Expensive Sadism

Darryl Wayne Turner's family will receive $625,000 from the city of Charlotte, NC and more suits may be in the making (possibly involving one of the only lawyers to successfully sue Taser International). Turner was tased and died after an incident involving hotpockets in 2008.

Is $625,000 the value of a young black man's life in the US today? Still, I wonder if Turner would be alive today if the cop that tased him had assessed the boy's life at even a tenth of that figure. If cops faced a real and swift prospect of paying for the costs of tasing we'd probably have many less dead tased people.

In another incident, Santa Paula will pay a man $250,000 to settle a lawsuit over a tasing incident that required back surgery for the victim.

And let's hope that these incidents become extremely expensive tasings (especially the first one):

Tasing a pregnant woman and a grandfather at a Baptism party. See the video here. Coincidentally, can you imagine this happening in an affluent white neighborhood like Bryn Mawr, PA? There would be wall-to-wall national television news coverage.

A judge threw out a city request to dismiss a lawsuit over a taser incident in Lubock, Texas. The cop in this incident acknowledges not turning on his microphone until the end of the arrest. How convenient. He also left the taser barbs in the victim's chest for over twenty minutes. Standard practice or not, here is at least one judge agreeing that that's excessive.

Finally, I can't wait to read about the results of the police-led investigation into a 76-year-old man, on a tractor and in a parade being tased, for not following traffic directives. That excuse is guaranteed to be a doozy.