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From the Police Blotter: Basic Info on Tasers
I’ve heard a lot of legal eagles offer their opinions on various political talk shows on Tasers in the Atlanta shooting.
I’ll try and clarify Taser classification as a weapon. There are two types of weapons under Oregon law. Deadly weapons and dangerous weapons.
A dangerous weapon is any item that was not designed to cause serious physical injury or death, even though it could cause serious physical injury or death. Examples would be a steak knife, chef’s knife, baseball bat, golf club, or an automobile.
A deadly weapon is designed to cause serious physical injury or death. Double-edged dagger, firearm, sword, etc.
A Taser could be defined as a deadly weapon or a dangerous weapon depending upon a state legislature, although it was designed to be a non-lethal means of incapacitating a violent subject. A Taser is capable of causing death in certain circumstances.
A police officer doesn’t have to go to the trunk of his police car and get his city-issued baseball bat if he’s being attacked by a baseball bat wielding subject. He can use his pistol to stop the attack. The same thing applies in an edged weapon attack, or if a suspect tries to Tase him. He gets to move up to the top of the Force Continuum, and use deadly physical force to defend himself.
Does that make sense? I hope so.
Published in Policing
My only concern on that shooting is the suspect was moving away after having expended the single round of higher force. If I as a civilian in that situation were to shoot as he were running away and apparently disengaging, I would be facing charges.
It’s reported that it was a two shot Taser X2.
ty for the clarifications, and I am glad that the law backs the one-size-fits-all use of lethal force.
That’s an important clarification. He was still running away, past the effective range of that weapon. Had he cycled around to come back, I can easily see shooting.
Taser range is up to 35′. I don’t know what the distance in question was, and I’m lousy at judging distances on videos.
The decedent’s back may be turned to some extent, but as I understand it, he was still in the process of aiming the taser over his shoulder, thereby continuing the fight even as he is moving away.
Also, I’ve read too many media reports of people who were “shot in the back,” when the autopsy indicated that the shot may not have been full-frontal, neither was it anywhere near square with the back. So what does the term “in the back” mean?
Consider that had he succeeded in tasing the officer, the officer would have been defenseless, and he could easily have taken the officer’s weapon and done whatever he wished with it.
Precisely. By stealing and then brandishing the taser / pointing it at the officer, the officer must assume that the assailant running in front of him is attempting to incapacitate him. If successful in doing so, the suspect would have the ability to do further harm to the officer, if not take his pistol and kill him. The officer’s use of deadly force in the Atlanta incident was absolutely justified and if he’s properly represented by a decent attorney, he will be found not guilty. The other challenge will be to find a jury that’s not already biased against the officer. Given the spectacle that we are seeing in Atlanta, that could be quite challenging. So, the officer’s attorneys may immediately want to petition the court for a change of venue well outside the Atlanta area.
There seems to be discussion about when the policeman fired at Brooks. This video (I’m sure most of you have seen it, put just in case I’m including it) shows that the officer had his arm extended and pointing at Brooks up until and including the time that Brooks fired the taser. Brooks twists at the waist roughly 90 degrees and fires back while running away. The flash from the taser can be seen on the video. Upon being fired at (the officer said that he felt it hit his arm) there appears to be a simultaneous hitch in the policeman’s stride, and then the officer drops his arm while spinning to the left into the fender of the red parked car and doesn’t raise his arm again, but instead appears to reach for his right flank while continuing to chase Brooks.
I can’t see the flash from the policeman’s pistol in this video, but I don’t see any indication that he shot Brooks before Brooks turned to fire the taser at him. And after being fired upon, the policeman doesn’t raise either arm toward Brooks. After Brooks fires the taser, Brooks runs four steps before collapsing during the fifth step.
In other words it appears that Brooks was not hit before firing the taser, nor after firing the taser. It appears that the policeman fired his pistol essentially simultaneously with Brooks firing the taser.
And if he tried to taze me and continued to plausibly disengage, then I’d be in legal hot water if I shot.
Then I retract my statements. Good shoot.
Lawless mayor.
The DA had already declared a taser a deadly weapon when used by two officers against a rioter.
Andrew McCarthy brings out other relevant information in his latest:
The prosecutor has set his successor up for one of two scenarios: an unjust conviction (probably with celebratory rioting) and dropped or an acquittal (with rioting.) I suppose a successor who reviews the case and drops the charges is theoretically possible but I doubt such a DA could be elected. Rioting would follow that as well.
