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Stun guns were introduced in New York in the early 1980s, when officers were confronting a higher number of disturbed people because of the rapid and widespread deinstitutionalization of mental health patients. The devices were not seen as a success.
The technology had not been perfected and the devices were kept mostly in Emergency Service Unit officers’ trucks. Several high-ranking officers and sergeants were transferred from the 106th Precinct in Queens after officers were charged with using stun guns on drug suspects during interrogations. Mr. Kelly was assigned by Commissioner Benjamin Ward to clean things up.
Perhaps spurred by memories of that scandal, Mr. Kelly added a cautionary line to the new rules of engagement for the Taser. The order, published on June 4, said that putting a Taser directly against someone’s body should not be the primary method of use and that such cases of “touch-stun mode” would be investigated.
How about Mr. Kelly stating that stun mode won't be used, rather than should not be used.
And what about oversight of the NYPD's use of tasers? I've been able to find very little about that and this article offers only a hint of information:
In 2007, 41 people complained of being struck with a Taser by officers and 9 said they had been confronted by officers brandishing one, according to Andrew Case, a spokesman for the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates allegations of wrongdoing by officers. Of those complaints, one was substantiated, he said.
So far this year, the board has received 17 complaints from people who said they were struck with a Taser by officers and 6 from those who said they were confronted by them, Mr. Case said. None of the 2008 cases have been fully investigated yet; eight have been closed because the victim refused to provide a statement, one has been withdrawn, and the others remain open.
Two disturbing paragraphs contain a statement from the NY chapter of the ACLU:
Christopher T. Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the concern now is whether officers will use Tasers in situations where they traditionally had used much less force, and whether civilians will be unnecessarily and more frequently subjected to their use.
“Is it actually an alternative that leads to reduced use of firearms by the police?” Mr. Dunn said. “Or does it lead to increased use of force? The concern is we are going up the ladder of force, as opposed to coming down the ladder.”
Mr. Dunn, those aren't really points of contention anymore. The questions have been answered. Tasers don't reduce firearm usage and they are too high in the continuum of force. See various links to the left and right of this post. They're filled with answers to those questions.
Finally, and this may just be a pet peeve of mine, but NY Times can you please leave your crushes out of your reporting? What is with this bit (emphasis mine):Tasers came under a new spotlight as the image of a square-jawed Mr. Kelly holding a stun gun was beamed across the media landscape on Monday and Tuesday, and as news spread that the nation’s largest police force was taking a fresh look at the device. At the same time, a sea of controversial Taser headlines seemed to crop up.
Tasers fire electrified darts from as far away as 35 feet to immobilize the target. Some New York police officers say the devices are useful in subduing suspects who are on drugs or are mentally disturbed. New York police officers encounter some 80,000 such situations in a year.Mentally ill people and drug users are exactly the people that a major inquiry into tasing by Canada's Commission for Public Complaints just labeled as "at risk" (for taser abuse and post tasing complications). As pointed out at Excited Delirium there's some dubious spinning in trying to pin a predisposition to cardiac events on every person who died after being tased, but these populations are undoubtedly at risk for abuse (see Houston).
If more Tasers are deployed in New York City, strict conditions would have to be imposed on who could use them and under what circumstances. They might make sense as a last-resort alternative to lethal force, but it would be folly to allow them to be used in more routine situations like crowd control or policing political demonstrations. Nor should they be seen as the full answer to the problem of police shootings.Indeed. An internet search would have turned up plenty of information on this topic. NYC's own Daily News was able to find some of these statistics.
The Media Matters link contains nine more examples of Matthews promoting John McCain.MATTHEWS: Let's go to Senator John McCain, Republican presidential -- there he is! Senator McCain, you know you're in my heart! I have to tell you the president gave your speech tonight.
[...]
McCAIN: I know that pundits like you and [MSNBC host] Keith [Olbermann] were making different predictions about who was going to win about a month ago, not only on the Democratic side, but on our side as well. So, I think a lot of things can happen between now and a week from now or even -- so, I just think --
MATTHEWS: I know.
