For the last week or so, there has been all kinds of hysteria over the City’s plans to acquire tasers for every officer in the SPPD. There’s a small but vocal crowd who are opposed to tasers on philosophical grounds, calling them instruments of “torture”, and who apparently think that the British model of modern-day policing - “Please stop, or I shall have to ask you to please stop again” - actually, um, works. The majority of critics seem to be anarchists (of course) with persecution complexes (of course), who seem to feel that tasers are going to be used against them when they engage in obscure acts of apparently symbolic protest against all the worlds’ evils at the RNC convention this coming September.
While the unwashed hordes concoct ersatz defenses against these “lethal weapons”, it’s worth pointing out - to the handful of interested parties who aren’t CP members, or who have bathed in the last week - that tasers are hardly the fearsome tools of mass oppression they’re being made out to be. They are single-use devices, effective against a single individual to a range of perhaps twenty feet. They’re also way, way up the “use of force” scale; below firearms but above batons (I think.) I hate to let reason and facts get in the way of a good bit of misplaced outrage, but odds are very, very good that the only demonstrators tasers are going to be used on are those individuals who are (predictably) actively, violently resisting arrest.
Tasers aren’t crowd-control weapons. If “the Man” wants to distribute pain and misery to the masses, he’s already got the tools - crude ones like fire hoses and water cannons, old friends with two-letter nicknames like OC, CN, and CS, the ever-popular array of “less lethal” munitions like pepperballs, rubber bullets, and beanbag rounds, and newer, high-tech gadgets like the LRAD.
Denver police have tasers - about as many as St. Paul does, and they’ve even had someone die after being zapped by one, unlike St. Paul. Yet no anarchists seem terribly concerned about getting their neurons scrambled in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains. Might that be because Colorado activists are a little bit more “reality-based” than their Minnesota counterparts? Or simply because the folks out West are able to go a month without being at the center of some new, largely made-up personal drama? (Don’t answer that; it’s a rhetorical question.)
Look, kids, it’s really quite simple. Tasers look like guns, work a bit like cattle prods, are somewhat dangerous, and even more scary. That’s sort of the point. You’re supposed to be scared of them. (You’re also sort of expected to be capable of rational decision-making, and modify your behaviour as a result of said fears, but…) Can’t you see that all this hysteria is what they want you to feel? Police officers could “subdue” you by smothering you with a large stuffed pig… but, really, what rational person is going to be afraid of a pig?
4 responses so far ↓
Robert Dziekański // Feb 24, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Hey Genius, or whatever your name is-
A lot of people are getting sick of your silly little uninformed rants. You’ve got it all backwards. The folks who are standing up to the hypocrisy and violence in this so-called “democracy” by coming to the Twin Cities and speaking their minds aren’t intimidated by tasers themselves. If they were intimidated by the militarized police and their stable of “sometimes less-than lethal” weapons, they wouldn’t be coming!
No, instead they’re concerned for all the locals who will be brutalized by the police and their shiny new handheld torture devices. You see, it’s becoming clear that police like to use tasers in lieu of even talking to people in many situations. The LAST thing these pigs need is easier access to unpredictable, lethal weaponry.
Oh, and did you bother to research WHERE the police found the money for these new tasers? They admit that it’s “seized drug money”, but what they’re slightly less vocal about is that the money was headed for summer programs for Twin City kids. So instead of spending $210,000 on summer programs to help give local kids something to do besides getting themselves into trouble all summer (and it seems like that amount of money could have gone pretty far if applied to summer programs), they’re buying weapons with it. “But moments before, a move intended to reroute the money and spend it on summer crime prevention programs failed 4-3. Council Member Lee Helgen authored the move, and Carter and Council Member Russ Stark backed it.” Does that sound responsible to you?
You probably should have done some research before making yourself feel good with your usual verbal diarrhea routine, but that’s irrelevant now. In the hope of helping to keep you from making yourself look like an ass yet again, here’s some really basic recommended reading for you (copyright violation and boring blather deleted - ed.)
someone // Feb 26, 2008 at 12:29 am
Dear pseudonymous, copyright-infringing asshat;
If you don’t like it, don’t read it. It’s really quite simple. Heaven forbid someone dare to criticize - or, worse yet, poke fun at - the noble activists of the anarchist fringe and their manufactured dramas, huh?
Ironically, amid all your bothersome name-calling, you’ve managed to be wrong not once, but twice - first, when you state the gross untruth that (evidently thin-skinned) activists are “concerned for all the locals who will be brutalized by the police and their shiny new handheld torture devices”. Anarchists, like every other special-interest group, look out for Number One first and foremost: their (and your) peculiar brand of enlightened (?) self-interest leaves little room for “concern” for those not in ideological lockstep - a majority that, propaganda-esque rhetoric aside, includes those “locals” whose fate you’d like to pretend to care about.
Second, you say the seized drug money in question “was headed” for summer programs, and accuse me of not having done research. The money, like all seized assets (or the proceeds thereof) is part of the SPPD’s general fund, used to augment their city tax-based funding. It was never “headed” for any summer program; that was an alternate proposal made after the taser issue was raised, not before.
Does it sound responsible? Sure. It’s there for the police - excuse me, pigs - to use, as they see fit. They could probably have used money allocated for RNC security expenses for the tasers - but that would just confirm everybody’s worst fears, wouldn’t it? Of course, heaven forbid, if they actually are telling the truth, and really aren’t getting the tasers for crowd-control at the RNC (a situation for which they’re spectacularly ill-suited), then spending RNC-connected money on them would be wrong - something I’ll just take the opportunity to once again point out you’re probably quite familiar with.
But, hey, why let some pesky facts stand in the way of a good bit of angstful outrage, eh?
Solidarity Please // May 11, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Whoa,
I must be at the wrong place. I was informed that this site was a good source of information about the RNC protests but apparently it just serves as a place for leftists to attack each other. Come on, show some solidarity.
We need to be supporting each other not tearing ourselves apart. Leave the angry rants about RNC protesters to the right wing.
Person who hates anarchists: Get over it. There are anarchists. And right now, they’re on YOUR SIDE. That doesn’t mean you can’t criticize them (you do make some good points about tasers being bad for crowd control), but the name calling is rediculous. Also, anarchists have a long history of special abuse by police (I even know a cop who proudly admits this) and have good reason to be a little paranoid.
Robert Dziekanski: You may have some good points but insulting people and name-calling isn’t going to get them across.
Can we please remember that it is the right wing we’re supposed to oppose and not fellow leftists who do things in a different manner? If we’re busy destroying ourselves, that means the right-wing needs to spend less time trying do destroy us and more time fucking up the world.
So, please, please, save your anger for the RNC.
Oops // May 11, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Okay, now I feel like an idiot.
Apparently, I had read the few anti-RNC articles and assumed this was an anti-RNC website.
I thought that this article was just misdirected frustration but apparently it is somebody who actually is just full of himself.
I’m sorry, Robert. It’s one thing to play nice with frustrated leftists with misplaced anger but playing nice with people who just go out of their way to attack other people actually standing up for their rights is another.
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