Now it's the death penalty for acting weird - watch your ass

From Suburban Guerilla, via Digby, yet another predictable result of letting cops depend on weapons instead of non-violent enforcement.

Fiorino called for backup, and she and responding officer David Burk considered taking Oliver in for a psychiatric evaluation, because they thought he might be mentally unstable.

When Burk tried to get Oliver to cross the street, Oliver "struggled and pulled away from him," according to the ruling.

Without warning, Fiorino Tasered him in the stomach, bringing him to the ground. Once the five-second pulse wore off, she Tasered him again. The witness said Oliver never got up after the first Tasering, and never hit, punched, kicked or threatened the officers.

Oliver, who was lying on the hot asphalt, allegedly screamed that it was "too hot." Fioriono said she may have Tasered Oliver 11 or 12 times, explaining that she kept pulling the trigger until he stayed on the ground. Her Taser log showed eight times in two minutes, with each shock lasting five seconds.

After officers handcuffed Oliver, he began foaming at the mouth, according to Fiorino. She said she was unable to remove all the Taser prongs from his body.

Read the whole thing.

Digby says:

This is the logic that pervades the taser argument: The taser isn't harmful so we shouldn't be held responsible for killing people with them.

Actually this court decision is a step in the right direction. They at least held that there should be some probable cause before you kill someone with a taser. It isn't much but it's better than the idea that these deaths are "accidental" or caused by the police custody disease called "excited delirium." At least they acknowledged that police can't electrocute and kill citizens for no reason whatsoever.

Maybe someday we'll even reach a point where courts will acknowledge that cops aren't allowed to kill anyone for any reason but self-defense and that electro-torturing people into compliance is excessive force. It's hard to believe it isn't obvious that allowing police to commonly and reflexively use this level of pain, no matter how transient, is an authoritarian method worthy of the worst dystopian nightmare, but since huge numbers of people in this country seem to think the screams and terror they cause are really, really funny I guess you can't really blame the cops for assuming it's perfectly acceptable. The killings though, that might just be a step too far even for the jokesters. Maybe.

Here's the crime for which the man I'm sure those officers still call the "perp" received the death penalty: He waved down the officer, requesting help because someone across the street was shooting at him. Then he refused to accompany the officer who wanted to detain him for psychiatric evaluation.

Unfortunately, the lesson likely to come out of this unjustified homicide is not the desperate need for police training in non-violent methods, but the importance of immediately and cheerfully obeying any police order, no matter how unnecessary, unjust or potentially dangerous.