McCAIN: -- things are very unsettled. I think a lot of Americans are undecided.
MATTHEWS: Well, you show a lot of courage out there, Senator. Thank you very much for coming on tonight. And by the way, we have our jobs, too. Our job is to predict what's --
McCAIN: I know you do. Tell Keith.
MATTHEWS: -- going to happen tomorrow night and we can't do it very well, but we do like doing it.
Opening his radio show with funeral music yesterday, Fox News host John Gibson callously mocked the death of actor Heath Ledger, calling him a “weirdo” with a “serious drug problem.”Playing an audio clip of the iconic quote, “I wish I knew how to quit you” from Ledger’s gay romance movie Brokeback Mountain, Gibson disdainfully quipped, “Well, he found out how to quit you.” Laughing, Gibson then played another clip from Brokeback Mountain in which Ledger said, “We’re dead,” followed by his own, mocking “We’re dead” before playing the clip again.
The untimely death of anyone is a sad thing. It's especially sad when a young person is denied the full duration of what is likely our one chance at consciousness.
But as Mr. Giuliani has plummeted from first to fourth — or worse — in some national polls, as he finished near the bottom of the pack in the nation’s earliest primaries, and as his lead evaporated even in Florida, the state on which he has gambled the most time and money, those Republican leaders are verging toward a grim new consensus:
Take heart Rudy, Chris Matthews still loves you. That's more evidence that the pundits and talking heads should be the last people we listen to on such matters.If Mr. Giuliani loses in the Florida primary on Jan. 29, they say, he may even have trouble defeating the rivals who are encroaching on his own backyard.
“It’s pretty certain that he has to win Florida,” said Guy V. Molinari, the former Staten Island borough president, who is co-chairman of Mr. Giuliani’s campaign in New York.
Those supporters say they are confident that if Mr. Giuliani carries Florida or runs a very close second [How's that for leaving room for failure?], he will remain the odds-on favorite to claim virtually all of the delegates from the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut primaries on Feb. 5, when Republicans in 22 states vote.
Go Denny. Go.A judge in Nevada has just ordered MSNBC to include Rep. Dennis Kucinich in Tuesday's Democratic Party presidential debate in Las Vegas or he will cancel the forum.Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson vowed to issue an injunction halting the nationally televised debate if MSNBC failed to comply. Kucinich had filed a lawsuit seeking to be included just this morning.
The judge ruled it was a matter of fairness and Nevada voters would benefit from hearing from more than just Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama. Kucinich had been invited to participate in the 6 p.m. Pacific debate Tuesday, but that invitation was rescinded last week following the ....
results of the New Hampshire primary and Iowa caucuses that showed Kucinich trailing badly.
Kucinich received the news in an Associated Press story handed to him during a telephone interview with Neil Cavuto on the Fox Business channel. Kucinich read the news item out loud: "It says ‘A Nevada judge said Monday that Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich must be included in Tuesday’s candidates’ debate in Nevada’. Holy smokes! I just found out. I have to get off the phone now. I have to make plans to go to Nevada.”
Simply put: This is what happens when one side of American politics – the Right – spends three decades and many billions of dollars building a sophisticated and powerful media apparatus and the other side – the Left – does next to nothing on media infrastructure.
Yes, it’s true that many Democratic senators behaved spinelessly, but a leading reason for their political cowardice is the Republicans’ extraordinary ability to whip up national frenzies over anything that can be portrayed as an affront to them or their allies.
The Right’s powerful ideological media – stretching from newspapers, magazine and book publishing to talk radio, TV networks and the Internet – is arguably the most intimidating force in modern American politics. There is nothing remotely comparable – in size, reach or funding – on the Left.
Obama staffer Marvin Nicholson, a personal aide always at Obama's side during rope line handshakes, said O'Reilly yelled at him to get out of the way of his cameraman's shot. Nicholson said O'Reilly came around the waist-high barricade separating Obama from well-wishers."Then he grabbed me with both of his arms and tried to push me out of the way," Nicholson said after the campaign agreed to make him available to reporters.
