If you give the police more Tasers, don't be shocked by the result

If you give the police more Tasers, don't be shocked by the result

The Guardian
David Mitchell

The police have been going through a rough patch recently. First they were implicated in the phone-hacking scandal – though they managed to escape most of the blame when we collectively came to the surprising conclusion that it was more serious for tabloid journalists to neglect the public interest than offi

cers of the crown. But while they deflected a lot of that responsibility, their attempts to deflect it over Hillsborough have been catastrophically counterproductive. And as senior officers have been caught dining with Murdochs or maligning the dead, officers on the ground have been getting shot and called plebs. Or not called plebs, depending on who you believe.

Meanwhile the Police Federation's attempts to extract retribution for the disputed p-word, in the form of Andrew Mitchell's sacking, have been roundly slagged off by former Labour minister Chris Mullin, who last week described the organisation as "a bully", "a bunch of headbangers" and "a mighty vested interest that has seen off just about all attempts to reform the least reformed part of the public service". He didn't call them plebs though. Then again, some police have taken to wearing "PC Pleb and Proud" sweatshirts, so perhaps the insult has lost its sting? Maybe they'll soon be sporting "Sergeant Headbanger Will See You Now" riot shields or stab vests with the slogan "You Needn't Try Stabbing ThisMighty Vested Interest".

Another accessory which the Police Federation advocates is the Taser. In June it wrote to the prime minister asking for the number of Tasers to be trebled so that every frontline officer could have one. "They need to have the proper equipment to do the job," says Paul Davis, secretary of the Federation's operational policing subcommittee. And officers certainly seem to be getting a lot of use out of them. Just last week, a policeman Tasered an elderly blind man as part of an operation to check whether his white stick was a samurai sword. It wasn't.

Of course, anyone might get rattled by a semi-paralysed blind man slowly tapping his way with a stick towards you. Apart from anything else, it's so spooky. Those are the high-pressure moments when you need the training to kick in. According to guidelines, officers are permitted to use Tasers when they "would be facing violence or threats of violence of such severity that they would need to use force to protect the public, themselves and/ or the subject" and this moment is surely eerie enough to qualify. The whole event would barely be worthy of note if it weren't for the fact that they shot him in the back. But then the gentleman is quite old and has suffered two strokes in the last few years – so the comparatively slow rate at which he was fleeing was probably taken as provocation.

Incidentally, if you do get Tasered by the police, it's advisable to watch your language. As Boris Johnson has pointed out, it's now an offence to swear at a police officer. So, should you incur a public-spirited 50,000-volt warning shot – perhaps for brandishing your pension book in an aggressive manner or because a young PC has mistaken your tartan shopping trolley for a piece of field artillery – don't accidentally shout "Oh fuck!" or you might get sent to prison. Keep it to a "Dash it all, that smarts, constable!" and be on your way. As soon as you can stand.

In the case of Colin Farmer, the suspected samurai, the police have apologised and Chief Superintendent Stuart Williams said: "We have launched an urgent investigation to understand what lessons can be learned." That response demonstrates everything that's wrong with large organisations. In terms of dereliction of duty, I think it's worse than Tasering a blind pensioner. What possible good can this "investigation" do? We know what happened. A police officer, who Colin Farmer described as "an absolute thug with a licence to carry a dangerous weapon", made a brutal and stupid mistake. How can an investigation illuminate the situation further? Will DNA analysis of the stick reveal that it's a sword after all?

All of which feels like an inopportune context for Keith Bristow, the director general of the new National Crime Agency, to request more police powers. He's trying to influence the new communications data bill so that he'll be able to scour Skype and social media networks for wrongdoers. But he's quick to allay the fears of those who call the bill a "snoopers' charter": "I value my privacy, I don't want to be snooped upon," he explains. "That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about criminals who run organised crime gangs that import drugs… We're talking about predatory paedophiles, we're talking about dangerous people."

Oh, well that's OK then! He's only going to be snooping on criminals. Personally I don't think that's enough – I think criminals should be arrested and charged, not just snooped on. But just as long as the NCA won't accidentally be snooping on anyone who's not definitely a criminal, I can't see the harm in it.

In an ideal world, Keith Bristow would be wasting his breath. When a state law-enforcement agency says "We need more powers", it should carry as little weight as when I say (as I have spent much of the last couple of weeks saying) "I want you to read my book". Not because either statement is insincere: all writers genuinely want people to read their books and all law-enforcement agencies really believe they need more powers. But, when they say that, they should be completely ignored. Not criticised, not accommodated, just disregarded.

The sincerity is beguiling but it's meaningless. "Help us to do our jobs better," the police implore. "We can see the good we could do if you let us." They almost certainly can. But they can't see what it would cost society in lost freedoms. They can't know the consequences of potentially irreversible authoritarian steps.

