Woman tasered while filming police offers arresting man

[SkullKing]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...f-another-man/

Alegedly this cops tasered a woman for filming them, and then erased the video from her cell phone. Video later recovered from her cloud account.

The cops accused the woman of trying to run over them.

[s_stabeler]

one small problem I have- from what I read, she was in a car that was stopped in traffic. So she probably shouldn't have been recording. ( even if the traffic is stopped, you SHOULD be paying attention to the road ahead, so you can move off again ASAP.) HOWEVER, at most that's a ticket, I believe. (oh, and before Greenday chimes in saying she was tased for trying to run over an officer- a) by the time she was tased, she was restrained on the floor. It is not an officer's job to administer punishment- excepting issuing tickets-just to arrest an offender. b) the charges relating to that have already been dropped, presumably because I highly doubt (not having watched the video) the video shows the car moving in any way.)

Also, WTF is with cops erasing footage as a routine thing? I can understand it in certain circumstances (more or less if it's of something like a drug bust, and they're protecting an informant's identity or something similar)

[Greenday]

She was tazed for trying to r....oops, beat me to it.

Seriously though, pretty ridiculous. In NJ, you can't use your phone while actively driving. Stopped doesn't count.

[s_stabeler]

yeah- I agree on that point ( she shouldn't have been using her phone while driving) but this was definitely an overreaction by the police. Is it worth $7million? I'm not sure. Probably not. ( I WOULD suggest punitive damages should apply- but assuming that the lawsuit is against the cop, $100k is more likely- possibly quite a bit less. ( the idea behind punitive damages is to make it hurt enough to get the defendant to knock it off, but not to send them straight to bankruptcy court due to being completely impossible to pay. The reason you hear about big-money awards against corporations is because the award is set so it can't be considered a cost of doing business. ( it's why if I was coming up with a method of tort reform, I'd have any punitive component go to charity or something similar- the idea being that it removes the financial gain motive for suing somebody but a big company can't shrug off lawsuits as a cost of doing business.)

[MadMike]

I never understood why the cops have such a problem with being filmed. After all, if they want to monitor us, we're supposed to be OK with it because, "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about!" Well, that works both ways!

[Gravekeeper]

I'm going to be bluntly honest here. Putting the whole tazing thing aside for a moment:

If you as an officer of the law cannot even stay professional enough to avoid dropping the f bomb repeatedly and calling someone a "dumb bitch" as you arrest them you should not be an officer of the law. You are there to protect and serve. If you can't even hold yourself to the professional standard's of a McDonald's employee you need to find another line of work.

As for the video ( and several more like it ) what the hell is it with US cops and escalating situations to violence? This seems to be the reoccuring theme in most of these incidents. Rather than de-escalate the situation as they are suppose to be trained to do they escalate it to the point where they can use violence. Like instead of maintaining the public peace their objective seems to be more to push the situation to the point where they are "justified" in using violence and/or arresting you.

And if they're not "justified" they will yell "STOP RESISTING! STOP RESISTING!" to justify it as they're wailing on you.

[Andara Bledin]

There is an entire 80-page thread on the Ars Technica forums about the issue with US police being too often out of control.

There are a lot of issues regarding our police, including the fact that they often don't live within the communities they are supposed to be protecting, leaving a very real Us vs Them mentality which allows officers to view those they encounter as less than other humans because their only encounters are due to the law being broken.

Then there's the fact that there's precious little training given to actually working with people, to go along with the precious little training given to everything else they're required to do.

And then you run into the issue of those within the force facing censure, loss of position, loss of their jobs, or even being forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital should they dare speak up.

[Gravekeeper]

And then you run into the issue of those within the force facing censure, loss of position, loss of their jobs, or even being forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital should they dare speak up.

....wait, so its easier to get fired if you have moral standards then if you shoot unarmed civilians?

[Andara Bledin]

Yup.

Urban US cities aren't so much policed as occupied.

[s_stabeler]

wait, WHAT? speaking up "this is going a bit far" can get you committed to a mental hospital? I'm sorry, but the police and the Mafia should really be differentiated by more than not actually killing those who leave.

[Andara Bledin]

Yeah. Read up on Adrian Schoolcraft for that particular event.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Keep in mind if you're going there, this is the same NYPD from the Knapp commission and whose police force is Union.

You're not just getting "us" vs. "them" from neighborhood displacement, you're getting it because unions foster that sort of brotherhood mentality. And that's not even a dig at Unions. That's just the reality that Unions tend to protect their own and their friends as a self-preservation mechanism.