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Dalian Atkinson Dead.

scaramanga said:
Nothing changed in the year before and after the use of cars or helicopters. Both kill more people, I suspect, but you wouldn't take either away. At least I hope you wouldn't.


Tasers are not intended to kill and only do under very unlikely circumstances. They don't need to be in the hands of firearms officers any more than cars or helicopters do.
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Helicopters and cars are not, primarily, offensive weapons. Cars also kill more people than knives. We aren't allowed to walk the streets with knives, but we can drive cars. The difference is, one is an offensive weapon, one is not. I believe, in the hands of a citizen, a taser would be considered to be an offensive weapon.

Tasers are meant to cause harm to an assailant, the same as a baton or a gun. I am not convinced officers outside of armed response need more than a baton to do their job, as has been the case until very recently. Again, just because tasers are available to use does not mean that they should be used.
 
the dza said:
Helicopters and cars are not, primarily, offensive weapons. Cars also kill more people than knives. We aren't allowed to walk the streets with knives, but we can drive cars. The difference is, one is an offensive weapon, one is not. I believe, in the hands of a citizen, a taser would be considered to be an offensive weapon.

Tasers are meant to cause harm to an assailant, the same as a baton or a gun. I am not convinced officers outside of armed response need more than a baton to do their job, as has been the case until very recently. Again, just because tasers are available to use does not mean that they should be used.
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No they're not. I think you fundamentally misunderstand the point of tasers.
 
scaramanga said:
No they're not. I think you fundamentally misunderstand the point of tasers.
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The harm is only temporary for most, but it's harm nonetheless. That is their whole purpose, to incapacitate. A weapon. Not a car.

For a small number of people, the harm caused isn't temporary and can result in death. The crux of the debate is whether this is acceptable or not. I don't think it is because I don't think it is necessary for police to be armed with tasers outside of armed response units who deal with armed assailants.
 
the dza said:
The harm is only temporary for most, but it's harm nonetheless. That is their whole purpose, to incapacitate. A weapon. Not a car.

For a small number of people, the harm caused isn't temporary and can result in death. The crux of the debate is whether this is acceptable or not. I don't think it is because I don't think it is necessary for police to be armed with tasers outside of armed response units who deal with armed assailants.
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There's no temporary harm either. They just stop someone, so do walls. If you are determined not to stop for a wall you'll probably suffer instant and possibly lasting harm.

Handcuffs are used to incapacitate and I bet they cause very rare deaths too. Going by your logic, shouldn't police just hold people's arms still? They don't absolutely have to use cuffs to restrain someone after all.

Very rare deaths are acceptable, otherwise everyone just needs to wrap themselves in bubble wrap and stay indoors.
 
glasgowspur said:
The officer that fired the taser didn't know it was going kill the target, that wasn't the intention.
Are officers supposed to stop and ask for a medical certificate before firing a taser?
You know what, if you don't want to get tasered don't attempt to murder your father, don't shout in the street that you've murdered all your family.
Actions have consequences.
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By that comment alone mate, many High Streets at closing time on weekends could see a slew of bodies.

I still want more general information on this one...it simply does not add up.


As for the last comment (boldfaced) they should, I agree, they should, but they often do not. THAT is when the question of who receives what consequences becomes interesting!
 
Raziel said:
Not disagreeing mate, I do however find it amazing that politicians

- Can never find money for policing, education, healthcare, stuff that actually makes a difference for people ..
- But somehow can find for tax breaks/shelters for large corporations, stupid military projects and list goes on ..

Anyway .. thread hijack ..
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You have to look at the bigger picture.... If you don't give tax breaks/shelters for large corporations then they choose to base themselves elsewhere and the country loses large income tax revenues.

Military projects are generally based on:
a) getting control of an area for it's valuable resources (oil/gas)
b) winning the contracts to rebuild
c) spending money on military hardware - which is quite a big UK industry.
 
nayenezgani said:
The argument is that of excessive force. Tasering to immobilise a threat makes sense to most rational people.

Continuing to use the taser repeatedly and even kick said threat while on the floor is a more questionable behaviour.

Don't think there's much debate to be had.

It's just a terribly tragic situation and the job of a police officer can be a terrible one at the best of times. Welcome to the real world.
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I would be very surprised if the taser was used after the person was immobilised and even more surprised if the person was kicked while on the floor. So far we have one 'witness' who has claimed that she 'heard' him being kicked and 'heard' the tasers going off again. Had either of these two things occurred I think we would've had more witness accounts (perhaps including some from the deceased's family).
 
scaramanga said:
There's no temporary harm either.
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I totally disagree with that, so I will agree to disagree else we go around in circles talking about cars, walls, bubble wrap and guns!

For what it's worth, I have very little problem with policing in this country in general and I appreciate they do need to be able to protect themselves when faced with the threat of violence. But I'm not convinced that the use of tasers is the way to go.
 
the dza said:
The harm is only temporary for most, but it's harm nonetheless. That is their whole purpose, to incapacitate. A weapon. Not a car.

