21 yr old black man tasered 9 times in 14 minutes by police officer AFTER being arrested and handcuffed. He died

Awesome !

You got it. I keep a copy of the constitution in my desk so if I have reason to quote it, I get it right. Sounds like you must have one close by. Unalienable rights-- not freedom by govt. decree. It makes no mention of color.

Sorry to play devil's advocate but do you know the history of the founding fathers and their lives? Some were slave owners, and when they said freedom and equality for all they meant white land-owning males, not minorities or females. Not saying it's right or wrong, but I doubt this incident would cause much concern for most of them.

Yeah, Jefferson was one of the worst in that area. And you are right. I guess you would have to consider the climate of the times and their mind set. Thing is, if we all got together and rewrote the constitution could we do much better?

sarah...my reference to the writers of the Constitution was based on the misuse and abuse of authority against any American...the parameters set by the Constitution within which the government may exercise its authority has been breached...this spills over all the way down to the street cop...the government no longer protects and enforces our rights...the American who was murdered by being tasered was denied his rights...he was not read his Miranda Rights, nor did he get the right to have a speedily trial and be represented by a attorney...his death was not caused by his color or whether the founding fathers were slaveowners...his murder was caused by the fact that government no longer protected and enforced his rights...

AND THAT MY FRIEND IS "MY BUDDY" THE WAY YOU PUT IT IS MAGNIFICENT...........

I THANK YOU ALSO, IT IS REASSURING TO SEE THAT MAYBE THIS REPORT ISN'T A "GENERIC COIN TOSS" AND THAT OTHERS CAN BE MOVED BY THE SENSELESSNESS OF THE REPORTED INCIDENT. I READ THE WAY PEOPLE WERE RESPONDING AND FOR A MINUTE I WAS BECOMING FRIGHTENED BUT THEN AS YOU READ ON YOU CAN FEEL THE CONNECTIONS AS HUMANS, WE REALIZE, WE HAVE " THANK GOD"

Hey GregT1, using all-caps on the internet is taken as shouting. It's considered much better manners to write normally.

Possession of narcotics.

T.Y. Ryan. But 14 times while handcuffed is what worries me. Two times after he was dead !
Being a parent I know of nothing that would justify an officers actions in a case like this.

I know it was for possession of narcotics...but I wonder what narcotics..

I thought I read somewhere that it was cocaine. I am too lazy to substantiate that.

Had he merely ran from the officer, been tasered, subdued, cuffed, yada yada yada...that's one thing. Now had he been cuffed and was kicking at the officer...that's another... but GOOD GOSH... 14 times??? The taser shock lasts a full 5 seconds. It's 50,000 volts of T-wave electricity. It imitates brain waves. This means it merely immobilizes the subcutaneous musicles. It only goes AROUND the body, not through it, like conventional electricity from your household socket. It's a different type of electrical wave all together. Nonetheless, 14 times would be hard to explain. As was stated earlier, warrants are just that, warrants. It's not instant guilt or innocence but if he runs, that should be a clue! He was probably ditching something. That's just experience talking. I have no first-hand knowledge of this case... merely speculation, however, there is NEVER any cause to taser a corpse!

It only goes AROUND the body, not through it, like conventional electricity from your household socket.

Electricity follows the lowest resistance path to ground; That might be through your body, or it might be around. I would bet on through in most cases.

Electricity follows the lowest resistance path to ground; That might be through your body, or it might be around. I would bet on through in most cases.

That's a simplistic view of electricity.

In reality, there's something called the "skin effect".

The skin effect is the tendency of an alternating electric current (AC) to distribute itself within a conductor so that the current density near the surface of the conductor is greater than that at its core. That is, the electric current tends to flow at the "skin" of the conductor. The skin effect causes the effective resistance of the conductor to increase with the frequency of the current. Skin effect is due to eddy currents set up by the AC current.

In any case, it's pretty much a moot point. Since, with stun guns and tasers, the electrodes are pretty close together and are both near the skin, even without the skin effect, the electricity going "straight through" from one electrode to another would not pass through the core of the body.

First allow me to introduce the fact I am an instructor for the use of the taser. Now, Hemphill, conventional electricity follows the path of least resistance. That's why when people are electrocuted they have burns or even places blown out of them. That's where the electricity grounded. It has to exit somewhere. The taser grounds itself. If you are being tasered someone can actually touch you and not be shocked...UNLESS they touch the area between the location of the prongs. Then and only then can they feel the effect of the taser. I've been tasered numerous times for training purposes just to show cadets that there is no long-tern affects.

