let’s make the cops EARN their weapons

i’ve written here before about tasers, and about how hard it was to discover just how many people have actually been killed by those non-lethal weapons.

well, alternet did the research and the answer is: 400 people in north america have been tasered to death.

canada’s eminently humane and rational response was to immediately detaser their police force. this country’s typically obtuse response was to do … nothing.

tasers are supposed to be the safer alternative to firearms: tase somebody rather than putting a bullet in them and the cop can protect himself and still stop the (alleged) perpetrator in his or her tracks. if this is how tasers were actually used, they would be an excellent addition to the law enforcement toolkit.

but they are not used this way. people are tasered in situations where a cop wouldn’t dream of pulling his gun: on students, on a naked EDP ranting & raving on the ledge of a building, on guests at a rowdy wedding. and people are shot when they shouldn’t be, where using a taser would’ve made perfect sense: a man in his apartment with a baseball bat, another EDP on the street armed only with a folding chair, both of whom were shot dead by police.

clearly, cops aren’t using their tasers as prescribed — only as an alternative to shooting — and what makes this so dangerous is the myth of non-lethality. there are 400 ghosts on the commons right now saying that it just ain’t so.

here is my solution:

• manufacture a taser that looks exactly like a standard-issue police firearm (presently, tasers are intentionally made to look as little like guns as possible)
• issue one of these menacing tasers to all police officers, and take their real guns away
• create a special police certification that would earn officers the right to carry actual firearms, and make it tough as nails
• give guns only to those cops who pass the certification tests

so nobody can tell which cops have the guns and which cops have only tasers, but everybody knows that some of the cops have guns. because most (and it better be most, those certs need to maintain ballbustingly high standards) cops don’t have guns, the taser will then be their most powerful weapon. checks and controls on taser use similar to those already in place for gun use could then be implemented to restrain any taser-happy officers from zapping your woozy mama at the beach. even ONE instance of inappropriate taser use would disqualfy the officer in question from EVER taking the firearm certification tests, and that would be one helluva motivation for exercising restraint. the authorized gun-toters become the street police elite, subject to regular retrainings and rigorous psychological exams.

this would create an environment where tasers truly ARE used, and used only, as an alternative to shooting, while still maintaining enough firepower on the streets to keep the cops reasonably safe. while cops in other countries don’t carry and never have carried guns, the american bang-bang shoot-em-up culture is too engrained for that to be a realistic solution here.

back in the day, it was really difficult to get a job as a cop. the background checks, the psych tests, the questioning of motives — in the 70’s, if you got a job on the NYPD it meant you were rock-solid and squeaky-clean. it meant you were smart and balanced and not overly fond of physical violence or power for its own sake. those days are long gone; the NYPD can barely fill a class of rookies these days despite all their advertising. while they’re not exactly hiring just any damn body off the streets (at least i hope they aren’t), it’s pretty close, and it’s a devil’s choice anyway: what are you gonna do, not have any cops?

the compromise suggested here could solve two problems: the overuse of tasers by overzealous (or sloppy, or stupid) cops and the placing of deadly firepower in the hands of barely-vetted and poorly trained members of the force.

whaddya think?

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