It's a frightening state of affairs. Those who know most about law enforcement – those who actually do it – are the least qualified to advise on what its rights, powers and funding should be. We have to ignore their cries and trust our instincts. We have to balance our fears of the indefinable, nebulous worlds of crime and terrorism, with the fact that, if we put Tasers in our public servants' hands, at some point they'll use them on us.

David Mitchell's autobiography, Back Story (HarperCollins), is out now

'Another One Bites the Dust'

Daily Bell

Noel Polanco, Unarmed Man Killed By NYPD, Was National Guardsman ... An unarmed 22-year-old man shot and killed by a New York City police officer during a traffic stop in Queens Thursday morning was a member of the New York Army National Guard, authorities said. Police said Noel Polanco was speeding and driving erratically near LaGuardia Airport just after 5 a.m. when he was pulled over by officers. New York Police Department sources initially told news outlets that as two officers approached the car, Polanco reached under his seat, prompting Detective Hassam Handy to shoot him once in the stomach. Polanco died shortly after being taken to a nearby hospital. – Huffington Post

Dominant Social Theme: Police officers are serious people and crime is a serious occurrence. In America, you can die even if you just go a little bit over the speed limit, or if law enforcement believes you might have been doing so.

Free-Market Analysis: This is a sad article posted at the Huffington Post but we have given this article a foolish and insensitive title to show how easy it is to get inured to this kind of police brutality.

There is no other description for it but "brutality." Over and over – almost every day now, it seems – there comes some report of an officer of the law shooting someone who has been stopped for a potential infraction as minor as a traffic ticket.

In too many cases, the individual is proven to have not actually done anything confrontational. The gun the individual was reaching for, or knife, or whatever, turns out not to exist. Yet these people bleed to death, or go into shock and die, or have heart attacks from tasers.

One is simply left with a series of victims commemorated often on YouTube. But what is even sadder is that while an initial video report goes up – or in this case an article is written – the follow-up is lacking.

We never find out about the officers themselves. Almost invariably they are placed on "desk duty" while an investigation is marshaled. But it is hard to find out the results of such investigations. It is hard to find out the aftermath of any of it.

Are the officers disciplined? Are they sent back out into the community to murder again? It IS murder, after all. There is no other word for it.

Civilians can spend the rest of their lives in jail if they shoot and kill someone. But officers who kill may be given back their guns, tasers and badges and released from their desks to go back out into the community. Presumably, this takes place if it can be reasonably shown the officer was in fear for his life.
Another one bites the dust ... like a bad pop song. Meaningless. Lives are destroyed ... for what? We are so inured to it that it barely registers.

Someone was stopped for speeding. Imagine dying because you were driving "too fast." Realistically, it doesn't even matter. Many studies have proven that driving quickly does little if anything to increase mortality and that enforcing low speed limits is basically a waste of time. Talk about a meaningless death. Here's some more from the article:

No weapons were recovered from the car, but a hand drill was found under the driver's seat, police said. NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Thursday afternoon that a passenger in the car described as false the initial account that Polanco reached under the seat.

"The last thing she saw was his hands on the steering wheel," Browne told The New York Post. The shooting is now under investigation by Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, a spokeswoman for his office confirmed.
Amanda Reyes, Polanco's sister, was shaken when reached by The Huffington Post on her brother's cell phone. She said her father had died earlier this year. "I already lost my father three months ago, and now my brother?" Reyes said. "There's nothing to say. I have nothing to say. I just feel hurt. There's only hurt."

According to an Army spokesman, Polanco enlisted in the New York Army National Guard in April 2008 and was assigned to the 156th Engineer Company out of Kingston, N.Y. He did not serve in Iraq or Afghanistan and had no record of misbehavior. He lived in LeFrak City in Queens.

Perhaps Polanco did mean to assault the officer with a drill. But probably not. He died because an officer thought he was driving too fast. He was shot because an officer supposedly misinterpreted his gesture – though the only witness says Polanco's hands remained on the wheel.

We cover the memes of the elite. Our theory – borne out by research and reporting – is that these dominant social themes are meant to scare people into giving up wealth and power to globalist facilities. The idea is to create world government.

In the past decade, what we call the Internet Reformation has made it much more difficult, in our view, for thesepower elite to propagate these promotions.

As a result, they've turned to three historical tools: War, economic ruin and regulatory authoritarianism.
From our point of view, the rising tide of police violence and brutality is no accident. It is being orchestrated to make people fearful and confused.

The idea is to make people so cowed by "officers of the law" that they will put up with almost anything – any degradation of freedom – to avoid being maimed or killed.

Even more perniciously, this sort of brutality acts as a kind of divide-and-conquer mechanism. People begin to doubt that they can have any impact on "their" communities and cease to believe they have the ability to affect public policy.

Their own civic enterprises become estranged from them. Their law enforcement officials become a kind of occupying force for the larger central government.

Enough police brutality erodes our ability to feel shock. It sends a message that we are insignificant beings in the scheme of things, that our lives are forfeit on the whim of authority. But what is even more worrisome is that such acts of violence erode the bonds of civil society itself.

