I'm sure most of you guys have heard that Andrew Meyer, a University of Florida student, had been tasered at Kerry forum. The student seemed fine after being tasered by the cops.
This time, on October 14th, taser guns had killed a man. At Vancouver International Airport in Canada, Robert Dziekanski, a Polish first time flyer, had waited at least ten hours at the baggage area, waiting for his mother. Because the mother was not able to go into the baggage area, she could not get the words to him that she was here. The surprising thing is that she was told that her son never arrived at the airport when he clearly did. The man then got frustrated and started to throw computers and desks around until the security finally stuns him which led to his death. You can watch to clip of the man getting tasered (VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED) here: VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED
Although this happened in Canada, we can still see the effect of taser guns.
Should there be stricter laws on police forces/securities/etc. using the taser guns, now we know that it can kill a man? Was it necessary for the securities to taser the Polish man? Did the people who informed the mother that his son did not arrive at fault? What should we ultimately do about taser guns?
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although i don't think tasers are ever a good idea, i guess in certain cases that are threatening to other people's lives or very very serious they are ok. I'm not exactly sure how threatening this man was but from the way it sounds, he was just really frustrated. So in this case i dont think a taser should have been used. The other thing about this incident that shocks me is the fact that they told his mother that he never arrived whereas he did and died in the process.
Some questions come to mind:
How dangerous or threatening must a person be to even come close to being tasered? Also, how long should a threatening person be tasered for in order to prevent such deadly events from occuring?
Here's a story about a UCLA student who was tasered back in 2006: http://www.alternet.org/rights/44455/
According to this article, "nearly 200 people... have died in the last five years after being shot by a Taser stun gun." That doesn't seem like a large number, but they're supposed to be an alternative to guns, so should they really be killing anyone?
There have been numerous deaths from taser guns before this incident, so I'm sure that stricter control of taser gun usage have been discussed. But I believe that it is a fairly efficient way to stop people in their tracks; it's better than shooting them anyways...
I don't care if that guy was waiting 10 hours or 10 days for him mom at the airport. In the video, he was thowing chairs and stuff around, and acting crazy. That isn't right. People shouldn't do that. The police were right in stopping him. We can't judge the actions the police made, since we aren't in their place. If I was a policeman called in to stop a crazy person that I knew nothing about, except that he was a danger to me or others, I probably would have done the same thing. What should the police have done? Waited for him to calm down? No, the guy could have a gun or knife under his shirt, he could jump on top of someone; he could damage more property. I think that response, as tragic as it was, was appropriate.
Since I haven't seen a video of airport employees talking to the mother, I can't make up my mind on that. On the surface, it sounds horrible that they would deny that he was ever there to his mom. But maybe it's not their fault. How are the employees supposed to know that the man who died is related to some random woman in an airport? Maybe they just didn't know. This is just an unfortunate story about an unfortunate situation. I wish he knew English, so this wouldn't have happened.
Well, I think that they should lower the voltage in taser guns. If people are getting killed / severely injured when those taser guns are being employed, then it would be like officers using regular guns and shooting people in the legs/arms to overpower them. I think that either the voltage has to be lowered or there should be some kind of automatic timer that shuts off the taser in a certain span of time to prevent deaths like this.
I have no idea who is at fault in this situation. Of course, the people who told the mother that her son did not arrive contributed to the incident. But things happen; maybe the plane manifest was wrong, or there was a computer glitch. We can't blame them based on what we know right now. Even though the man had been waiting for 10 hours, that is no reason to go around breaking property and acting dangerously around over people.
Before the police used a taser on the man, someone should have tried to communicate with him. It would have been worth the wait to find someone who could translate from Polish to English so that the police and the obviously scared and agitated victim could have understood what was going on between each other.
Acht :( Another depressing story :(
Benji, although I agree with you on the perspective of the police, they should have been more rational. If they had monitored him as well as tried to get more information on what was happening this never would have happened.
And being as you put it in the perspective of the police, try and think of his perspective as well.
If you had just flown somewhere for the first time, ended up in a country where you couldn't speak the language, waited for a seemingly endless time and still had no sight of the person who was supposed to pick you up, wouldn't you become frightened? Scared? Frustrated?
