"Torture for Tantrums"

Juvenile program officials can lose millions in federal funding by failing to use carefully-taught passive restraints on children. But cops can tase them with impunity.

The 10-year-old girl throwing a temper tantrum her mother was too lazy to deal with didn't actually die from the tasering, but that's no thanks to the cop who delivered it or the mother who gave permission for it.

From Digby:

Taser madness of the day:

Ozark police said they were called to a home where a mother asked for help with her unruly child, but the 10-year-old's father said he's outraged at the force police used against his daughter.

"I would like to say Ozark police Tased this little girl right here. Ten years old and [they] shot electricity through her body, and I want to know how the heck in God's green earth can they get away with this," said the girl's father, Anthony Medlock.

Medlock said his daughter was at her mother's house when Ozark police Officer Dustin Bradshaw shocked her in the back with a Taser and arrested her.

"If you can't pick the kid up and take her to your car, handcuff her, then I don't think you need to be an officer," Medlock said.

Medlock said his daughter does show signs of having emotional issues, but she "doesn't deserve to be treated like a dog. She's not a tiger."

According to a police report, the officer was called to the home by the mother and witnessed the child kicking and screaming.

The officer's statement said the girl's mother, Kelly Hamlert, told him to use a Taser on her if he needed to.

The officer did shock the girl after he said she kicked him in the groin.

"He had no other choice. He had to get the child under control," said Ozark police Chief Jim Noggle.

Noggle said the officer shocked the girl for about a second.

Ozark police said it is their policy to use a Taser on someone who is a threat to others, no matter their age.

Noggle said simply restraining the child could be harmful.

"Well, if he tried to restrain her, he might hurt her by restraining her. If you grab somebody, you can slip an arm out of joint. They can slip from you and fall on the ground," Noggle said.

Right, all those things would hurt. So it's best to avoid such "harm" by shooting a child with 50,000 volts of electricity.

Do they even bother training cops anymore or do they just give them a taser and tell them to use it in all circumstances?

More details the next day:

Bradshaw stated in the report that when he arrived at the scene, he found the girl "balled up in the floor crying and screaming (sic)," according to the report.

"I made several attempts to speak with her and she continued to behave in this manner," Bradshaw stated.

Bradshaw said the child's mother attempted to place the girl in the shower to get her ready for bed.

"I witnessed (the child) screaming, kicking and resisting every time her mother tried to touch her," Bradshaw stated. "Her mother told me to Tase her if I needed to."

Bradshaw said he and the mother carried the child to the shower, but the child refused to cooperate.

Bradshaw said after realizing there would not be a "peaceful resolution," he moved the child to the living room and told her he was going to place her under arrest, according to the report.

"She was jerking her arms away from me violently while I was trying to cuff her and thrashing about wildly," Bradshaw stated. "While she was violently kicking and verbally combative, (she) struck me with her legs and feet in the groin."

Bradshaw said because he had difficulty placing handcuffs on the girl, he administered a brief drive stun to the child's back with his stun gun, the report states.

"She immediately stopped resisting and was placed into handcuffs," Bradshaw stated. "She would not walk on her own and I had to carry her to my police car."

Digby comments:

Well, why didn't they say so? The little girl was having a tantrum and got even more upset when her mother and a strange man in a uniform tried to carry her into the shower. She's lucky she wasn't pistol whipped.

This is a new parenting technique I think every mom should try. But you needn't call the police when your kid refuses to bathe or clean up her room or has a tantrum. Just stick her finger in an electrical outlet for a few seconds and she'll turn right around. After all, it's not like it hurts them or anything:

The girl, who hasn't been identified, wasn't hurt and is now at the Western Arkansas Youth Shelter in Cecil.

I am very much against tasering, but I honestly believe that any mother who tells a policeman to taser her child should be tasered first, just so she knows what she's asking them to do. And if she then says it's ok to do that to her own child, the child should be removed from her custody immediately.

Electricity shooting through the human body is excessively painful, which is why people fall to the ground screaming in agony when it happens. People who purposefully do that to children for any reason are sadistic and abusive. It's torture.

It might not have hit the local papers yet, but that doesn't mean it's not happening in your town.