For a small number of people, the harm caused isn't temporary and can result in death. The crux of the debate is whether this is acceptable or not. I don't think it is because I don't think it is necessary for police to be armed with tasers outside of armed response units who deal with armed assailants.
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The problem here is that it takes a long while for an armed response unit to be mobilised. You can therefore only deal with situations where you know (probably in advance) that there will be weapons. In such a scenario I would rather the police were properly armed than merely armed with tasers (that have to be discharged at quite close quarters).

You argue that the police should simply carry batons instead of tasers. The problem is that to discharge a baton you have to be VERY close, certainly close enough to be hit/stabbed/slashed. I don't think our good, hard working, police personnel should have to be put in that sort of danger. If the police discharge their taser, they have to record the fact that they have done so, immediately that means they are unlikely to do so unless they feel they need to. Prior to discharging their taser they also have to give a warning. If the person ignores that warning then I have no problems with the taser being used.
 
Looking at this in its simplest form it looks to me like;

  • Bloke doing weird aggressive things and telling everyone he's going to murder his Dad get's told to stop or Police are going to Taser him
  • Bloke doesn't stop
  • Police Taser him
  • Police don't know that bloke has an underlying condition that makes tasering him a bad option of restraint in comparison to someone else off the street
  • Guy unfortunately dies
Whether or not the Police were right to Taser him is the question, but without knowing he was going to die and having issued him with the threat that they were going to, is it really that suprising that they did?
 
Millsy_Yiddo said:
Looking at this in its simplest form it looks to me like;

  • Bloke doing weird aggressive things and telling everyone he's going to murder his Dad get's told to stop or Police are going to Taser him
  • Bloke doesn't stop
  • Police Taser him
  • Police don't know that bloke has an underlying condition that makes tasering him a bad option of restraint in comparison to someone else off the street
  • Guy unfortunately dies
Whether or not the Police were right to Taser him is the question, but without knowing he was going to die and having issued him with the threat that they were going to, is it really that suprising that they did?
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Not at all.
 
the dza said:
The crux of the debate is whether this is acceptable or not. I don't think it is because I don't think it is necessary for police to be armed with tasers outside of armed response units who deal with armed assailants.
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So you wait for someone to maybe murder their father and then the police are in the dock again for not dealing with someone that was a threat?
 
Grays_1890 said:
So you wait for someone to maybe murder their father and then the police are in the dock again for not dealing with someone that was a threat?
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Par for the course, as far as some are concerned the police can not do right for doing wrong.
 
Grays_1890 said:
So you wait for someone to maybe murder their father and then the police are in the dock again for not dealing with someone that was a threat?
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No, I'm saying they restrain him without using the tasers -- he was unarmed iirc, one man and two or more cops? This is why I have said that police used to handle these situations differently until the very recently, without tasers.

Once you start saying "we can never wait for armed response" then we have a situation where all police should be armed with guns. Afterall, some people will go mad with guns and a cop with a taser is no good then, he'll get shot before he can get close enough to taser the other guy. We can go on and on until police are armed to the teeth, without the requisite training that the specialist armed response officers have. And even those guys make mistakes. I think we'd be worse off as a society if that ever happened.

This is my last post on this fine topic, I don't really have anything new to add (then again, I don't add much elsewhere either haha).
 
Finney Is Back said:
You have to look at the bigger picture.... If you don't give tax breaks/shelters for large corporations then they choose to base themselves elsewhere and the country loses large income tax revenues.

Military projects are generally based on:
a) getting control of an area for it's valuable resources (oil/gas)
b) winning the contracts to rebuild
c) spending money on military hardware - which is quite a big UK industry.
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Mate, that's very broad statements, and I'm going to answer them from a US centric point of view (believe it's reasonably applicable to most developed nations)

- No re corporations, what they do is take your tax breaks and STILL fudge off with their jobs, money holdings and manufacturing to somewhere they have no rules/regulations, slave labor, zero taxes, etc. If you actually put some limitations around the tax breaks (e.g. manufacturing or majority of head count must still reside in country), I might agree with you, but it isn't done that way.

Re Military, I'm not trying to say that the Military doesn't have a purpose, however
- In the US, there were two projects in the last decade, the F35 ($1.3T, yes that is 1.3 TRILLION dollars) and the new Aircraft Carrier ($14B for first one, with several other to follow). these weapon systems are obsolete before they got out the gate, the next generation of aircraft that NATO will fight against will be cheap, unmanned drones. Huge, expensive, manned systems that can win no fight that current solutions can't are useless wastes of money. Add in bases in Japan, Germany, etc. that costs billions per year for what reason?

If you can with a strait face say, we could not have used 2 or so trillion dollars (not even including war spending) in the last 10 years on social projects & services (policing as well), infrastructure, economy, alternate fuels and general country investments and got a better return that two obsolete dingdong measuring military exercises ... don't know what to say.

A CIO once told me, when I say I don't have budget to spend on something, you can translate it to "I have no interest in spending money on that thing", and that's what I'm saying, Politicians have no interest in spending budget on things that really matter ...
 
scaramanga said:
That's cleverly written to make standard procedure sound like evidence of guilt
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My first thoughts as well, its standard practise in these situations to fully have a look at what happened. It is the way that they have reported it which makes it sound a lot worse then it probably is.
 
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