The American Police State: I Shot a Man In Reno Just to Watch Him Die

Arm the police with portable torture devices and some will use them to torture people. The latest incident was in Merced, CA where a cop twice used a Taser on a wheelchair-bound double amputee.

• In June police in Texas tasered a 72 year-old woman accused of speeding.
• In Phoenix police tasered and beat a pastor for resisting arrest for the crime of ... well he actually didn't do anything illegal except ask what he was being arrested for.
• In Seattle, back in 2005, a woman eight-months pregnant was tasered for not signing a ticket after a traffic stop.
• Certainly the worse case I could find was out of Boise, ID where police jammed a Taser up a man's rectum and fired.

Police have grown to love the Taser. It looks and feels like a gun but it doesn't kill (often, in the United States police using Tasers kill citizens on an average of once a week), instead it causes agony with the victim writhing in pain. Police have discovered torturing with a Taser is a lot more fun than killing with a gun. A Taser also doesn't leave bruises and wounds like beating a prisoner with a nightstick so there is less embarrassing television video.

Police seldom get in serious trouble for using a Taser. In Edmonton, Alberta a policeman used a Taser on two sleeping men and all he got was a 90-hour suspension. But, I'm certain they were sleeping in a threatening manner.

I'm always a little worried when I write about the American Police State. I fear a policeman may decide to electrocute me. The Taser has become a toy used by police for recreational torture. I even wonder if police consider it a sex toy. Here is another Texas story about an on-duty officer getting shot with his own Taser that sounds more like sex play gone wrong than an accident.

See also:
Torture by Taser
A report from Der Spiegel on American police Taser practices
Pam's House Blend's take