Court OKs Repeated Tasering of Pregnant Woman

[ensho]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/pregnant_woman_tasered/



A federal appeals court says three Seattle police officers did not employ excessive force when they repeatedly tasered a visibly pregnant woman for refusing to sign a speeding ticket.

The lawyer representing Malaika Brooks said Monday that the court’s 2-1 decision sanctioned “pain compliance” tactics through a modern-day version of the cattle prod.

“To inflict pain on a person if that person is not doing what the police want that person to do is simply outrageous,” said Eric Zubel, the woman’s attorney. “I cannot say that loud enough.”

Zubel said he would ask the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear Friday’s 2-1 decision that drew a sharp dissent from Judge Marsha Berzon:

“Refusing to sign a speeding ticket was at the time a nonarrestable misdemeanor; now, in Washington, it is not even that. Brooks had no weapons and had not harmed or threatened to harm a soul,” (.pdf) Berzon wrote. “Although she had told the officers she was seven months pregnant, they proceeded to use a Taser on her, not once but three times, causing her to scream with pain and leaving burn marks and permanent scars.”

-snip-
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big brave cops

cruel Court

[joeybee12]

1. How phucking ridiculous...those cops should have been fired...

...tasering over a traffic ticket???? All they had to do was write on there, "refused to sign." Idiots, sadistic idiots.

[Schema Thing]

2. Hopefully this will be taken to a higher court? This shit has to stop.

[truedelphi]

12. I am hoping that it does go to a higher level.

In the beginning days of taser use, the police and military officers were trained that it is NOT POSSIBLE for people to comply with orders while being tasered, as a human being's physiology is not able to withstand the procedure in a manner conducive for them to:

1) comprehend the commands

2) while convulsing from the voltage of the tasering, a person often simply cannot make their body move in the way that the police are requesting.

Nowadays, the police are not given more than ninety minutes of training - some of which is time spent having the students taser one another.

A shock that a two hundred and twenty pound younger man can endure easily doesn't give4 them the idea that someone who is of smaller weight, or not in good health, etc may not be affected in the "minor" way haht the trainees say they are affected.

[LiberalFighter]

3. Those judges should be tasered for being stupid.

Tasering anyone because they won't sign a speeding ticket is outrageous. Since when is it required for a speeding ticket to be signed?

[SocialistLez]

4. I wonder if the judges are

"pro-life."

In any case, this is disgusting.
It's a tad bit more disgusting than shackling down pregnant prison or jail inmates when they're in labor.

[inna]

5. That's just absolutely outrageous.

"leaving burn marks and permanent scars"???


:wtf:


I hope this will be appealed! :mad:

[backtoblue]

6. That is absolutely horrible!

and it's one reason why people are afraid to stand up for their rights nowadays.

[frogmarch]

7. Are anti-abortion groups

ready to go to war over this? If they aren't, they should be. Tasering a pregnant woman could harm the fetus or cause a miscarriage.

This story makes my blood boil :mad: Those police offers should lose their jobs and serve jail time.

[Ignis]

8. K&R, read a snippet from the majority decision here:

I read this story yesterday and simply could not believe it. :argh:

Here's more from the article:

The woman was driving her 12-year-old to the African American Academy in Seattle when she was pulled over on suspicion of speeding in 2004. The child left the car for school and a verbal spat with the police resulted in the woman receiving three, 50,000-volt shocks, first to her thigh, then shoulder and neck while she was in her vehicle. An officer was holding Brooks’ arm behind Brooks’ back while she was being shocked.

...

“A suspect who repeatedly refuses to comply with instructions or leave her car escalates the risk involved for officers unable to predict what type of noncompliance might come next,” Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall wrote for the majority. She was joined by Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain.

“Therefore, while using the Taser three times makes this a closer case, we find that it does not show excessive force in light of the corresponding escalation of Brooks’ resistance and the fact that it was the third tasing that appeared to dislodge her such that the officers could finally extract her from her car and gain control over her,” Hall wrote.

In other words, tasering a pregnant woman is OK if that's the only possible way two LEOs could gain control of the situation.

:puke:

[truedelphi]

11. You may be pleased as I was to read the 9th District Court's ruling in

San Francisco that no police officer can use a Taser unless they are facing bodily harm. In other words, they have to know that the person has a weapon.

Under that ruling, a seven month pregnant woman driving her kid to school is not going to be tasered for not obeying an admonition by the police.

So it is a shame this woman doesn't live in California.

It was interesting to note that the police man who was trying in the court case to defend his actions offered another reason for his excessive tasering of a victim of his brutality - they thought maybe the person was mentally ill.

The court ruled that deciding that someone is mentally ill, or even knowing that they are, does not give a police office the right to taser that person.

[tedk_355]

9. American "justice" indeed

[Beacho]

10. Address this with laws

Go to your city councils, state houses, and use the petition process, and demand an outright ban on tasers.