I have pointed this out, once or twice. Given the opportunity, there are police officers out there that can screw up a box of rocks with a rubber mallet. Case in point:
https://www.rgj.com/story/news/local/2019/10/23/siskiyou-county-family-weed-man-burned-police-stun-gun-fire-speaks-out-mental-health-training/4058122002/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark
A suicidal man doses himself with a flammable liquid. He then produces a cigarette lighter and threatens to go out in a blaze of glory. The family, well aware that the guy is a suicidal wacko, calls the police.
A cop shows up and is unable to persuade the wacko to drop the lighter. He resorts to his Taser. The company, the police department and numerous examples broadcast on the Internet all assure this officer that the Taser is non-lethal. It is.
Unfortunately basic physics was not part of the officer’s training. Either he didn’t know or overlooked the fact that an ignition source and a flammable liquid produce fire. Boy was he surprised! Not half as surprised as the wacko.
The extra crispy wacko survived to make it to the hospital. The betting line seems to be that when he leaves, it will be feet first.
Now everybody is mad at the cop. I’m not excusing him, but he is only the catalyst in a long line of failures. The so called victim has a long history of mental health issues. This implies some type of interaction with mental health practitioners. Where were they? I guess the wacko could have suddenly twisted. I am going to take a slightly wild assed guess (SWAG) that the wacko started acting out long before he took a bath in flammable liquids. The family stood by, ” Oh that’s just wacko, being wacko.”
The Dynamic Man Syndrome
It’s a funny thing about cops. Put them in a situation and most will try to handle it, qualified or not, properly equipped or not. I call it the “dynamic man syndrome.” It can be exacerbated by ignorance, ego and organizational culture. Two examples:
I once had to restrain a rookie officer from wading out to a stranded vehicle stuck in a low water crossing. There wasn’t any indication that the vehicle was occupied, or that anybody needed rescuing. The water was already up to the roof line of the car and flowing pretty fast. The rookie had no flotation device and didn’t know how to swim.
After ballistic vests had become fairly standard in law enforcement, Texas DPS decided to order vests for its troopers. The specifications DPS dictated increased the costs of the vests significantly.
Ballistic vests come with a front and back panel. DPS insisted on vests with only a front panel. Half the protection, twice the cost. The DPS rationale. DPS troopers don’t run and therefore don’t need the back protection.
The family is complaining that the cop who lit the wacko on fire should have negotiated the lighter away from him. Think about that for a moment. On the one hand, the family damns the officer for not knowing that electrical sparks and volatile liquids don’t mix. Yet, they expect that he possesses the mental acuity to calm a suicidal wacko and win him over with rhetoric. They can’t have it both ways.
Police Training for Taser
Here is the manufacturer’s description of the training they provide police officers.
TASER Conducted Energy Weapon (CEW) Basic Instructor Course
Axon (manufacturer)
This course provides the basic operational theory and practical training to instruct users to reasonably safely and effectively operate TASER CEWs. This course covers the TASER X26P, X2 and the new TASER 7 CEWs, and will certify those who successfully complete the course as TASER basic instructors for a period of 2 years from the date of certification. This course is open to sworn law enforcement officers, military personnel, and licensed professional security employees. Part 1 of the courses is completed online. Part 2 consists of practical training and final certification (all attending students are required to attend 1 day in class; there is no separate recertification version).
When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
I was involved in police training for thirty years. I taught subjects that ran the gambit from theory, law, practical application and skills. The skills training included firearms, defensive tactics, tactical approach and physical arrest.
One weakness in police training, that I saw, was the gap between the legal, psychological, people skills and the building of physical skills, shooting, handcuffing, hand to hand, baton, and down and dirty fighting. The firearms instructor’s first concern wasn’t the why but the ability to hit a target a large percentage of the time. The same followed for most other physical skills.
It wasn’t that these instructors didn’t care about the overall context. It was that they had a limited amount of time to accomplish their task. They relied on the fact that other instructors had filled in the blanks to form a complete picture. It was up to the individual student to take all the disparate pieces and fit them together, like a jigsaw puzzle. Experience shows some people excel at assembling jigsaw puzzles and others are abject failures. So it is with police training.
The training offered by the company that makes Taser may be adequate enough that a user is less likely to shoot themselves, but it does nothing to prepare the user for myriad situations they will face in the real world.
I played with Tazers in a training environment. I have never carried one or used one in an enforcement situation.
I have seen a variety of videos, news reports and U-tube offerings where a Taser was deployed, apparently within policy and legal guidelines. In a lot of those situations, I wouldn’t have used it.
The typical situation where I wouldn’t use a Taser or at least not at the point where it was deployed usually involved a belligerent drunk. As the scenario plays out the drunk says the secret word. Hand waving is optional.
In this case the secret word is a phrase: “I’m gonna kick your ass!” Next thing the drunk knows, he is rolling on the floor and pissing on himself. Okay, “I’m gonna kick your ass,” accompanied by arm waving, to the uninitiated, might sound like a threat. This is what the Taser crowd is hanging their hats on.
To an old school cop, “I’m gonna kick your ass!” has an entirely different meaning. It is shorthand for: “I’m drunk and I screwed up. I know I’m going to jail. I need to make this face saving gesture so my bro’s and ho’s won’t look down on me. Please don’t hurt me and I’ll be cool once we’re outta here!”
Snatch an arm bounce him off a wall or the hood of a Buick, 1,2,3 and a hooey and it’s off to jail we go. It’s nothing personal, just work.
All and all it is a good deal for the family. They get rid of a broken family member and automatic entry into the Ghetto Lottery.