Conclusion: Police are taught to believe the public at large carries within itself the ever-present seeds of incipient criminality. Citizens increasingly feel isolated by the very organs of government once created to keep them safe.

Police Murder Unarmed Retired Veteran Kenneth Chamberlain after He Sets Off his Personal Medical Device

Tased From Above! New Robot Copter To Begin Patrolling Our Skies (video)

Singularity Hub

Editor's Note:  Time to brush up on your trapshooting!

Forget the idea that weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are only for military operations in wars fought in far off lands. Soon they’ll begin setting their sights on criminals within our borders. And they’ll be packing heat, not the long-range missiles of the X-47B, but with up close and personal stun guns, 12-gauge shotguns and, believe it or not, grenade launchers.

The ShadowHawk is the seven-foot, 50-lb copter that is the toy-sized dealer of destruction from Texas-based Vanguard Defense Industries. The copter is the result of three years of development. If being tased from above sounds frightening to you, I suggest you cease all criminal activities now (simply staying indoors is an option). There’s a good chance ShadowHawk’s spine tingling buzz could be heard approaching a city near you. As a sign of new law enforcement tactics to come, the Sheriff’s Office of Montgomery County, Texas was recently awarded a grant by the Department of Homeland Security for a squadron of ShadowHawks. Montgomery County’s Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel is psyched. “We are very excited about the funding and looking forward to placing the equipment into the field. Both my narcotics and SWAT units have been looking at numerous ways to deploy it and I absolutely believe it will become a critical component on all SWAT callouts and narcotics raids and emergency management operations.”

The Department of Homeland Security grant is just the latest indication that the US is taking the military’s lead – with over 7,000 drones in the skies of Iraq and Afghanistan – and using drones as a key tactical tool. In 2009 a surveillance drone called the Wasp was used during a SWAT raid in Austin, Texas. The Wasp climbed to 400 feet and beamed realtime video of a house in which an armed drug dealer was hiding. After the team had confirmed that there were no unforeseen dangers lurking in the backyard, they stormed the house and arrested the suspect. Drones are also helping the US to secure its borders against illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Just a few months ago the Obama administration began sending drones to Mexico to gather intelligence and help in the country’s war on drugs.

Not limited to our borders, ShadowHawk will soon be swooping down on bad guys off the shores of Africa. Vanguard Defense just won a multi-million dollar contract for “several” ShadowHawks to patrol the east African coast against pirates. Hired by a “global leader in the oil and gas exploration and production industry,” the initial plan is to use the copter drones strictly for surveillance. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the local authorities get involved at some point and bring the heavy stuff. Pirates might respond better when looking down the nose of a 40mm grenade launcher.


ShadowHawk is not nearly as agile as the acrobatic quad-copter from UPenn’s GRASP Lab. But it’s definitely more agile than a perpetrator fleeing on foot. All of the cameras can be used to track ground targets with amazing effectiveness. The following video demonstrates the ability of the CCD (1:40) and infrared cameras’ (2:00) ability to track vehicles and humans fleeing on foot. You can run, but ShadowHawk is going to stick to you like flies on…shady characters.



The ShadowHawk comes in four different flavors with different options for outfitting. Both turbine or piston engines are available and guidance systems include laser pointers, range finders, illuminators, CCD TV optics and a FLIR infrared camera. Take off, flying and landing can be fully automated or pilot assist, semi-autonomous. The military and law enforcement can opt to add an XREP taser, 37mm or 40mm grenade launchers or a meaty single shot or multiple shot 12 gauge shotgun. The final variety is for military use only and they don’t tell us what sorts of ballistics toys they get to pick from.

ShadowHawk can travel over land or sea for up to 3.5 hours in its hunt for perpetrators. Its maximum range is 35 miles with a top speed of 70 mph. The XREP taser sits on ShadowHawk’s nose with four barbed electrodes that can be shot to a distance of 100 feet. After hitting the target they deliver ‘neuromuscular incapacitation’ for a hellish 20 seconds. The cameras are on continuously, which means, when they are inevitably leaked, we’re due for some of the craziest videos-gone-viral ever to hit YouTube.

But you shouldn’t be worried about your neighbors getting their hands on a ShadowHawk. Hobbyists can have drones as long as they keep them from flying higher than 400 feet. And, of course, they won’t be armed with tasers or grenade launchers. But after that the FAA guidelines are pretty loose concerning ShadowHawks or any such “unmanned aircraft.” The FAA “encourages good judgment on the part of operators so that persons on the ground or other aircraft in flight will not be endangered.”

In its first flights the ShadowHawk’s job will probably be strictly surveillance. But as law enforcement such as Montgomery County’s gains experience and field tests the drone, perhaps they’ll decide when using that taser might be the best option. As more drones like ShadowHawk take to the sky over our cities and that high-pitched whine draws terribly closer, probably best to just lay down, hands on your head, feet spread apart.