Meanwhile, Away from the Airport

Who will put a stop to this epidemic of elderly, bedridden, mentally ill, epileptic and otherwise helpless citizens demanding that police leave their homes and thus forcing the poor terrified officers to tase them into submission?

Digby:

Many of you will probably recall that story of the police who tasered the 86 year old bedridden woman, but it appears they've filed the lawsuit and the details are just ... awful:

Hearing the 911 call made by her grandson, Lonnie Tinsley, he said he was unsure what medication his grandmother had taken and that he feared she “wanted to end her life.” He requested that an emergency medical technician come to her apartment to evaluate her.

Yet according the lawsuit (PDF) that was filed in an Oklahoma federal court, it was not the paramedics or an ambulance that responded. Instead, “as many as 10 El Reno police” arrived and “pushed their way through the door.” The grandmother, Lona Varner, who was lying in bed hooked up to an oxygen machine, responded by telling police to get out of her home.

Police admitted tasering the suicidal 86-yr-old woman in her-hospital type bed to incapacitate her after she told the police to get out. According to The Oklahoman, Officer Duran wrote in a police report that Lona Varner pulled a kitchen knife from under her pillow and threatened to kill him. The officer added she raised the knife above her head and said, “If you come any closer, you’re getting the knife.” The cop allegedly tried talking to her to calm her down but “nothing would work.”

Leaving the room must not have occurred to the ten cops since the lawsuit states, “The police then proceeded to approach Ms. Varner in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she began to suffer oxygen deprivation.”

Because the bedridden grandmother sat up a bit straighter, Officer Duran stated that she “took a more aggressive posture in her bed,” and that he was fearful for his safety and the safety of others.

Tinsley said, “Don’t taze my Granny!” But the cops said they would taser him instead. Tinsley was wrestled to the floor, handcuffed and forcibly removed from his grandmother’s apartment to wait in the back of a police car.

The lawsuit states that officers fired tasers at the bedridden woman, hitting her twice, “causing burns to her chest, extreme pain and to pass out. The police then grabbed Ms. Varner by her forearms and jerked hands together, causing her soft flesh to tear and bleed on her bed; they then handcuffed” and arrested her.

That’s when the cops freed the grandson from the back of police car to ride in the ambulance with his granny. She went from the emergency room to a psychiatric ward “at the direction of the El Reno police; she was held there for six days and released.”

I suppose the total loss of common sense in situations like this is inevitable when tasers are seen by just about everyone as a joke at worst and as "harmless devices that make people be reasonable good citizens" at best. This took it to the next level, however. Anyone who is able to inflict that kind of pain to gain compliance from a bedridden old woman is a cruel sadist. There's just no other way to look at it.

Those of you who have insisted over the last few days that all this caterwauling about civil liberties is silly should stop for a moment and think about all the little acts of public humiliation and pain at the hands of authorities that have been reported at in the last few years. I think we're the proverbial frogs in boiling water. (And yes, I know that frogs would jump out. I suspect they are smarter than humans in this way.)

The authoritarian cruelty never stops.