I believe that the problem is deeper than simply the use or non use of tazers. Much of the problem, it seems to me, is the attitude of many local police departments. There has been a movement for a number of years toward “in your face” police work. This hyper aggressive attitude leads to very bad feelings between the citizen and the cop as well as over use of so called nonlethal weapons — simply from a crappy attitude on the part of the officer.
All of you local yokels out there need to watch an Andy Griffith marathon and start thinking about what you are supposed to do for US — the taxpayer — and dump the black uniforms, hard hats, shaved heads and cop toys. Be cops and not Nazi Brown Shirts.
You are creating enemies when very conservative folks like me (an ex Marine) are getting disgusted with your actions. Now comes the Houston PD with a military drone to fly patrol over the city a la Bagdad, peeking in windows and back yards as a new way of improving our “security”. This follows the recent revelation that you folks are following us around via our cellphones on the thinest of legal excuses — unsupported accusation with only the slightest of court overview.
While some of this is justified in the very, very rare case of terrorism, these attitudes and methods are spilling over into day to day police work and it makes you guys look very ugly. Worse, it will eventually make you the enemy of the general population and, thus, make our country ungovernable.
One other thing — if the “copettes” can’t handle the job without the tazer then they should get out of the work. There is no room for PC attitudes when the basic job at hand is the use of controlled violence in the pursuit of the common good.
Well said!