Police Taser Drunk Fan Who Heckled Tiger Woods At Golf Tournament

A drunken American who heckled Tiger Woods at a major golf tournament was Tasered by police when he refused to stop. Travis Parmelee yelled abuse at the shamed golfer at the second round of the Players Championship, close to the 11th hole in Sawgrass, Florida. The 36-year-old resisted attempts to calm down and became increasingly belligerent – which led to officers zapping him with a 50,000 volt stun gun.

Travis Parmelee is handcuffed and arrested after being Tasered by police for heckling Tiger Woods at the Players Championship in Sawgrass, Florida. Parmelee was charged with disorderly intoxication and resisting arrest at the event, which marks one of Woods' first public forays back into golf Parmelee was charged with disorderly intoxication and resisting arrest without violence.

Captain Dave Messenger says Parmelee had been drinking. The arrest comes four days after a Philadelphia police officer used a stun gun on a teenager dashing through the outfield during a Phillies baseball game at Citizens Bank Park. The use of a Taser on Parmalee comes just four days after a fan received the same treatment from police for running through the pitch during a Philadelphia baseball game

The taser operates by delivering an electrical shock that is (1) inherently painful and (2) designed to debilitate the person by disruption of neuromuscular function.

Yes. I know. As an instructor for the device, I have been exposed to it numerous times. I know exactly what it does and how it feels.

Both functions occur simultaneously, and are inseparable from each other in its use. A taser cannot be used to cause pain without also causing neuromuscular disruption.

You are incorrect. A TASER can be used in drive stun mode to cause localized pain without the incapacitation. It is the probe mode (shooting the darts) that causes the incapacitation.

Its function is therefore fundamentally consistent with the cattle prod insofar as it induces involuntary pain compliance from the target, and differs only insofar as it uses technology to obtain this compliance with an additional neuromuscular disruption.

Incorrect. firstly, it does not "induce involuntary pain compliance" in drive stun mode. As a matter fact, most cops avoid drive stunning (the "cattle prod" affect) because it only further exacerbates the incident by causing the suspect resist even more.

When the TASER is used in probe mode, its purpose is to bring a combative subject under control....not compliance. Compliance is voluntarily given.

The electricity delivered through the probes has a very specific purpose, to override the subject's motor nervous system thus rendering him unable to violently resist. The current only affects the muscle mass between the probes. The TASER is not an "electroshock torture" device. It successfully ends violent encounters very quickly without injury to those involved on a daily basis all over the country. Of course, it isn't those incidents that make the news.

I have been in innumerable fights with assaultive or combative individuals who violently resisted arrest. I'm talking about dangerous felons. This was long before I knew what a TASER was. In many of those incidents either I was injured, the suspect was injured or my partners were injured. If I had a TASER back then, nearly all of these fights would have been ended very quickly without injury to anyone.

I'm not sure what your life experiences are and I will do you the courtesy of not making assumptions. Perhaps there is much you don't understand or you are completely unaware of. Given your following posts, I will accept that you refuse to see my point of view. That's fine.

Again, it is very appropriate and necessary to debate the misuse of the device on a case by case basis without overreaction and misunderstanding about the merits of the device.

A TASER can be used in drive stun mode to cause localized pain without the incapacitation.

...in which case it would be functioning as an electroshock stun gun. But you're really just dancing around the issue at hand - the bottom line is that the Taser is a device that uses electrical shock to cause both pain and neuromuscular incapacitation. It's various hi-tech "modes" and "features" in delivering this shock are wholly secondary to the nature of what it is - a shock device. To speak of it as a device for "control" rather than "compliance" is really just the parsing of words because the effect is essentially the same - to coerce or coercively apprehend an unwilling subject. And that is done in a way that is inherently pain-inducing, even at its most limited settings.

And as a painful, debilitating, and occasionally deadly shock device, the Taser shares a common origin and nature with such other historical law enforcement "tools" such as the cattle prod and electroshock torture. In fact the ONLY differentiating feature is that those earlier inventions used a more primitive and less versatile technology in delivering the shock...which makes the Taser, as I originally said, little more than a hi-tech cattle prod.

As to the propriety of its use, I find arguments in favor of its convenience, ease of use, and even its relative (though certainly not flawless) record of safety unconvincing not for the reason that I doubt the favor the Taser has among police officers - they are clearly fans of the device given how widespread it has become. The fault with the Taser is the Taser itself by way of its means of operation through electrical shock. The civilized parts of the world deemed electrical shock for the purpose of inducing pain, compliance, control, or whatever term it is that such coercive acts go by to be inherently barbaric. Dressing up barbarism in technology and praising its convenience does not alter the fact of its barbaric origin.

It successfully ends violent encounters very quickly without injury to those involved on a daily basis all over the country.

That of course depends on the definition of injury. I would argue that the piercing of the skin with two electrode prongs fired from a projectile device, the subsequent burning of those contusions by passing electricity through those prongs, and the likely direct result of the victim falling to the ground as a result of the muscle disruptions caused by that electricity may all be classified as an "injury." Perhaps a minor one, but an injury still.

And I would also contend that those minor injuries must be weighed along side the infrequent but indisputably known instances of the Taser inducing deadly injury among persons with certain preexisting cardiovascular conditions.

It is therefore inaccurate to portray the Taser, even in is most minor and routine uses, as an injury free device. Being convenient and relatively safe to use does not mean it isn't also inherently painful, or that its use isn't inherently coercive.

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