Posted on 11/13/2004 1:40:34 PM PST by freepatriot32
MIAMI (Nov. 13) - Miami-Dade police have acknowledged using a stun gun on a second youngster just weeks after subduing a 55-pound first-grader with a 50,000-volt shock.
In the second instance, a 15-year-veteran officer used his Taser to immobilize a 12-year-old girl who was playing hooky from school.
Police Director Bobby Parker defended the decision to shock the 6-year-old boy on Oct. 20 because he was threatening to injure himself with a shard of glass he was holding, but he said Friday that he could not defend the decision to shock the fleeing girl, who was apparently drunk.
According to the incident report, officer William Nelson responded to a complaint that children were swimming in a pool, drinking alcohol and smoking cigars about 11 a.m. on Nov. 5.
Nelson said he noticed the girl was intoxicated and told her to get dressed so he could take her back to school.
"While walking the girl to the police car, she took off running through the parking lot," Nelson wrote in his report.
Nelson, 38, said he chased her and yelled several times for her to stop. Nelson said he pulled out the Taser and fired when the girl began to run into traffic. The electric probes hit the girl in the neck and lower back, immobilizing her with 50,000 volts.
Nelson said he fired "for my safety along with the girl's safety." Paramedics treated the girl, who went home with her mother.
Parker said department policy permits officers to use the Taser to apprehend someone, but he said he expected his officers to use better judgment, especially when police had no plans to arrest someone playing hooky.
The first incident had already exposed the department to more criticism for its use of Tasers, which it has begun distributing in greater numbers to officers.
"The police could have handled this better," said the 6-year-old boy's mother, Kathy Rojas. "They did not have to shoot him."
Parker said that, in light of the disclosure of the second incident, the department will review its policy.
Parents? Plural?
I have this funny feeling that the father of the 12-year-old is long gone.
Yes --- it sounds like these kids are already so bizarre --- I wonder if they're ritalin kids --- they might as well get used to being tasered.
While given the facts as I read them, I don't see any problem with a juvenile delinquent brat getting tased for resisting arrest, I fully agree with you regarding the para-militarization of our police forces. Military and police missions are different and wide separation is necessary in a free society. In other words, no jack booted thugs needed.
No... you have weak, nancy boy cops who cannot deal with a 6 year old child without a 50,000 volt shock.
Overdosed or in a car wreck and dead by 16. Maybe killing someone else's family while she's at it.
"It's cold, rainy and a Saturday. My kids are lucky that I don't have a taser right now.
I'm so tired of refereeing fights that I may just have to leave and go shopping."
Nope. Sorry. You don't understand. They are only "harmless" in the hands of a police officer who uses them on a child.
In YOUR hands they would constitute child abuse and you would be arrested for same.
My mistake, I guess that makes her parents Dr. Phil and Oprah, and the Policeman is Attila the Hun.
I think I failed in my attempt at humor. Unfortunately, that's not unusual.
It's a matter of responsibility if I mess up I get busted. Law enforcement is a Service, they are doing their job. Without it the ants inherit the earth.
Could you please explain in specific detail, step by step, how you would have taken down an angry six-year-old waving around a sharp piece of glass with which he's already cut himself a few times, without using a Taser?
You'd rather have big burly cops snapping his little six-year-old bones and grinding his face into the pavement instead of dropping him with a Taser that leaves no lasting effects?
The kid in question was poised to do himself very serious, lasting injury with a shard of glass - he'd already cut his face near his eye - and stab and slice anyone who got near him.
A Taser isn't "harmless," but compared to severed tendons and arteries, it's about as close to harmless as it comes.
I kinda got a kick out of your comment. . . but then, I used to play with charged capacitors and tesla coils when I was 12.
I didn't have much time for drinking and neckked pool parties during school days at the that age. Maybe I was just a stick in the mud.
oops post 79 was meant for tuffydoodle
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