A group of black bloggers is sponsoring a petition and calling for Congressional hearings on police use of tasers against African-Americans in the U.S.
Group member Eddie Griffin, of the blog, Eddie Griffin-BASG, said, “While there continues to be considerable media and congressional attention to torture in Guantanamo, there is comparatively little attention to the mounting evidence of human rights violations in the streets of America by a number of police departments across America, including torture and killings of black children, women and men through-out the United States through the use and abuse of Tasers.”I'm not sure why misuse or overuse of tasers is only a problem for black Americans. There have been plenty of news stories detailing questionable taser use by police on people of various races, including a number cases where children have been tasered. In the latest incident, a school police officer in Phoenix, Arizona tasered a 14 year-old boy in order to break-up a fistfight. Was blasting a kid with 50,000 volts really the best option?
But regardless of the racial issue, the black bloggers' initiative points out yet again why it is so hard to take seriously the hysteria about torturing terrorists. There are all sorts of questionable activities, many of which could be considered torture -- especially using the broad definition favored by torture opponents -- that take place regularly within our criminal justice system. We tolerate and sometimes even advocate those activities. Yet people actually get all worked up about the torture of foreign terrorists.
In other news, Breitbart says lefty intimidation is "worse than waterboarding". Calling something torture doesn't make it so.
ReplyDeleteOpponents of torture stand against it anywhere it happens. A we are particularly worked up about the torture of foreign terrorists is that it was official policy.
Find some evidence of domestic officials authorizing torture-memo-like abuses of domestic prisoners or suspects and we will decry it on the same grounds.
Read pretty much anything about the U.S. prison system.
ReplyDelete'pretty much anything' will reveal the usual stream of abuses which exist almost anywhere people have forcible control over others who are deemed inferior (incl. criminal)
ReplyDeleteTorture-as-policy is something else.
Having had a medical test that involves small shocks applied to the body to test nerve conduction (EMG), i can affirmatively state with authority that any use of a taser qualifies as torture. better than a gunshot? sure. humane? no.
ReplyDeleteGherald,
ReplyDelete"Torture-as-policy is something else."
If you believe prison reform advocates, treatement that many would consider torture is endemic in U.S. prisons, as policy. Have you ever seen the BBC documentary "Torture, Inc."?
PersonalFailure,
I have no problem with the use of tasers in serious situations with adults where the only other realistic alternative is lethal force -- and where that isn't called for. But there have been way too many incidents which in my opinion constitute unnecessary or abusive use.
PF,
ReplyDeleteTorture implies the punishment or coersion of someone under your control. If someone is well-enough under control and gets tazed, that may be torture. But if they are trying to e.g. flee a scene or attack someone, then it's not torture to merely stop them.
UNRR,
If torture is 'endemic in U.S. prisons' then that's an argument for prison reform, incl. military prisons where I'm sure the same or worse abuses happen (see Abu Ghraib)
I don't take what reform advocates say as gospel, but I do welcome reform. I just don't know how far the prisons themselves can be improved, because I think these things happen almost anywhere people have forcible control over others who are deemed inferior. Just look at all the "pound me in the ass" jokes people make; the public is not terribly outaged by the rape of convicted felons.
I think the most important prison reform is to reduce the number of people we incarcerate for victimless crimes, so I focus on this.
Gherald,
ReplyDelete"If torture is 'endemic in U.S. prisons' then that's an argument for prison reform, incl. military prisons where I'm sure the same or worse abuses happen (see Abu Ghraib)"
One of the points brought out in the BBC documentary was that the things which happened at Abu Ghraib were very similar to what goes on in U.S. domestic prisons.
"these things happen almost anywhere people have forcible control over others who are deemed inferior. "
True, and the guard profession seems to attract at least a minority of sadists.
"Just look at all the "pound me in the ass" jokes people make; the public is not terribly outaged by the rape of convicted felons."
That's partly the point I'm making. We tolerate & in some cases see that as a deserved part of punishment -- despite the fact that quite a few of those felons are non-violent offenders in for something like drug crimes. It happens on a fairly wide scale. With that in mind, outrage over the treatment of some foreign terrorists doesn't make much sense.
"I think the most important prison reform is to reduce the number of people we incarcerate for victimless crimes, so I focus on this."
We are on the same page on that. We could also make more use of alternative sentencing and other options for first time offenders and those who don't appear to be serious threats. Save that harsh punishments for those who truly deserve them.
> tolerate & in some cases see that as a deserved part of punishment -- despite the fact that quite a few of those felons are non-violent offenders in for something like drug crimes. It happens on a fairly wide scale. With that in mind, outrage over the treatment of some foreign terrorists doesn't make much sense.On the contrary, it's all wrong when it happens, but the mistreatment and torture of detainees was policy in a way that US prisons are not. You just have that minority of sadists there, or however you want to think about it.
ReplyDeleteYour argument is basically that "unauthorized abuse happens at location A, therefore it does not make sense to worry about it being authorized at location B".
That's ridiculous, especially when location B is the much higher stakes international arena.
If evidence of a US felon being waterboarded hundreds of times hit the news, we'd be outraged. But it would be seen as a relatively isolated event like Abu Ghraib, and cause much fewer problems for this country than Abu Ghraib did, as well as far more less than the policy of torturing terrorists has. That much is indisputable.
Far from making no sense, the decision to focus on the far more significant and avoidable problem (because it was authorized)is an obvious choice.