| |
The death of Patrick Lee was an accident
by Rattle at 5:36 pm EDT, Oct 1, 2005 |
Dagmar has posted a well thought out argument about the Patrick Aaron Lee situation over at LiveJournal.Tragically, Patrick Lee died last Saturday after having taken a bunch of drugs and winding up in an altercation with the police. Unfortunately the family and a few friends are acting "a-fool" and apparently trying to claim this is a case of police brutality, regardless that the responding officers demonstrated remarkable restraint in their attempts to restrain a guy who was basically running around a parking lot naked. I've gotten more than a little irritated about this, since under normal circumstances a Taser is a really safe thing to be using (as opposed to batons and bullets), and taking them off the streets is just going to get more people hurt that could probably have been brought under control with a taser. Therefore I have summarized events and countered some of the deliberate misinformation in hopes that this information is going to make it's way into the proper hands and hopefully put some minds to rest. Regardless of whether he was relatively irresponsible, he will be missed.
I'm of the opinion that more research needs to be done on Taser usage before any reasonable conclusions can be drawn. Update: Dagmar's post has really been making the rounds. |
| |
RE: The death of Patrick Lee was an accident
by Dagmar at 6:57 am EDT, Oct 2, 2005 |
Rattle wrote: I'm of the opinion that more research needs to be done on Taser usage before any reasonable conclusions can be drawn.
Yeah, but the hot-buttons for the "right now" are that considering the facts currently at hand, whether or not the responding officers were in some way negligent. I say no. I say they were doing their jobs as they were trained to do them. One can not reassess the technical data and then condemn the officers based on something that was decided after the fact (ex post facto indeed) and that appears to be exactly what the friends and family are attempting to do. |
|
| | |
RE: The death of Patrick Lee was an accident
by Rattle at 3:54 pm EDT, Oct 2, 2005 |
Yeah, but the hot-buttons for the "right now" are that considering the facts currently at hand, whether or not the responding officers were in some way negligent. I say no. I say they were doing their jobs as they were trained to do them. One can not reassess the technical data and then condemn the officers based on something that was decided after the fact (ex post facto indeed) and that appears to be exactly what the friends and family are attempting to do.
I agree with you. That's not the point I'm trying to make. The police can be divided into three key parts: individuals, procedures, and equipment. I'm not attempting to blame the individuals for anything. The conclusions I'm interested in have to do with what can be learned from this, so similar incidents are less likely to happen in the future. Those would all have to do with procedures and equipment. |
|
The death of Patrick Lee was an accident
by Dagmar at 7:10 am EDT, Oct 1, 2005 |
Tragically, Patrick Lee died last Saturday after having taken a bunch of drugs and winding up in an altercation with the police. Unfortunately the family and a few friends are acting "a-fool" and apparently trying to claim this is a case of police brutality, regardless that the responding officers demonstrated remarkable restraint in their attempts to restrain a guy who was basically running around a parking lot naked. I've gotten more than a little irritated about this, since under normal circumstances a Taser is a really safe thing to be using (as opposed to batons and bullets), and taking them off the streets is just going to get more people hurt that could probably have been brought under control with a taser. Therefore I have summarized events and countered some of the deliberate misinformation in hopes that this information is going to make it's way into the proper hands and hopefully put some minds to rest. Regardless of whether he was relatively irresponsible, he will be missed. |
|
|
