Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Don’t Tase Me, Young Man
Reasonable use of the Taser? I mock, you decide.
Officials with the city’s Department on Aging went to Lillian Fletcher’s home Oct. 29 to make a welfare check, and called police when they saw Fletcher in a window swinging a hammer back and forth, police spokeswoman Monique Bond said Tuesday.
Officers arrived and in an attempt to subdue Fletcher one of them used their Taser, Bond said.
[...]
“My grandmother is easily confused,” Taylor told the newspaper, adding that the elderly woman can be belligerent but is about 5 feet 1 and no more than 160 pounds.“I just don’t think they should be Tasing 82-year-old women. That’s ridiculous,” Taylor said.
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She’s crazy and wielding a hammer. I say reasonable.
(Plug alert)
And you can read this and many more stories like it at my latest project Tased and Confused.
(Plug over)
Was she injuring her self or another? The story offers no evidence for that. What gave the “Department on Aging*” the right to break in to her house? Since when is “swinging a hammer back and forth” in your own home a cause to break in to her house and batter her?
Charge the city officials with burglary and throw them in the state prison for a few years, then charge them with federal violation-of-civil-rights statutes and drop them in the federal pen for a few more.
(Yes, this looks to me like unnecessary violence, where the decision was abetted by the free availability of a “non-lethal weapon”.)
* “Department on Aging”: Really?
From this article it seems like she didn’t start waving the hammer until the cops were inside.
From that same article:
“Apparently, the department had received an anonymous tip that Lillian Fletcher, who has a history of mental illness, was home alone and in need of assistance.”
Please note that the tip was anonymous.
“When Fletcher refused to open her door, police were called. Although Fletcher cracked the door, she still refused to let her visitors into the house.”
So the police were called to break in to her house on the basis of an anonymous tip and in direct contravention of her stated desires. Let’s take a look at the 4th Amendment:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
I saw no mention of a warrant based on probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, particularly describing the place to be searched, etc.
“But police officers wouldn’t take no for an answer and pushed their way in. Fletcher ran and got the hammer she keeps beside her bed.”
Good for her. Well, I mean, other than being assaulted and battered by the police violating her constitutional rights. Too bad no officers were harmed in the process.
After reading the Sun Times account (assuming that it bears any relation to what actually happened, of course), I’m even more convinced that this was a crime on the part of the government.
I agree. You can taser someone at 80 or 81, but 82? Come on…