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Monday, November 15, 2004

More on Tasers

On Friday, I blogged about Miami cops tasering a six-year-old. Well, they doubled their offense later, tasering a 12-year-old girl.
Miami-Dade County Police are reviewing their policy on using Tasers after officers stunned two children with the weapons in the past few weeks.
...
The more recent of the two incidents occurred November 5, when a 12-year-old girl who was skipping school was found drinking and smoking in a swimming pool, Miami-Dade police officer William Nelson stated in an incident report. He said he responded to an anonymous call about the activities.

He said he told the girl he was taking her to school. As they walked to the police car, she ran away.

"I advised her to stop several times," he said in the report. She "continued running even to the point of starting to run into lanes of traffic."

Nelson said he used the Taser for his and the girl's safety, striking her in the base of the neck and lower right back.
His safety? A 12-year-old girl is running away from you and you nail her with 50,000 volts for your safety? So much for big macho cops, I guess. And if she was running into lanes of traffic, incapacitating her with a taser made it much more likely that she'd get hit by a car. So much for her safety.

Zeynep has a lengthy post on Tasers. Excerpt:
Records kept by Taser International of Scottsdale show that as of six months ago, two 1-year-olds, one 2-year-old, two 3-year-olds, two 4-year-olds, one 5-year-old, one 6-year-old and one 7-year-old had been hit with Tasers...
[Update] Bob Harris has a poll on the subject of tasering kids:

What should Miami police use on unruly children instead of 50,000-volt tasers?