matter one iota how folks here feel about it, that's the reality.

BTW, I've been tased twice, no one got charged with anything, not even me! (well I guess I did get "charged"  ) Here's the other reality a "Lethal weapon" can be anything almost, even a left handed monkey wrench can be called a lethal weapon.......it depends on how it's used! Heck, even a piece of velcro is a "potentially lethal weapon".

[jlwilliams]

  I think that the Tazer has it's place but I agree that it's over used and the danger is under rated by some who use it.
 
  A week ago I went to a funeral for a 20 year old man who's mother is a friend of my family.  He was mentally ill, called the police because he wanted some help (details are scetchy but it's all over the news.  Happened in Portsmouth, RI if you care to google it.) The police arrived to find this big guy flipping out.  They restrained him until he was dead.  According to his mother they held him down and he couldn't breath.  I haven't spoken to her in any detail (I can't bring myself to ask any details) and the case is as yet still unfolding.  The RI State Police haven't finished their investigation.  Anyway, this whole incident is stunning to say the least.  For me, seeing him in a casket and knowing he was the same age as my daughter was overwealming.  Thinking about what happened leaves me wondering a lot of things, not the least of those being what could the police have done differently.  Should they have used a Tazer?  In what way did they restrain him?  As yet there are no answers, just questions.  The police aparently didn't try to resessitate when he went unconcous.  No one has been charged, or even suspended.  I'm sure the police didn't set out to kill him, but he was alive until they laid hands on him.  In RI we have had an inordinate number of people die of police beatings in the last few years.  Westerly police were recently cleared of wrong doing in the death of a guy who they arrested for drunk and disorderly and died of head trauma in their lockup.  West Warwick police were cleared after beating a mentally ill man to death a couple years ago (4 cops beat a vagrant to death, aparently he was resisting arrest and none of the four could get a restraint on him)  It's a small place but in the last few years we have had more blunt trauma death by police than seems fitting the number of people in the population.  Those are only the ones I can think of without looking anything up, there are more.  Would Tazering lead to less beating deaths?  Or would it lead to more Tazer deaths?  I can't help but think we have a systemic problem not a hardware problem.
 
  The cop who used repeated Tazering to "Teach you to touch me!" should lose her job and be prosecuted.  Charging the guy with assault is what "teaches a lesson", not having pain inflicted by the cop/judge/jury/executioner on the scene.  that's a prime example of the authority intoxication that gives police a bad name.  It's not her place to 'teach him a lesson' and her belief to the contrary is frightening.  She'd fit right in around here.