All it takes is for the perp to aim a weapon, and that’s cause for lethal force.
The officer, Officer Brosnan I believe was charged with lesser crimes by the DA. He was tased by Mr. Brooks, and his head hit the pavement and he suffered a concussion.
There is a lot of misinformation about the law, and unfortunately some of it is coming from attorney’s. The DA did not present any of these charges to a Grand Jury. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation had not completed their investigation, and the GBI is still investigating the DA for misappropriating funds that were intended for some other city program. The amount of those funds were in the six figure realm, and may well have been deposited in his personal bank account.
In another case perhaps a week earlier concerning the police use of a Taser during a riot the attorney for two of the officers are saying that a video the DA relied upon was edited more than one time. This DA has other issues.
The DA made a public announcement that Officer Brosnan was going to be a witness for the prosecution in the shooting case. Officer Brosnan’s attorney said that his client is cooperating with the investigation, but he will not testify for the prosecution.
So you are OK with the police letting a suspect with a dangerous weapon that he took away from an officer in a violent struggle to potentially use that weapon on others in the public just because he was running away? The officer was in tough spot and made a quich judgement call. Remember adrenaline has significant affects on the body (significantly restricts peripheral vision often resulting in “tunnel vision”, hearing, etc.) and after the struggle adrenaline was running high and decisions had to be made in a time frame measured in fractions of a second.
Fascinating, that.
There is a lot of misinformation on statutes, and some of it comes from prosecutors, defense attorney’s, police officers, the media, and private citizens.
Statutes contain definitions, elements that define specific statutes, and allowable defenses to specific statutes. Statutes in my opinion are not designed to prevent something from happening. They are designed to provide a consistent process to enforce laws, and a consistent prosecution in a court room for offenses. Once emotion, and politics play a part in charging, and in the resulting trial, then laws become whim, an ever changing process when the only certainty left becomes uncertain application of the law.
The UK’s Daily Mail ought to have a new masthead slogan: Reporting US news that US media won’t report.
For example,
Could that (combined with being drunk and disinhibited) explain his violent resistance to arrest?
Stacy McCain comments:
They don’t make poster children like they used to.
When I understood the case as I had, the taser was an expensive box after being fired. I’m OK with a random guy holding an empty taser.
Civilians can’t engage unless there is about to be an assault (essentially). If the assault is over, the civilian can’t get in a last shot.
You don’t have to be a poster child to have someone wave your bloody shirt.
On the other hand, knowing that there are multishot Tasers out there, as a civilian can you be expected to have been counting shots and recognize the Taser model and do that inside your attacker’s OODA loop before if it was indeed a live weapon he could hit you with it?
I think we can do better than that. The typical person can run about 15 seconds before they get tired quit. Cops should know that. There are two officers and if they stay back 30 feet there is zero risk of the perp getting to a holster. If the cops can’t run for 15 seconds, then go get they car and follow him. How far can he run? And if they lose him, they know where he lives and they have his car.
There used to be saying in police work, “you can’t outrun Motorola”. The meaning of that is that police communication (speed of light) and coordination are overwhelming enough of an advantage to prevent escape of almost everyone. Patience, communication, coordination should be chosen over shooting people in a chase. Training can overcome the animal emotion and frustration of seeing someone run off, when you have a gun in your hand.
I love watching the Youtube videos of Patty Mayo. He is a bounty hunter that has these 30 minutes shows of him catching fugitives. One of the things I enjoy is how good he is with his techniques. Always has a partner. He and partner are always carefully positioned. He is very patient and respectful. He often uses a shield and mostly uses Taser and pepper shots, when people resist arrest or have a weapon. If he does have to wrestle, he is very good with wrist locks, arm locks, leverage and knowing how to give his partner a clear shot with their Tazer. Patience, communication, technique, more tools on his belt than batman. Also, he has an 8 shot Tazer.
I don’t think it makes any sense for the law to require someone to somehow know if they’re being attacked with a single-shot derringer, or a two-shot derringer, or a 5- or 6-shot revolver, or an automatic pistol, or…
You can’t stay 30 feet from someone while arresting/handcuffing them.
And letting an armed person run loose in a neighborhood while the police use their Motorolas…. well, I’m not a fan of that either.
Of course this isn’t what happened in Atlanta.
But this bounty hunter does only one thing and does it well, I presume. Cops are made to be Jacks of all trades.