My View Point

This is just my view on a subject that keeps coming up lately in the news. Again this week a man in Canada died because the police used a taser on him. Seems these things are not as safe as the manufactures say they are. I guess if you have any kind of hidden defect the jolt from these things will bring it out and you die. The thing that bothers me is the comments that are left on news sites and in discussion groups. Everyone is out to have any cop fired and charged with murder when they use the taser and it turns tragic. Any death is sad but I look at it from a different point of view. First it is usually not a person going for a walk in the park, no matter what people say, I can't believe any cop kissed his wife and children goodbye and said "see you honey, I'm going to hunt down a totally innocent person and zap them just for fun!" I know personally if I was aloud to have one and some guy maybe high on crack, was coming at me with a baseball bat, I would taser his ass to the pavement. I also understand that there are some cops who are a bit aggressive but really when you need one to get a crazed nut case off you, do you want him to come up and ask "can't we all just get along?"

What about the police, are they not allowed to protect themselves, some people made the comment "injuries are just part of their job, if they are too wimpy then get out," oh really! Wow what a brave statement from someone who probably is sitting by their computer and never went out of their way to help another person in their life, unless there was an angle in it for them. The police are people too with spouses, children, close friends and I don't think it is part of the police's job to take a bottle or chair to the head, it is not the WWF. I think as well when the officers arrive on a scene, they have no idea what is about to happen, plus they can not predict how a person will act. Maybe everyone around knows uncle Bernie just gets 'this way' when he is drunk but the cops don't and maybe this is the day old Bernie snaps. Examples of how we don't know the people around us, lately in this area there have been a couple of tragic examples of loving and devoted fathers who suddenly snapped and killed their wife and children. The friends and neighbors all had that same story, "he was a loving father, kind, gentle, quiet and we never would expect this to happen." we hear that sort of thing often, now imagine the police who have to go into those situations all the time, so is the drunk man harmless and just carrying a knife for attention, I am glad it is not my call. In extreme cases I feel it is better to taser someone if they can than for bullets to start flying. Again I want to be clear that I find it sad when it results in loss of life and we did have a very tragic incident here in Canada in an airport, there could definitely be better guide lines but honestly it is quite easy to avoid being tasered, like I said, it is not as if the cops are hiding around the corner waiting to jump out and get you.

I do have a solution that will benefit everyone involved. Those people who wrote "we should ban the police from having tasers because the police are just government paid thugs", that the police handled those situations wrong according to them, should put their name on a list. This list would be a call list and the people who feel they know how to handle the situation better than the police would be called when some guy is running around a bus station with a knife, they could then go and put their smart ass in harms way, as some combative person runs at them with a broken bottle, I wonder if they would suddenly wish they had a taser.