I don't doubt for a second that he deserved it.

They probably didn't realize his spine was broken; they probably just thought he was severely injured or suffering from a crippling seizure of sorts.

If you don't get up when a police officer asks you to, you deserve to be tazed. None of that "my back is broken" excuse; pain is weakness leaving your body.

My money is on them using it as a make-shift defibrillator. CLEAR!

they were afraid he was going to try and escape, like that quadripalegic guy did.

"quadripalegic"?

If they get in trouble at all...

You people. What are these cops, doctors? Are they supposed to use their MAGIC BROKEN BACK DETECTING powers to know that he's been injured and isn't a garden variety felon? If it were a big black buck coming at you, you wouldn't want the cops to stop tazing that guy would you? No, you wouldn't.

Exactly, thank you camonk.

Danke Camonk.

The point is that tasers are a cop's way of saying, "Stop!" rather than, "Hey! You're not doing what I want you to do." If a kid is just lying on the ground, he isn't interfering with the police much nor could he in any way be construed as a threat.

If this were Boston, I'd just assume the police were tasing him because they were assuming he was a bomb.

"If it were a big black buck coming at you, you wouldn't want the cops to stop tazing that guy would you? No, you wouldn't."

If he were coming at me, that would be a pretty good sign he doesn't have a broken back. Also why is being black relevant to whether a person should be tazed?

The police put their lives on the line every day to protect whiners like you. Sometimes that means erring on the side of caution when dealing with a belligerent suspect. As for what a man being black has to do with the threat he represents, you must surely know that violent criminals are disproportionately african American. It's a little thing called profiling the criminal element, but you appear to be Irish and so I don't expect you to understand anything more complicated than washing the dirt off a potato.

THERE we go. That's a little closer to a coherent counterpoint. Still pretty dim.

Well I'd forgotten that this place is overrun with police-hating, patchouli-smelling, parent-shaming, long-haired peaceniks who need every damn thing about the real world explained to them while I hold their hands and sprinkle fairy dust in their oily mops.

I don't know how I lived my life before you were here to set me straight.

They should have done exactly that. Fucking punks not listening to police directions deserve to get their heads blown off.

Kind of a contradictory statement there.

YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS TO COMPLY

YOU HAVE FOUR SECONDS TO COMPLY.

YOU HAVE THREE SECONDS TO COMPLY.

I comply.

YOU HAVE TWO SECONDS TO COMPLY.

(88) (====) (88)

Five stars for this.

I think I speak for everyone when I say we're all waiting on baleen to answer for police everywhere again.

Tasing a kid lying on the pavement with a broken back and ankle? He wouldn't comply? ....also, I very strongly doubt the high temperature was the only effect of 19 hits with a taser.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, a report on China, a strange place far away where individuals have few rights and the government can routinely spy on and physically brutalize the citizenry at will.

Remember when police departments apologized for this sort of shit? Once upon a time?

No, but I do remember cops being much worse than this in the past.

I took some basic first aid training once, and as I recall the first thing to do when someone has a broken spine is to attempt to move them. If they don't respond, jolt them with some electricity, to get those muscles spasming artificially. You gotta keep those muscles moving or they risk paralysis.

You seldom say sensible things.

Are you insulting yourself or correcting yourself? I'd like to think maybe you fell off an overpass and have become delirious with cerebrospinal fluid losing pressure and excruciating pain.

I pressed submit before I finished the comment, then tried to ammend it by tacking one on the bottom. Funnily enough when I re-read it I briefly thought somebody was being sassy.

She seemed somehow guilty and shifty when she was talking about him. I think maybe something is happening between them. Something forbidden.

Sounds like she needs a taser.

in the ass