Tazers, Holy Shit!!

I got trained with the X-26 Tazer today. While the training doesn't require an officer to get nailed with a tazer it IS highly recommended. The reason? An officer needs to know first hand that it will work and that it won't cause undue suffering to the target subject. THAT is important. Despite what some people think, Cops aren't sadists. There may be a few of them floating around but in general we actually hesitate to cause somebody harm if we can at all help it. That's why cops often times hesitate to shoot someone who is trying to kill them, we don't WANT to SHOOT somebody. A lot of times that gets guys killed

The Tazer (despite what Amnesty International says) is God's own great gift to police-work. There is a great risk in injury to both cops and criminals in a toe-to-toe scrap. I don't have time to "rassle" some asshole. I have to go work a traffic accident after I deal with a puke and I don't want to be dirty when I go do it.....

....sorry, I'm kind of staring at the chick on the Weather Channel. She's frickin hot!.....

Anyway, I don't think I should have to waste my time and precious energy (as well as rick injury that costs the tax-payers money) by fighting some dipshit who forgot to mature past his adolescence. I would rather use something off of my "batman-esque" utility belt and be done with it. 

We used to only have a gun and a flashlight. Problem is, not everybody needs to be shot and a flashlight is NOT a good impact weapon because it was not designed to be. They have a higher potential for causing injury and death than they do of actually stopping somebody from acting stupid. Toss in the odd sap or baton, a little better but there WILL be injury. If you hurt them you have to help heal them. That is also a big time waster and again, can be expensive for the tax-payer.

Chemical irritants aren't bad and OC in particular has almost no adverse permanent side-effects. Problem is with multiple exposures you can build an almost immunity to it and some people have extremely high pain tolerances. In fact, most of our non-gun ways of dealing with shitnugget and his merry band of douche-bags have something to do with pain compliance. Not always effective. You haven't experienced an "oh shit" moment until an extremely large person who doesn't like you very much at the moment looks at you and says, "If you hit me with that stick again I'm going to shove it up your ass". Depending on the size of the particular person and their feelings towards you, that can almost be a religious experience. Not the good kind.

Right about then you start praying for somebody to come up with something that works. Enter Tazer.

Some people HATE it and claim that it's torture. Those people are being inflammatory to sway opinion because they want the douche-bags they represent to have an easier time being douche-bags. While I can personally atest that it is definitely painful in the extreme, it's also over rather quickly. As long as you comply with orders, you shouldn't get it again. If you start fighting again after the first blast, you are too stupid to reason with and deserve every additional blast you get.

How does a Tazer feel? Ever accidently grab a live wire while changing an outlet or doing something else with electricty? Remember the dull, vibrating, throbbing, numbing pain that you briefly felt? Imagine if you will that sensation magnified about 10 times and all over your body causing one body-wide cramp for 5 seconds. That's as close as I can get to describing it without yelling a lot of obscenities. It SUCKS!!!

However, due to the fact that it relies on a specific frequency of voltage to disrupt only the voluntary muscular response it doesn't actually cause harm. It just feels like it. Tazer related injuries are mostly caused by falling to the ground when you get tazed, not from the tazer itself. Every incident where the tazer was listed as a contributing cause of death have been investigated and determined by review to have NOT been a contributing factor.

So fear not, people are not being "electrocuted" by the police. However, if an officer finds you in a less than agreeable mood and has to draw a Tazer on you, get a fast change of heart and do whatever the nice man says. You do NOT want to take "the ride".