This summer I flew to Costa Rica on what ended up being over a 24 hour trip. When I arrived in Costa Rica, even though I had taken four years of spanish, I felt frightened and confused. The lady who was supposed to pick me up was about a half hour late and I felt absolutely abandoned. I didn't have to wait 10 hours and I spoke some of the language. I can relate to him, but can barely imagine the scope of his fear.
Also, being as it was an international airport, I believe that it was their duty to attempt to have some form communication with him before using their tasers. I completely agree with Kaitlyn. They should've gotten a translator and tried to calm him down before being threatening to him.
I remember that UCLA story that Angela is talking about and my sister told me about. There were some demonstrations at the school when it happened. I’m sort of for and against tasers. I’m for them because they can stun potential dangerous people easily. But I’m against them because of how dangerous they have proved to somewhat be.
But, how can police officers, who are protecting themselves, know whether their harmless or harmful attacker has a weak heart or something that will cause them to die if hit by a taser? So, the taser gun can be good, but I still think there are other ways to stop criminals…sometimes.
But, there are many different instances of when the tasers are used. The taser incident at UCLA was different than the airport incident. The student was tasered at UCLA because he was in the library and refused to show the security officer his UCLA id (you can only use the library with a UCLA id card) because he thought the security officer was racially screening. But, many of the students didn’t blame the security officer because people thought it was really stupid of the guy who was tasered to deliberately do something against school rules and policy. Also, the security officer was only asking for his identification because it’s school policy to show id and he could have posed a real threat. However, I think tasering the guy was a little much. But then again, I don’t know if the man was being aggressive or what.
But in any case, I think tasers have their place as do any other type of police defense weapon. I mean, there have been horrible misunderstandings when police see someone pull something shinny out of their back pocket and shoot them dead because the police officer thinks it’s a weapon (I remember this happened some odd years ago). So, you could make the same case for this as the tasers: that they’re overused and dangerous and are used in wrong situations.
However, we are all humans and all have our own virtues and vice. And even though tasers are dangerous and can kill people, it is a self defense weapon that seduces aggressive attackers. But, I think the main problem is peoples’ ideas of when to use the weapon and which events cause for the use of such a dangerous weapon. So, perhaps, the answer is having more training sessions of when to use the taser guns and other defensive moves, rather than using such a dangerous weapon.
And in the case of the airport taser gun issue, I think the police officers mistook linguistic aggravation for aggressive behavior and should have tried other means of quieting the man instead of just tasering him off the bat.
When I was at Boys State we watched a police officer get tasered by a fellow police officer. The man fell, got up, and continued to talk to us. They do a taser demonstration there every year. From his report, tasers have never been the reason of death, but rather that on the rare occasion they cause an already existing problem in the individual to be affected. I am not saying that tasers are necessarily the best thing, and I for one do not want to be tasered, but I do not think they are horrible in the hands of police officers. I have seen paintball guns used on cops and after forty shots at the man who stood still covering his "private parts" he fell. I have seen the little rubber balls used and they leave a bruise and a welt. I have seen the bean bags used, the same thing happens. Tasers almost always make the victim stop what they are doing and fall to the ground. So when you see a man being a disturbance to the peace and potentially dangerous, if you want to paintball him go ahead I guess. But then what happens if you shoot him in his adams apple or in the mouth and he chokes to death! Oh and I think it is only fair to use facts that represent peace officers using tasers, the man who tasers his best friend for thirty minutes on a bet for one hundred bucks is an unfair statistic to present.
I don't think that procedure control has anything to do with this mishap. I do agree that this guy was wacked but he did not diserve that kind of brutality. I think that it is unfair to be taking the taser's ability to kill anyone under consideration, after all anything can kill someone if used in the right (or arguably the wrong) way.
That being said, let's think for real here, this man's unfortunate death is not his fault nor is it the Canadian Law Enforcement's fault for allowing tasers as a gun alternative. This is the cop's fault. If you listen to his voice he seems as if he is rising to the occaision to use the weapon. He eagerly asks "Can I taser him?" I don't intend to be trying to read minds or anything, so my apologies to that mounty if I got him wrong. To me it sounded like this death was a result of a single act of irresponsibility.
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