Man dies after he is shot by the police with a stun gun and catches fire

"You better not hurt yourself! That's MY job! Stop resisting!!"

Usually the argument is "do not try to subdue them, try to de-escalate". Obviously that is not always possible, but before worrying about how to deal with the objectively complicated cases of subduing a belligerent person without hurting them, we should probably focus on the much more common problem of police escalating instead of de-escalating situations.

Perhaps people could be respectful toward authorities and follow directions when a stressful situation is happening. Deal with issues at a later point as appropriate.

> How else would you subdue someone? You can’t expect all cops to be able to go 1-1 or even 2-1 with someone to subdue them physically.

Why not? We hold all firefighters to the standard of having the physical strength to break down doors and carry people to safety; and a large part of their downtime is upkeep of their physical fitness, to enable that. We hold all soldiers to the standard of being able to haul huge packs over miles while being shot at; and a large part of their downtime is also constant upkeep of their physical fitness, to enable that.

And, in fact, by closest analogy, we hold all EMS personnel (and also orderlies for in-patient wards) to the standard of being able to bodily subdue people who are in a state of violent delirium, to get them strapped onto a gurney. And, again, we expect them to work out to achieve and maintain the requisite level of physical fitness.

So why can’t we hold all police to the standard of having the physical strength to bodily subdue people, and expect them to do the required upkeep on their physical fitness to enable that?

(Yes, the people police are dealing with sometimes have weapons. Mostly they do not. Even in America; even in the most gun-carrying parts of America, they mostly do not. The strategy for subduing someone should focus on the majority case — subduing people with no weapon, where it is safe to overcome strength with strength — with subduing people with a weapon as a tactical exception, rather than that tactic being the general-use rule. The expectations for police should be built around the requirements to carry out the general-case tactic [physical subdual of unarmed offender], not the requirements to carry out the exceptional-case tactic [armed takedown of armed offender].)

And note that I’m not suggesting police go in and wrestle people to the ground. They should be using tools, like man-catchers. It’s just that those tools are just multipliers for the effectiveness of physical strength, and so you still need to be highly physically strong to make effective use of them in a one-on-one or two-on-one confrontation.

There’s a fair number of videos from eg the UK where they do exactly this. The usual playbook seems to be: get a few people distracting the guy from the front, and another few rush them from the back whilst distracted and hit them with batons or just jump on them.

Or just distract them for a long while and wait for more backup and people with shields.

https://youtu.be/9mzPj_IaMzY

It takes a bit of effort and coordination but is obviously massively preferable to being executed on the spot by the state.

But that's what police in a lot of countries, for example in Europe, are doing. Go 2 on 1 or call for backup and stall. If that is not possible they use peperspray and batons.

I know that intelligence is not sought out in police candidates, but I think we need to be requiring a basic elementary school level of education, such as knowledge that "alcohol is flammable, and we don't apply electricity to flammable things". I mean the problem isn't just tasering; it is tasering someone drenched in alcohol. Kids know alcohol will burn, so were they trying to burn him to death intentionally, or are these officers really going to claim to be that stupid?

I'm seriously interested in the use of netguns or bolo-guns or even some kind of goo-gun that can just trap people. Tazers and pepper spray are way too violent and ineffective.

This one kinda works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yEYRxASpzw

> Battons and pepper spray don’t work well.

> https://youtu.be/7M6-NLm0GBM

I get your point, but I mean this is an edge case, and yet still after a few minutes they subdued him. Against anyone other than the Hulk they should work pretty reliably.

> on non dangerous individuals

If an individual is not dangerous then only little physical force should be used. A taser is not that.

i imagine 99.9999% of people would take their chances with a sandbag round than a bullet. the fact that 1 in <some very large number> may hit your head in a way to injur you permanently doesnt change this.

> There's remarkably little research done…

Well, sure. You don’t research what you don’t want to know, let alone have a public debate about. Better to just make loud blanket statements, and when challenged to just make them louder.

I don't think tendency to misuse is a justification for only providing guns: I think most people would rather be tased than shot. But yes, I'd agree the training needs to constantly reinforce that a Taser is still a weapon that causes serious injury or death, and should only be employed in a situation the officer believes warrants that risk.

Unfortunately a large number of these incidents involve mental health incidents, where officers probably weren't at real risk of physical harm.

On the other hand, incidents like this one drive a backlash against less-than-lethal weapons (and various holds), forcing police to deploy lethal force more often. I don’t know what the answer is besides “we need to stop making policy based on the whims of angry mobs”.

Does it? Other commenters are saying that 70% stuff doesn’t light even with an open flame. Maybe it’s what’s in the nonalcoholic remainder that makes the difference?

I think early during the pandemic we were generally given advice to find 80% or better. Pretty much straight alcohol plus a little bit of stuff to make it gel-like or smell nice or whatever.