Thursday, December 4, 2008

Fear of Taser Abuse In Dekalb County, Georgia

What We Think About Taser Abuse

Who can forget this horrible video of a black man getting Electrocuted While Black in a Georgia police station a few years ago. Well, this may be become common place throughout Georgia if rogue police have their way.

Visit the Blog Tasered While Black


David Simpson of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports about the gradual trend toward the use of Tasers by metro Atlanta police could dramatically surge soon with a plan to give the controversial stun guns to more than 1,000 DeKalb County police officers.

He reports that three suburban city police departments — Sandy Springs, Marietta and Alpharetta — have issued Tasers to patrol officers in the last year or so, but the area’s largest departments have either not used the devices or limited them to special squads.


Now DeKalb County Police Chief Terrell Bolton has a plan to issue Tasers to every cop on the street. Bolton will ask county commissioners next Tuesday to use $1 million from a fund of confiscated drug assets to give Tasers to 1,011 patrol officers, detectives and sergeants.

With speedy approval and after officer training, DeKalb’s Tasers could be in wide use in six or seven months, Bolton said.

Previously, commissioners have not funded Bolton’s requests for Tasers and other equipment, but their objections focused on how to pay for them. Bolton had resisted using money confiscated from drug dealers because that revenue source won’t necessarily pay for the cartridges that serve as ammunition for Tasers or for replacement weapons.

But with the county budget tightening and recent drug seizures adding to the confiscation fund, Bolton said he changed his mind after he attended a ceremony recently naming a county park for slain DeKalb officers Eric Barker and Ricky Bryant Jr. Each officer left behind four children.

“I don’t want any more children on my watch without a father,” he said.

Bolton was not suggesting that a Taser could have prevented Barker and Bryant’s shooting deaths last January. But he said he fears an officer trying to avoid using a gun could be killed by a knife-wielding suspect who might have been stopped by a Taser.

Bolton and a special county grand jury also have argued Tasers can reduce police shootings — a potent issue in DeKalb, where officers shot to death 12 suspects in 2006.

One of the fatal 2006 cases and an additional fatal shooting in 2007 fit a scenario often described as ideal for using a Taser to save lives: a knife-wielding suspect confronting multiple officers.

Taser critics such as Georgia NAACP president Edward DuBose cite other cases in which suspects who were stunned with a Taser have died — including two Gwinnett County jail inmates and another man who scuffled with Gwinnett deputies.

DuBose said Wednesday his organization “completely” opposes Tasers. READ More HERE

Cross posted on the blogs African American Political Pundit and Electrocuted While Black

Help us get the word out and keep the Blog Tasered While Black going.


Make a contribution today!




2 comments:

Constructive Feedback said...

Dear E.W.B.:

Dekalb County Georgia is the most Democraticly dominated county in Metro Atlanta. Not only that it has the most African-Americans in power of any metro county. Needless to say - they are all "Progressive Democrats".
Their voting patterns in the 2008 elections no doubt closely modeled yours.

With that being the case - how do you all reconcile your political prospects for "pulling the power outlet" out from the spread of the taser device when even your ideological soul mates are proceeding forth with their plan?

Now I realize that "Georgia" is in the stereotypical "racist South". Again - the people deciding to adopt these non-lethal weapons are not the "typical Southern White racist" politicians. They are Black.

Furthermore E.W.B. - did you see the recent fiasco regarding crime stat reporting in Dekalb County? Despite having a single month where the stats dropped precipitously - crime is up for the year. Including over 100 homicides.

http://withintheblackcommunity.blogspot.com/2008/12/dekalb-county-georgia-crime-view-of.html

I have a suggestion for you.
Why not confiscate the tasers from the cops and distribute them to the "Drug Thug Kneegrows" who are killing our people people with reckless abandon.

You Progressive-Fundamentalists win because you successfully take a tool that you like out of the hands of the "Authority" figures that you lobby against so frequently. You also abstract the "Drug Thug Kneegrows" from their own murderous tendencies.

If one of their "electrocution victims" does indeed die from being tasered by an untrained thug operator - this rate is still far less than the homicide rate from when they shoot Black people with traditional weapons.

You could then use the money you collect from this site to offer "Taser Training for Thugs" workshops.

Sleep on it and get back to me.

I'll be watching your antics in the meantime.

Anonymous said...

Who knows where to download XRumer 5.0 Palladium?
Help, please. All recommend this program to effectively advertise on the Internet, this is the best program!