Also, something that no one here has mentioned. There is a physiological phenomenon known as "the point of no return" in which people work themselves up, elevate their heart rate, elevate their blood pressure, elevate their core temperature and literally cause themselves a heart attack, stroke etc. Of course, being high on narcotics that ALREADY have your heart rate, blood pressure and core temperature elevated is not always a precursor, however is normally the root for the "taser deaths" that we hear about. Bottomline... Tasers have NEVER been the cause of a death to this day...PERIOD! Just because someone died after being tasered is not a sure shot that the taser CAUSED the death. In fact the death was probable in spite of the tasering simplly because of the point of no return phenomenon.

point of no return phenomenon

He's right about this. I'm a nurse and I know of 2, possibly 3 cases where this happened. Once was grief-induced, once was fear-induced, and the third time was sheer will of the patient that he was going. If I had not been involved in that third case, I would not have believed it. The gentleman was very elderly but healthy as a horse. He kept saying he wanted to die. The Dr. kept telling him he was the healthiest 90-something year old he'd ever seen and he wasn't going no where. He would lay in bed and FOCUS, I mean FOCUS on dying. We'd go in the room and stop him as often as we could. Three days later, we got to his room too late.

conventional electricity

Wow, they made a whole new type of electricity? Did anyone tell the physicists?

Tasers have NEVER been the cause of a death to this day...PERIOD!

Got any kind of proof for that? Didn't think so, since you really can't prove a negative. Either way the san jose's courts might disagree with that.

No, it's not NEW. It's synthesized... altered... harnessed.

So how does it not follow the lowest resistance path to ground? I get that they are trying to use the electrical impedence of the skin as a conductor to try and force more current deeper into the body, but it is still following the lowest resistance path to ground.

Of course, being high on narcotics that ALREADY have your heart rate, blood pressure and core temperature elevated

What do you mean by narcotic? In medical terms narcotic only refers to opiate derivatives, which depress heart rate and blood pressure. Stimulants are classed as 'narcotics' under US law but that's not medically accurate.

No, it's not NEW. It's synthesized... altered... harnessed.

Electricity is electricity. It's electrons flowing through a conductor. There isn't really any way to change that. The human body has many electrical systems and systems that can be disrupted by electricity, like heart beat. For all you know the person you're tasing has a pacemaker, an instrument so delicate it can be disrupted by the book scanners at the library.

I like it--an entire task force of Spidermans.

Then articles like this would be a lot more fun:

"Man slightly injured when hands and legs bound by viscous, sticky material. Cops site using the silly string as "A laugh riot", and even the perpetrator confessed that he "giggled a bit before hitting his head on the pavement.".

I'd choose taking a taser ANY DAY over having my @$$ whipped for not following orders from a LEO. It's not a game. It's real. It's not a matter of "who's right and who's wrong" at that moment. When the police tell you to do something they are in TOTAL AND COMPLETE CONTROL!!!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my youngest was tasered 3 times in a matter of minutes. The reason I called 911 was to get him medical assistance. He had cut his arm bad. We were having a family celebration and I refuse to get behind the wheel after even one drink. Everyone had had a nip so I called 911. There is a major artery in your arm. He wouldn't let me look at it and I didn't know if there was still glass in there that might shift and nick that artery. (I'm a nurse) I told him I was calling 911. We were just a few blocks of the hospital. He took off walking and told me to tell them he was already headed to the hospital E.R.

When the female officer, by her own testimony, pulled up to him, he was obviously intoxicated but friendly. He leaned in her window and said "I'm cut pretty bad, can you give me a lift up to the hospital?" Her testimony, mind you. Now anyone knows that if you have a calm, cooperative, but intoxicated person on your hands, they most likely won't stay calm and cooperative if you start popping off and coming at them with a major attitude. Which is what she did. As a nurse, if I have a patient that is cooperating but having reality issues and I approach them with an "I'm the one in control here!" attitude, that patient is likely to go off on me and it would be my fault for provoking an emotionally or mentally impaired patient. That is the part I blame the policewoman for. If she had not deliberately provoked him, he would have walked peacefully up the road to the E.R. and she could have followed along in her patrol car and it would have been end of story. Instead she made a smart-assed remark about he'll do what she tells him to do and got the very result I think she was fishing for.

He said some kind of expletive to her and told her he'd take himself to the hospital and started walking away. She was determined he wasn't going anywhere. He never got close to anyone on the scene. He just kept walking and yelling expletives back at them. (3 or 4 cars of officers by then) Then they pulled out the tasers. And at that point, the situation had deteriorated to the point that they were justified to use those tasers at that time. He picked up a can and through it their direction but he was too far away from them to hit anyone. He was tased from a distance three times. He said the only thing he can remember was laughing at them and yelling that their "tasers aren't sh!t". The DOGS on the other hand were another story. He says he'll take a taser over a canine officer any day of the year. I was just grateful they did have tasers. My baby might be dead today if they did not have the option of using the tasers. They're dangerous but they are less likely to kill than a bullet. MUCH, MUCH less likely.

