Posted on 12/13/2012 11:45:40 AM PST by servo1969
NEWTON, Mass.
A local family says a language barrier may have resulted in police using a Taser on a woman after she tried to buy too many iPhones at a local mall. Police, however, say the incident isn't that clear cut.
Xiaojie Li, of Newton, said she is embarrassed by Monday's Pheasant Lane Mall in New Hampshire incident.
"So my mom says she don't know why they called the police, because she doesn't understand what they are talking about," her 12-year-old daughter Jiao Jay said.
Jay said her mother bought two iPhones last Friday, and was told that was the limit. When she took video of others she claimed were buying more, the store manager asked her to leave.
The confrontation involving the Taser happened when Li went to the store on Monday to pick up two iPhones she ordered online.
"The management of the store asked us to have her removed. The officer approached her, told her she wasn't welcome in the store, and she refused to leave," Nashua Police Capt. Bruce Hansen said.
Police say the store had issued a stay-away order against Li.
"Two days prior to that, she had been asked to leave the store by store personnel for doing something that they didn't want," Hansen said, referring to Li's photographing other customers in the store.
A video posted on YouTube shows Li and police officers on the floor outside the Apple store at the Nashua mall. The crackle of the Taser and Li's screams can be heard on the video.
"She was scared, she didn't understand," said John Hugo, who said he was Li's fiance'. "I was outraged. You go into a store, and you end up getting brutalized by the police."
Hansen said the woman had been resisting arrest for about 15 minutes before a second officer arrived at the scene.
"So then the police took my mom's phone and tried to take my mom's bag. And my mom tried to ask them why, and they just threw her to the ground," Jay said.
The 44-year-old mother of two was charged with trespassing and resisting arrest.
"My mom feel really upset with what they did," Jay said.
Nashua police see the situation differently.
"She wasn't mistreated in any way. If she left the store when she was told to leave the store, it would've been done at that. She was told she was under arrest after repeatedly being told to leave the store. She didn't submit to the arrest. The officer used the Taser on her to get her to submit to the arrest," Hansen said.
According to Nashua police policy, Tasers may be used "when the subject has signaled his/her intention to actively resist arrest in an aggressive, hostile manner or when a need arises to incapacitate a dangerous, combative, or high risk subject where other use of force techniques exposes the officer, the subject or the public to unnecessary danger, or when other force techniques have been or may be ineffective."
The policy continues, "The weapon is a level of force normally required to overcome passive, defensive, or offensive resistance that is intended as an act of overt aggression toward the officer where an individual refuses to comply with verbal instructions."
Li will be in court in January.
Confirming my conviction that no matter how dire the situation, you can always make it worse by adding a cop.
“A customer wants to buy $800 worth of your product so you kick her out and she gets tazered by the cops you called.”
A strange summary of the incident. You left out a few steps.
Your choice of conjunction, “so”, is misleading. Did you do that intentionally?
“So” means “for this reason”. They didn’t kick her out because she wanted to buy $800 worth of stuff. They kicked her out because she wouldn’t stop taking pictures of other customers. Oops, when I re-read the story, I saw that she supposedly took VIDEO of other customers. That happens to be illegal in NH unless she got their permission. But they only asked her to leave.
I’ve taken pictures of stuff in that store. The staff asked me to make sure there were no customers in the pictures. They were polite about it. They didn’t ask me to leave.
So I suspect this woman did SOMETHING fairly extreme to get banned from the store... a heck of a lot more than wanting to buy $800 worth of stuff.
Then she came back 2 days later. Then she wouldn’t leave when the manager asked her to leave. Then she wouldn’t leave when the police asked her to leave. Wouldn’t leave when the police said they’d arrest her if she stayed. Argued with the police for 15 minutes. At some point she was actually under arrest, and she STILL put up a fight.
I don’t know what went wrong here. Maybe she didn’t understand English very well. Maybe she lost control of her temper. Maybe she took a swing at an officer. Maybe she’s blameless, maybe not. I hope she gets a sensible judge.
I don’t see any evidence that the store staff or manager behaved like some kind of evil ogres. You keep suggesting that they are racist, or anti-foreigner, but I’ve seen them bend over backwards to accommodate people of every sort.
I think your preconceptions are leading you to bend the story to fit an agenda. And I DON’T think you are funny.
“Cop went for her bag ~ no cultural misunderstanding there. TSA agents get caught doing that all the time ~ whatever new merchandise you have in there is going to be gone.”
When they arrest someone, don’t they always take custody of their stuff? Are you saying it’s ok to resist arrest because the cops might (and in a fraction of cases, do) steal your stuff?
Again, you selectively take facts from a particular event and arrange them to grind one of your favorite axes. The leap from a woman getting arrested and tasered in front of an Apple store to the misdeads of some TSA agents — that’s uncommonly athletic “logic”.
Working deductively here, based on real life and knowledge of the caliber off folks Apple hires into their management positions, this is all about the warranty.
“There’s probably an app for that.”
A “Taser App.” The comedic potential alone is worth it.
When she came back to the store that was to pick up 2 more i-phones ~ that she’d purchased over the internet ~ see: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_iphone ~ where it says ‘buy online, pick up in store’ ~ http://www.apple.com/retail/iphone/ should also bring you up to date on identification requirements at Apple ~ they ask! Reading through the Apple site i don’t see where she did anything wrong except to let the store manager know she saw his clerks selling other people more than 2 machines at a time. As i said, this is an Apple store, this is a typical Apple manager, it’s all about the warranty and i you get tazered for not buying into the Apple mystique, so what eh!
What are you freaking talking about? Put down the bottle and step away from the keyboard.
Here is the Criminal Trespass law in NH:
Section 635:2
635:2 Criminal Trespass.
I. A person is guilty of criminal trespass if, knowing that he is not licensed or privileged to do so, he enters or remains in any place.
II. Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor for the first offense and a class B felony for any subsequent offense if the person knowingly or recklessly causes damage in excess of $1,500 to the value of the property of another.
III. Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor if:
(a) The trespass takes place in an occupied structure as defined in RSA 635:1, III; or
(b) The person knowingly enters or remains:
(1) In any secured premises;
(2) In any place in defiance of an order to leave or not to enter which was personally communicated to him by the owner or other authorized person; or
(3) In any place in defiance of any court order restraining him from entering such place so long as he has been properly notified of such order.
IV. All other criminal trespass is a violation.
V. In this section, "secured premises'' means any place which is posted in a manner prescribed by law or in a manner reasonably likely to come to the attention of intruders, or which is fenced or otherwise enclosed in a manner designed to exclude intruders.
VI. In this section, "property,'' "property of another,'' and "value'' shall be as defined in RSA 637:2, I, IV, and V, respectively.
Source. 1971, 518:1. 1979, 377:7. 2005, 125:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2006. 2010, 239:2, eff. July 1, 2010.
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