I don’t see how failing to comply should get you tased. The kid was very obviously not trying to attack the officer. So now it’s okay to taser people when they don’t listen? Are you saying that if a taser did not exist the kid should have been shot? I get that we don’t have the full picture but we do have is a video showing a law enforcement officer taser a kid who is not listening but in no way making threats towards the officer at the time of the recording. Simply not listening is not grounds to use a device that is supposed to be used as an alternative to shooting someone.
I did not see any mention of body cam footage in the article. So we’ll probably never know what happened prior the video. It’s the law enforcement officers word vs a 16 kid who had some pot on him. From what I can tell the officer did not say he saw him buy the pot. So one can make a reasonable assumption the officer did not know he had it. So there goes that argument.
As far as we know no one called reporting of a break in and the last burglary was in Jan according to the article. So i highly doubt the area is getting extra cops to look out for break ins. So I guess my question is more of why was the cop following this kid? Last time I checked hiding in a bush is not against the law. While I get that may look sketch and the cops can ask question that kid was not under any obligation to answer them.
I guess at the end of the day I really don’t give a flying fuck what the kid did or said to the cop. I guess if the kid made some kind of threat of harm to the officer (which damn sure would have been in the report) I would kind of be objective. But from all the facts currently available the law enforcement officer created this whole deal and got mad and used force designed to be used when an officer would have shot someone prior to being issued a taser. Ask yourself if that kid deserved to be shot in that same scenario. I’m perfectly okay jumping to a conclusion on this one as the department has no leg to stand on here. You can bet your ass had there been a prior incident to this that could have explained the actions of the officer we would know. At this point I would not trust anything else they say.
But then again I’m a black male who’s father, grandfather, and uncles were all cops. So… I guess I have some insight into how some cops think and how myself as a black male who lives and works in one the whitest states in America thinks. 16 year old me would have been shot and killed given this scenario. I had a smart ass mouth and did not take shit from cops the many times I’ve been followed for no good reason. Very much a script flip when your being followed to stop and ask a cop why they are following you. I’m not about BLM or defund the police.
What I am about is holding law enforcement personally accountable. Remove qualified immunity and make cops carry liability insurance. I get they have to make difficult choices under stress. But don’t doctors? You can tell me someone operating on someone is not stressed out when something goes wrong and they have to make a spit second decision to save the person they are working on. But I guess a surgeon has a bit more training then a 6 month academy. I’m done ranting.