Tased in the Chest for 23 Seconds, Dead for 8 Minutes, Now a Life of Recovery | Hacker News Reader

Tased in the Chest for 23 Seconds, Dead for 8 Minutes, Now a Life of Recovery

theintercept.com

57 pointsllamataboot23 comments

If only all Americans got these kind of expose's after the media reveals they had an ounce of weed on them.

I frequently see the suspect/victim/dead person/perp's association with drugs as a reason why their life is worthless. I've seen instances in some departments where the police just stand on the victim until all the life is gone, or the paramedics never arrive, or the paramedics just nonchalantly go through motions but never attempt resuscitating.

I would just assume all these contrasts would be fresh on everyone else's minds too.

edit: and here it is, this is addressed in the article

"When asked if he still has faith in the system, considering that Runnels is one of the rare officers to face criminal punishment for using excessive force, Matt shakes his head no. He knows there are many deserving cases, especially involving minority victims, that never see the inside of a courtroom. “I get a lot of sympathy from my black cop friends, like, ‘this is what we’ve been saying about cops for a long, long time.'”"

"I've seen instances in some departments where the police just stand on the victim until all the life is gone, or the paramedics never arrive, or the paramedics just nonchalantly go through motions but never attempt resuscitating."

What do you do for a living that causes you to see these things firsthand, if you don't mind me asking? What happens when you report them?

I only see the videos and incongruent arguments from the departments and families, the incidents were already reported by the time I see it.

As sad as it is unsurprising.

But this will continue until the justice system stops assuming cops are always right and everyone else is always guilty.

Are there any court documents here showing what happened before the video?

Last time I was at a traffic stop, the cop didn't tase me. How did it come to that in this situation?

Edit: I just got to that point in the video. While I don't support tasing people for things as light as this, I do have to say that I personally don't think it's a good idea to this adversarial to anyone.

This reminds me of "Making of a Murderer"[1] documentary on Netflix.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_a_Murderer

“Whenever you see these officers come out with a use of force, whether it be a shooting or a tasering or a whatever, there are phrases that always go in those reports, that we’ve been trained to put in there,” Matt said. “And so many times that’s just like an ‘insert quote here’ in your report because that’s going to cover your ass.”

So he knew exactly what was happening. But I'm sure he's ~one of the~ the only good cop that never covered his ass for excessive force and unwarranted actions, right?

Police in America are a cesspool of scum, dishonor, poor judgement, poor impulse control, and sociopathic behavior. It's not every cop, but on the other hand it's also the system as a whole, which does affect every cop. Police are not good. They are not to be trusted. They are a barely controlled monster that we ostensibly hold the leash to but increasingly are getting bitten by.

It shouldn't be normal to be constantly filled with rage by the actions of police officers. It shouldn't be normal to silently celebrate whenever a police officer is killed. It shouldn't be normal to have to consciously put on an exaggeratedly compliant persona when interacting with police so they don't kill you. It shouldn't be normal to be a law abiding citizen who actively avoids any interaction with police because you might end up in jail or dead. It shouldn't be normal to have to refuse to talk to police because they can and will use anything you say against you if they feel so inclined, even if you're completely innocent of anything. But it is normal. And that needs to stop.

Please don't post rage rants to Hacker News. This is not the kind of discourse we want here, regardless of one's position on excess use of force by police, etc.

This, in particular, is egregious: "silently celebrate whenever a police officer is killed". You can't comment like that here. Please don't do it again.

Is he raging? waterphone sounds depressed about these state of affairs, not rage-filled. He doesn't want to be happy about an officer's death, but in the face of the behavior of our police force? It's weird how our monkeybrains celebrate the death of a member of a corrupt and insane organization.

I think it's blunt honesty that many of us can resonate with.

Thank diety I'm a white male, but we're no longer "exempt" from this behavior anymore either. I can only begin to imagine the emotions of a targeted demographic.

It's obvious there's a larger problem when young children of all walks of life know that something "bad" is happening when they see a police officer. If the system wasn't so vile they would be happy and thankful to see a police officer because they are "good" people who provide "protection". You know, like how kids feel about firemen.

Have you ever met a child that was terrified a fireman was going to burn down their house?

