Taser As Proctological Tool

Taser As Proctological Tool

A Taser isn't supposed to be used in this way--and Boise City is settling out of court, reputedly in six figures, for police officers using a Taser where the sun doesn't shine--and worse:

The City of Boise wants to make it clear that they are not admitting guilt in the case of a man sodomized by Boise police with a Taser gun.

But they are also dishing out an estimated $150,000 to Gerald Amidon to prevent this matter from going to court.

This was so disturbing I went looking for more discussion of what actually happened, and it confirms what this audio recording of the incident shows. The July 29, 2009 Idaho Statesman coverage is pretty shocking:

Upon arrival, the officers heard the sounds of a struggle and voices coming from inside. The officers yelled for someone to open the door, and were greeted with a profane comment by a man in the residence. The officers had to kick and push the door open; the man inside was pushing against the door for more than 80 seconds. Once they gained entry, the officers said the suspect did not comply with their demands to get on the ground and stop resisting.

The suspect said that he was hit three times with a Taser after he was already handcuffed and face-down on the floor. Murphy's investigation found evidence that the suspect was hit twice with the Taser — once in the back before he was handcuffed and once in the buttocks after he was cuffed.

Murphy said the officer who used the Taser -— described as Officer #3 in the report — also coarsely threatened to use the Taser in the man's anus and genitals. Murphy's report says that use of Taser on a man's buttock's does not violate policy in and of itself; the question is whether it was "reasonable and necessary."

... 

The exchange between Officer #3 and the suspect during the incident was captured on a police officer's recorder. Murphy transcribed some of it in his report:
Officer #3: Do you feel this?
Complainant: Yes, sir.
Officer #3: Do you feel that? That’s my -
Complainant: Okay
Officer #3: -Taser up your ass.
Complainant: Okay
Officer #3: So don’t move.
Complainant: I’m trying not to. I can’t breathe.
"This exchange, especially the complainant’s response, strongly suggests that, at that moment anyway, the Taser was pressed between the Complainant’s buttocks and near his anal area," Murphy wrote in his report on the incident.
Two circular burn marks 1 to 2 centimeters in size were found on the suspect's buttocks, Murphy said.
Officer #3 also threatened to use the Taser on the suspect's genitalia.

The officers involved are apparently being disciplined. Not fired? Not prosecuted? Look, if someone is resisting arrest, use of a Taser makes sense. But someone who is handcuffed and face-down on the floor?

UPDATE: Yes, the claim of "sodomized" isn't correct. Still not at all an appropriate behavior by the police officer, and it puts a bunch of money into the hands of someone who is probably nothing wonderful, either.

Unpleasant Heterogeneous Encounters

Unpleasant Heterogeneous Encounters

Another PajamasMedia reject, because they already have too many articles about this situation:

Unpleasant Heterogeneous Encounters: Racism & Paranoia

There is a very real disconnect between white and black America—-as the recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates in Cambridge demonstrates. I’ve seen an enormous amount of commentary that refers to Gates screaming at a Cambridge police officer as yet another sign that he is a race hustler. But there’s another explanation—-and one that we white people should think about.

Back when I was a freshman at USC (on a full scholarship—-I grew up just under the poverty line), I drove to school every day. One day, my beat up 1964 Chevrolet station wagon overheated on the way to campus. I pulled off the freeway at Fairfax Boulevard, and into a gas station. For those who don’t know Los Angeles in the 1970s, the Fairfax District was heavily Jewish at the time. The two guys running the station were named Sol and Nathan, and were like something out of a movie. Both had very pronounced New York Jewish accents, right down to mannerisms and expressions that might be considered offensive stereotypes today.

Now, where I lived in Santa Monica was also heavily Jewish. Many of my classmates were Jewish. On Jewish holidays, many of my classes were distinctly short of students. But none of my classmates fit any stereotypes. They sounded like me, they dressed like me—there wasn’t anyone with a stereotyped New York Jewish accent (except when being humorous), and I don’t think any of my classmates was Orthodox or Hassidic. In brief, they were Jewish, but it was an extraordinarily subtle difference—one so subtle that if you weren’t told (and there wasn’t much reason to do so), you wouldn’t know it.

Sol and Nathan persuaded me that all I needed was a new radiator cap, and used some gadget to prove that mine was defective. By the time they had done their song and dance, the engine had cooled—-and of course, the car ran fine—-for about 25 minutes, at which point it overheated again.

That evening, it was apparent that the radiator had a pretty substantial leak in it. My father called up the gas station that had sold me a replacement radiator cap. The defensive manner in which Sol responded suggested that this was not an honest mistake—that they took advantage of a college kid who didn’t know any better. I found myself wondering: had they taken advantage of me because I was a Gentile? I really don’t know-—but because they were so obviously different from me, the thought came into my head. Without that obvious difference, I would simply not have even wondered about it.

This is a majority white country. If you are a white person, and someone mistreats you, the odds are very high that it will be another white person. He might be a car mechanic who tells you that your muffler bearings need repacking, or your Johnson rods are bent. He might be a police officer who gets obnoxious when you get argumentative about a traffic ticket. But because you and the other person are engaged in an unpleasant homogeneous encounter, you don’t generally say to yourself, “It’s because I’m white.” You decide, “He’s a crooked mechanic, out to take advantage of me,” or, “This cop is too full of himself and the power that he has been given.”

Now, imagine that you are black-—in a country that is overwhelmingly white. The odds are quite strong that if you have a really unpleasant situation, it will be with a white person: an unpleasant heterogeneous encounter. It is extremely easy to find yourself asking the same question that I asked myself about Sol and Nathan’s radiator cap scam: is it because you hold my group in contempt? (The closest that most white people get to this same situation are those who live in majority black or Hispanic communities.)

It would not take too many of these unpleasant heterogeneous encounters to create the very negative perception of widespread white racism against black people-—when what is really going on is that we tend to notice unpleasant and ugly encounters with people that aren’t like us—-especially when those encounters are scary, or demeaning. Once an individual has developed that perception—-“this is how a black man gets treated in America”—-each new unpleasant heterogeneous encounter is going to reinforce it.

It also doesn’t help that when Professor Gates was growing up, there really was a lot of racial prejudice directed against blacks. Most of it was unthinking but not particularly hate-filled prejudicial assumptions about blacks, but some of it was really ferocious hate-mongering-—of a caliber with the hate-mongering that you have to listen to Rev. Wright to hear today.

I’m not defending Professor Gates’ behavior. But I would suggest that before we assume that his actions were just another sleazy race hustler like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, it might be good to think about easy it is for the disparity in numbers to create false perceptions that everything is about race.