by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Police officers in Chorley, Lancashire, have tasered a blind man because the mistook his white cane for a Samurai sword.
It would appear that British police officers cannot be trusted with a taser guns as they seem to be incapable of distinguishing between the white cane of a blind person and a Samurai sword.
And this is not an isolated incident for sure. There have been a number of taser uses where one should never have been drawn such as the incident when an autistic youngster was tasered by a cop some months back.
It is only good that British police officers, in fact, do not want to carry firearms for we can just imagine how that would turn out.
It has been said that a person has more chance being killed by a cop than by a mugger and it would appear that this is beginning to become the case for sure.
The predominant reason for this is that too many officers of the old school have left the forces and there seem to be too many trigger happy cops, many of them young and never having been teamed up with a real old-style beat bobby, who think that they are the law and not just law enforcement officers.
This attitude is not all that new having encountered a police officer from the Metropolitan Police some thirty years ago who exclaimed when asked to do his job “I am the law” and had to be put right by being told, “No, officer, you are not the law, you are a law enforcement officer (and so am I, but from a different service)” and having a badge waved in front of his face.
We have had before, that must me said too, also fatal encountered between members of the public and armed police such in the case of an old man who carried, for some reason, a table leg which firearms officers mistook for a shotgun.
One can but wonder whether the training of front-line officers needs to be seriously upgraded so that they can learn to act and react properly in stress situations.
© 2012