As a side note, lest one conclude my youngest is a complete reprobate, when the language he used that night was read to him the next day at his first hearing, he was HORRIFIED and told the judge that he was completely ashamed that he spoke to a lady that way. And it wasn't just talk to win the judge over. He told me later "Mom, when they told me what I said to her, I wanted to crawl under the bench." He completed all his sentencing requirements. At his sentencing, one of the officers had left the city force and joined the county force. That officer, God bless him, came in and testified FOR my son. He told the judge that he truly believed Mason was a good kid that had a really bad set of circumstances pile up on him that day. During Mason's probation, the probation officer kept telling him he just couldn't see Mason doing the charges he got charged with because he was the nicest, most dependable, and hardest working probationer he'd ever had. He's off now. His P.O. here fought hard to get him off probation because of how well he'd done.

I know I went way off track here but the bottom line is that those tasers just may have saved Mason's life. They should be used judiciously but they will save more lives than they will take.

One little addition to the earlier post. The female officer that responded, has a reputation in that town for copping an attitude with people. Describe her to someone and it's like "Ooooh, her! Oh yeah, I know which one you're talking about."

Though it's most unfortunate that instances like that occur, and I've been advised of situations where officers PUT people in the position to have less-than-lethal force used on them (some get their jollies like that) the taser is a far better option than the alternative. And again, it's most unfortunate that they slip through the cracks, but there are those officers that will ultimately corner a suspect into acting just so he/she can exercise that tidbit of authority. As I've said in previous posts we in LE call those officers "badge heavy" and we DO NOT let it go unnoticed by the brass! I can assure you of that. As a general rule they are dealt with in a fair and timely manner. I have worked for a dept (no longer with them... for obvious reasons) that had a few of these rogues and they PROMOTED THEM!!! GO FIGURE!!! Some Chiefs condone that behavior. I think they're compensating for...umm... something else.

Sarge, I agree that most are not that way. I think the reputation of the female officer was part of the reason the male officer testified for Mason. He, in fact, asked the prosecutor to plea bargain but the very day after Mason's arrest, the female officer had also called and said she absolutely wanted no deals. The judge made it clear that if the male officer had not taken off work from the county just to come plead for Mason that the judge had his mind made up already that Mason was going to do 3 years in prison. As a mom, it was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I'd only had one wine cooler that night. But the one drink - no drive rule is one I have never broken in my life. I felt so guilty that I didn't drive him the 4 or 5 blocks to the hospital.

The judge ended up giving him 3 years suspended, 30 days and 5 years intense probation. The judge did not order it in his sentence but Mason took it upon himself while in jail to write and mail apology letters to the officers involved and a special thank you letter to the officer that came to testify for him. Of course, after a year here in Louisville, his P.O. campaigned heavily to Ohio to get them to drop his probation. Mason worked two jobs for over a year, passed 4 surprise visits, house searches, and drug tests with flying colors. He had outstanding references from both jobs, even though the P.O. was worried he was trying to do too much. I'm proud he showed them his true colors after his sentencing.

When the police tell you to do something they are in TOTAL AND COMPLETE CONTROL!!! FOLLOW DIRECTIONS OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!!!

That seems to sum up that phrase 'badge heavy' that you keep using. You have a legal system that must be adhered to. That legal system does not say, Cop is god.

I agree with Sarge for the most part. If an officer is out of line, go along with him and and address his behavior in court or with your attorney later rather than resisting and escalating the situation at the time of the encounter, increasing the potential for injury.

Cops are not God... some think they are. (satire) And those are the ones that give the rest of us a bad taste in our mouths over the "cops in general" type comments.

Hemphill, when I say badge heavy I'm referring to the type of officer that comes off with that "because I'm the police and I said so" attitude. When I say it would be in your best interest to comply I mean for example: I approach your vehicle on a traffic stop. I introduce myself and ask for your license and proof of liability insurance. As I'm walking back to my vehicle you start opening your door. I tell you to stay in the car but you keep coming. I've given you a directive to stay and you have failed to comply. Now you've put me in a position to act. How do I know you're not out to do me harm? Nick Green didn't know either. Now he's dead. (Oklahoma Trooper killed in the line of duty). What you may be quick to call police brutality may be nothing more than survival training to us. That's how they train us. React quickly and stay alive. It's all part of our academics.