A Fox News spokesman did not immediately respond to e-mail and phone messages.
The scene was hard to miss. O'Reilly is about 6-feet-5-inches tall. Nicholson is 6-feet-8-inches tall.
"I told him, 'Sir, I would appreciate it if you wouldn't shove me anymore.'
"He called me 'low class.' He was pretty upset."
Secret Service agents assigned to protect Obama ordered O'Reilly back behind the barricade. At that point Obama approached him and extended his hand.
Faux News journalism in action! Awesome!
A spokesperson at the Vodaphone press office in Newbury explained this afternoon that with a lot of children now using mobile telephone technology to access the internet, web sites had “to meet a content standard”. Customers, she explained, could “opt-in” to access adult websites.
The Vodaphone website says that to opt-in, a subscriber has to be able to prove his or her age – and must be 18 or over.
UK Gay News uses a Vodaphone mobile phone and a test last night confirmed access was barred. Though this was the very first time that we had attempted to go online from a mobile phone, we phoned the company and the block was lifted immediately.
No one could argue with this philosophy, given that there are many pornographic sites on the web.
However, in the case of both UK Gay News and Gay City News, one fails to see how either can be deemed to be “adult content” sites.
In the case of UK Gay News, the vast majority of the content is links to articles of interest to lesbian, gay or transgender people in some of the world’s most respected newspapers, ranging from The Guardian and The Independent in the UK to the Globe & Mail in Canada and the Washington Post in USA.
The front page of Gay City News this morning include stories about a movie being adapted from an Upton Sinclair novel, congress cutting HIV prevention moneys, and the witch hunt for gays in Morocco.
“It’s two girls at a sleepover, and if all of a sudden that’s bad, then what is the world coming to?”I'm trying to find people upset by these photos. I'm wondering if this is something the American Taliban will care about? I'm guessing not. So far, I haven't see any homophobic ramblings from the American Family Association or the uptight men at Concerned Women for America.
PORTLAND, Ore. - Two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow search warrants to be issued without a showing of probable cause, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as amended by the Patriot Act, "now permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment." ...Mayfield claimed that secret searches of his house and office under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act violated the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure. Aiken agreed with Mayfield, repeatedly criticizing the government.
"For over 200 years, this Nation has adhered to the rule of law — with unparalleled success. A shift to a Nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised," she wrote.
By asking her to dismiss Mayfield's lawsuit, the judge said, the U.S. attorney general's office was "asking this court to, in essence, amend the Bill of Rights, by giving it an interpretation that would deprive it of any real meaning. This court declines to do so." ...
The Mayfield case has been an embarrassment for the federal government. Last year, the Justice Department's internal watchdog faulted the FBI for sloppy work in mistakenly linking Mayfield to the Madrid bombings. That report said federal prosecutors and FBI agents had made inaccurate and ambiguous statements to a federal judge to get arrest and criminal search warrants against Mayfield.
Also, I noticed that I had been getting some traffic from a CNN story about this ruling. I have no idea why, I haven't linked to it (until this post). Their version of this story is less organized than Yahoo's AP article and pretty right-slanted, ending with this not too subtle sentence:
Named to the bench in 1997 by President Clinton, Aiken is considered one of the more liberal judges on the federal bench in Oregon.
Pam has more on Jena here and here.
She notes that the "progressive" blogosphere is quiet on this. She's right and it's gross.
Also, check out the front page of the great progressive voice in print:
(click for larger)
The six black teens were charged a few months after three white teens were accused of hanging nooses in a tree at their high school. The white teens were suspended from school but weren’t prosecuted. Five of the black teens were initially charged with attempted murder. That charge was reduced to battery for all but one, who has yet to be arraigned; the sixth was charged as a juvenile.The beating victim, Justin Barker, was knocked unconscious, his face badly swollen and bloodied, though he was able to attend a school function later that night.
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