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Comment by ythn | Hacker News Reader

What the guards did was wrong, but don't you think your belligerent drunk friend needs to share even a tiny bit of the blame? People act like civilians should be able to do or say literally anything and fully expect law enforcement to be perfectly rational and fair and gentle with them.

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I 100% believe that "civilians should be able to do or say literally anything and fully expect law enforcement to be perfectly rational and fair and gentle with them."

And I don't see why that's not feasible.

You can expect law enforcement to be 'perfectly rational and fair', but expecting them to always be gentle is unrealistic. When people are being violent, it sometimes requires physical force to restrain them, and oftentimes that physical force can't be gentle.

In addition, being 'perfectly rational' does not always mean doing the correct thing every time, with the benefit of hindsight. You can be rational, but in real life we have imperfect information. Innocent people are sometimes hurt because of this imperfect information, even if everyone behaves rationally. It sucks, but is unavoidable.

The idea that cops respond with reasonable force in a rational manner is a fantasy. They are not some innocent victims of misunderstanding, they regularly fight back with as much force as they are allowed to employ, and if noone's watching a whole lot more. It's part of their dichotomous mentality. There is tons of evidence for the idea that cops regularly appoint themselves judge, jury and occasionally even executioner. Having the right information means nothing if your entire mindset is bent around the idea that you're there to mete out punishment to the deserving and all you're doing is waiting for someone to stick out their neck to be made an example of.

Again, I am not trying to argue whether too much force is used too often or not. I am simply stating that, even if we lived in a world where reasonable force was used every time by police, we would STILL have cases of citizens being harmed by the use of force by police. Since we know this, we can't use the fact that someone was injured by police to be our yardstick for determining if a police officer did the right thing or not.

If "always gentle" is unrealistic, I'd like to set the bar a little higher than "tazing a restrained person 3 times".

None of us was there. If she was belligerent drunk, how could she reliably remember everything that happened ? More likely story is she refused orders to calm down, assaulted CO's and got tazed before being restrained. That would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

None of us was there, as you said. I do not take it as "more likely" that the victim earned three tazings. I also don't believe that effective policework would ever require tazing a drunk person three times.

And as has been said elsewhere, she was restrained all throughout.

She was strapped to the gurney prior to leaving the scene of arrest.

Right.. and if she assaulted CO's to the point where it required three tazings, do you really think she'd escape without a charge?

Both law enforcement and correctional officers are trained in similar facilities with similar skills emphasized, and both physical and verbal techniques are part of that.

Emphasis is key. Grappling, weaponry, and mediation are each taught, but it's individuals that decide on application.

The problem is our collective perception of what criminal justice means to Americans.

The parent poster immediately shifted "partial" blame to the victim because she is a "criminal".

Until we change the perception that criminal = bad person and therefore subject to any punishment nothing of importance will change.

If we could put them in soundproof safe rooms after they've been detained so they do not disturb others (and monitor them so they don't hurt themselves), sure. Probably will increase the fines and taxes tremendously to do that.

> And I don't see why that's not feasible.

Because law enforcement is made up of the same imperfect, mistake making humans as the bone-headed civilians that committed the offense.

The thing is that they have less expectations than civilians in many cases. If someone was restrained and I tazed them three times I would be arrested immediately.

And you solve that problem structurally. Saying boys will be boys is not how you fix things.

She does. Which is why we didn't push an investigation too hard or go to the newspaper because of this potential reaction from the public.

I don't agree with her and I do not believe she is to blame. The system worked on her and she has subordinated to the system.

My opinion is that it is not OK to blame the victim. She was assaulted. That is illegal. She posed no physical threat to the guards. She was strapped down and out numbered 4:1.

Would you blame a woman for being held down and gang raped because she dressed provocatively and said hello to these men? Of course not.

How do you know her version of the story is the correct one? Are you sure she was really strapped down and tasered while restrained? We know she was drunk and belligerent, her recall might be imperfect.

I am not saying that police and prison guards don't abuse prisoners, but people in custody aren't always right either.

I think it boils down to:

- she was seen leaving the scene strapped to a gurney en route to jail

- the taser marks were visible for weeks in 3 separate areas of her body

- she was psychologically damaged. Literally broken for weeks emotionally. It still manifests in strange ways over a year later.

- we ran into another girl she was in jail with at court during pre trial. She was really concerned for my friends emotional well being after "what happened in there".

> I don't agree with her and I do not believe she is to blame.

I didn't say she is fully to blame, but you can't deny she was an instigator by being belligerent and/or drunk. Or rather, her actions were a catalyst to what happened to her.

You can fully expect law enforcement officials to be emotionless machines, but the reality is that they are human as well and sometimes make incorrect choices based on circumstantial triggers.

> You can fully expect law enforcement officials to be emotionless machines, but the reality is that they are human as well and sometimes make incorrect choices based on circumstantial triggers.

The bad thing isn't that cops are human, it's that their status insulates them from responsibility when they screw up in all but the most high-profile cases.

Who watches the watchers?

Bingo.

I do not deny that she was an instigator. In fact, I nearly explicitly mentioned it by using the word belligerent.

I contend that it's irrelevant.

If some guy on the street is calling me ugly, fat, or stupid and I walk to him and clock him in the jaw, it's still assault and I would still be charged. The same should apply to jail guards.

It is irrelevant. You are right.

>If some guy on the street is calling me ugly, fat, or stupid and I walk to him and clock him in the jaw, it's still assault and I would still be charged. The same should apply to jail guards.

I agree that if a jail guard just walked up to somebody who spoke ill of them on the street and punched them, they should be charged.

But I don't think that things should be simplified that much in the correctional environment because there is a big difference. If inmates were loudly talking down to guards and acting belligerent, that would present a disruption to the orderly running of the institution. It would also set a standard for other inmates to act in that manner. Does that mean I'm saying corrections personnel should feel free to beat inmates at any opportunity? No. But the jail and prison environment has more complex factors at play when inmates act up than just somebody is making fun of me.

I agree it's a complex scenario.

I will never agree that beating helpless and restrained detainees is an acceptable response to any scenario in a correctional facility.

There are things like taking away TV privileges or being demoted to janitorial duty that can be an effective deterrent to many behavioral issues in a facility.

I say many (as opposed to most) because our jails/prisons are regularly used to house the mentally ill these days which creates another layer of complexity. We should fix that problem and remove that layer first and foremost.

Yes, and there never seem to be consequences for that. Don't you find that troubling?

You are of course accepting completely that a belligerent drunk woman had sufficient unbiased recall to fairly assess the ordering and significance of events. If you're a belligerent drunk, its usually because you believe everyone is being belligerent with you, regardless of whether they are or are not. If drunk people had good powers of decision making and memory, we'd allow them to drive.

The scars from the taser guns were visible for several weeks. As were the psychological effects. She was broken.

I've known this woman for most of my adult life and have never found her to be one to embellish a story for theatre.

oy vey. When you give law enforcement a gun and taser, you expect them to use it appropriately. Your question begs the question that their action was reasonable in light of the "rude" behaviour.

There is no situation where it's okay for LE to shoot or tase someone because of non-threatening words.

> There is no situation where it's okay for LE to shoot or tase someone because of words.

ftfy

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