I'm a European immigrant to the US and honestly, I wouldn't have stayed if I weren't a white male. There's a lot of great things about the US but a lot of terrifying things about it to, crime and the police being two of them. Again, as long as you're a white male, one is mostly shielded from those.

If I were any other kind of ethnicity, I'd have stayed in Europe. Fewer opportunities, but better to be slightly poorer than dead, I say.

White males were never 'exempt'

You can squeeze in 4 dead black males into primetime annually but this doesn't account for the other 1000 Americans killed by police under equally dubious circumstances

It has always been this way in the US

Think about it, count on your hand the people you remember being killed

I see your point and approve of your charitable reading. Still, there's no interpretation of the HN guidelines by which inflammatory rhetoric like that belongs here, and it isn't a defense of police abuses to point this out.

Like most of you, we get mad when we read these articles. At the same time, HN calls for thoughtful discourse, not blaring or venting. There's no contradiction here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

I couldn't disagree with your more. The author was using interesting rhetoric and you misquoted him in an attempt to censor him.

You are asking people to silently and politely discuss issues that very serious and very problematic.

Honestly, seeing the moderator of HN say this, has made me question if HN is worth participating in anymore. To me this is the turning point where 'dang' demands civility in uncivil situations and mutes and waters down the discussion.

I very dissapointed in you.

You're blowing things way out of proportion. I also disagree with dang's assessment of the situation but I can also understand being bothered by the quoted statement. I'm bothered with it because I strongly disagree with it - I think the US should be ashamed of its police forces but certainly do not "silently celebrate" when they are killed.

I'm not advocating the celebration of the death of police officers, I'm acknowledging and lamenting that it's come to the point that a lot of people are responding that way. It shouldn't, and we as members of society need to work towards a way that we can have lawful, trustworthy police officers again who we don't respond to with fear and hatred.

Your comment here is fine. I'm sorry I misunderstood what you meant about celebrating the death of police officers. One reason heated rhetoric is out of bounds here is that it makes such misunderstandings more likely—and also more damaging when they occur (because then people get outraged in return, and once that feedback loop gets going, nothing interrupts it).

Stories like the OP upset all of us. When people come to the thread to ratchet that upsetness up even further, that succeeds, but at the wrong thing: it ignites a mob reaction. It might be good for a political rally, but it's devastating to the reflective—as opposed to reflexive—discussion that we strive for here.

The motto of the Canadian senate is "sober second thought". When you consider that the opposite of sober second thought is "intemperate initial reaction", I think Hacker News could aspire worse than to be the Canadian senate of the Internet.

It's nitpickery but the opposite of 'sober' in the sense used in that motto is surely not 'intoxicated'.

'Sober' comes from 'ebrius', i.e. drunk. So certainly it means the opposite of drunk, something every Canadian who has heard stories about our founding prime minister will appreciate.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sober

I initially had "drunken initial reaction", imagined someone taking offense at that, and changed it to "intoxicated". That was sloppy on my part—clearly it should have been 'inebriated' (same root!)

But as McLuhan said, you don't like these words I got others. Let's try 'intemperate'.

That's an unreasonably literal interpretation that would suggest that, say, 'worry' is about being strangled. Words are not defined entirely and only by their original roots and this is acknowledged by dictionaries. Webster:

"marked by sedate or gravely or earnestly thoughtful character or demeanor"

Or if you want to go all out, the OED

"Guided by sound reason; sane, rational [...] Of the mind, discourse, etc. 1651 Hobbes Leviath. i. viii. 36 If some man in Bedlam should entertaine you with sober discourse. [...]"

Hobbes likely didn't mean to say that a man confined in Bedlam was permanently drunk nor was John A. Macdonald referring to his personal preference in liquid refreshments.

Edit: It occurred to me we just re-enacted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11873985 with much more boring nicknames. McLuhan won't save you from being wrong on the internet, though!

> It shouldn't be normal to be a law abiding citizen who actively avoids any interaction with police because you might end up in jail or dead.

It's normal in many countries (some depending on ethnicity or local customs). A few 1st, many 2nd or every 3rd world country. Saud, China, India, Russia, Mexico, etc the list isn't short.

None of those other countries think of themselves as 'The Land of the Free', though, or routinely invades other country on the pretext of restoring human rights.

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