Something Must Be Done About Tasers

Hello Papamoka Bloggers - I need to take a position on tasers after reading about another death this weekend in Virginia. Poor 17-year-old Derrick Jones of Martinsville was pronounced dead in his own home following an encounter with police that ended in a taser blast.

Neighbors called the police due to noise. Jones, who had been drinking AT HOME with friends, "moved rapidly" towards the officer while making unspecified unkind comments. Police officers know that tasers have killed people in the past, especially those who may be high on drugs, so a taser should have been used as a LAST RESORT!

It is clear to me that police officers, who I hold in great esteem, are not using their tasers properly. They're inadvertently killing innocent people, and something must be done. He wasn't armed, so why taser him? Why couldn't the officers have just called in back-up, and wrestled him to the ground the old-fashioned way? Isn't that why we hire strong officers?

This is an example of how some police departments are taking tasers too lightly, and how they use them too casually. Despite what some police say, tasers can be deadly weapons, and they should be taken very seriously.

A CBS report shows that tasers have KILLED "at least 400 people in the United States and Canada since 2001." Those figures leave out those who merely suffered heart attacks yet survived after being tasered. I don't know about you, but if the police know that tasers can kill, or cause heart attacks, and they do, than it's clear that tasers should be restricted to the same rules as firearms. It only seems reasonable to me.

I've even read that when testing tasers on rookies, to demonstrate their use, police departments make a big deal to use volunteers with a medical clearance, because they know a heart attack is possible. That alone is very disturbing to me. It shows they are aware.

I'm pretty angry because, despite my admiration for law enforcement, I think some police departments are out of control, seeming almost militaristic in the way they enforce laws on unarmed citizens. It could be the thin end of the wedge, and could get worse. We as citizens need to get more vocal about it, unless you want to risk being tasered in the future, or even killed.

Just like that college student in Florida who tried to scream questions to McCain, and who begged not to get tasered by campus police, people are getting tasered way too easily. It is a growing problem that needs to be addressed by journalists and community groups. It is a good cause, and people have to speak up more. I know I will try.

My own father died in 1969 after police chased a criminal causing him to slam into my father going around 90 mph on city streets. Police chases kill thousands each year, and very little is written about their victims.

I cope with the idea that my father died because police thought it was important to catch that criminal. In a way he was armed, at least with a speeding vehicle. I could see tasering that young man if he was carrying a taser, or driving a car perhaps, but not for simply running and yelling abusive language.

Citizens tolerate police carrying firearms for good reason, but we do not have to tolerate police tasering unarmed citizens. Either police departments begin to take great steps to limit their use, or citizens should do it for them by writing laws. Something must be done. Derrick Jones should not die in vain.

Michael Boh
Papamoka's Left Coast Contributor
from Our Rants & Raves Blog

Passionate Politics and the Presidency

Can you actually picture John McCain this passionate about speaking to the people. Even in a downpour, Obama is talking to the folks and inspiring the democratic process to vote. 80,000 people endured the weather to hear Barack Obama speak which raises the thought that they are desperate for a true American leader.

Video Link

Obama McCain Toss Up States

When it comes to the Presidential election this year, many states are still in play and the battleground for McCain and Obama is very diverse from previous elections. States that went for Kerry or Bush are no longer locks by any political party this year.

One of the things that I am very glad to see is that the tough race that Hillary Clinton ran in the primaries has reinvigorated woman in America to participate in this election process. In the process of picking Vice Presidential candidates I was very surprised that Barack Obama did not actually pick Hillary Clinton as Vice President but that is history now. Joe Biden brings another spectrum to the Democrat ticket that expands the political theology of what it means to be a true American servant to the people. The big surprise in this election process was the coasting in during the primaries, John McCain, picking Sarah Palin the Governor of Alaska, a virtual unknown and unlikely pick for Vice President.

Personally, I honestly think McCain picked her simply because she was a woman and he hoped that her unknown status on the national stage would follow through in her run for Vice President. That didn’t hold up and Governor Palin comes with some luggage that I honestly don’t think McCain had the chance to consider or vetted in his pandering to woman voters. Make no mistake about it, the Maverick picked her because she alone could stir up the main stream media and draw attention not back to him but the Republican Party! As his campaign manager has said, this election is no longer about the issues! Something nobody speaking at the RNC convention went into any detail on, including John McCain the actual candidate for President from the Republican Party?

My thoughts are that many of the states once firmly in the Red zone are up for grabs and the Obama and McCain campaigns will have to fight hard to take or keep these states. According Real Clear Politics Polls Obama is making progress in achieving a win come November in many of these toss up states.

Florida is one state with 27 Electoral votes up for grabs according to the RCP Polls. Since March of this year to September, Obama has climbed up to a tie status with McCain which is almost a ten point jump. Just a reminder, Obama was not allowed to campaign in the primaries in Florida because of DNC rules at the time that prohibited campaigning due to Florida moving up its primary vote date. Florida is wide open and ripe for an Obama, Hillary, and Bill Clinton speech tour.

Virginia is next on the list that went for George Bush by 8+ points in the last two elections and is now a dead heat between Obama and McCain with 13 electoral votes in play. I’m giving some of that credit to Virginians not being anyone’s fool. Folks in Virginia know when the politics in America is screwed up and they elected Jim Webb as a U.S. Senator to counter the current administration claims as being a monarchy. There once was a king that pissed off one Virginian so much that he ended up leading a Revolutionary Army to victory just a couple of hundred years ago. Now that was Virginian with the true American spirit. I think they named a city after him or a state, his name escapes me right now…

"As the first of every thing, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent," he wrote James Madison, "it is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles." - George Washington

Nevada with 5 electoral votes comes up next with its never ending and growing economy that Bush won in the past two elections by just a few percentage points. One of the reasons that Nevada is growing so fast and furious in the influx of people moving into the state. The construction industry is booming and the tourist industry is off the charts. Everyone from everywhere else is moving into Nevada and that is changing the once prominent red state into a possible blue state. Immigration of Americans to Nevada is coming from the Northeast, blue states, Northwest, blue states, and the central states surrounding the Great Lakes, also blue states. Obama and McCain are 1% apart in the polls as of the time this post is being written.

New Mexico is up on the radar by a slim win by Bush in the last election but has one hell of a Governor in Bill Richardson. Ronald Reagan used trickle down politics like Bill Richardson uses trickle down philosophy in state government to help his residents in New Mexico. New Mexico residents are blessed to have Richardson as a Governor in so many ways that it isn’t even funny. I think they know it and will trust their Governor to vote blue rather than red come this presidential election.

Ohio is the battleground state to win with 20 electoral votes that went for Bush in the last election. Do the people of Ohio really think that John McCain is going to make their lives any better? I think they will see through the smoke and mirror politics of McCain and his selection for Vice President as just another clone of George Bush. Keeping tax cuts for the top 5% of income earners is more important than offering tax relief to 95% of Americans who make less than $250,000 per year. Trickle down politics is McCain, the rich keep more of what they already have to much of and you keep less?

Last thought on this rant, America is in need of change, the last eight years have proven that our leaders do not have any faith in us by the many lies they have told that were later exposed. If you want four more years of lies, misdirection, avoidance of the truth, deaths of our sons and daughters in made up reasons to go to war then by all means vote your conscience.

When you really think about it, America was born of people that had to have change to survive. They fought and died for that change that gives us all the rights that we enjoy today. America will not survive this phase of the experiment in freedom if the oppression our people face is born from within our halls of government.

Papamoka