I think what is missing from the discussion is this whole premise of needing to
use lethal or disabling force in our schools to begin with. Police officers
assigned to schools presumably carry guns not merely because all officers do,
but on the off-chance that a dangerous situation with weapons in a school might
occur. I understand that necessity, because there is always the chance that
some lunatic, an outraged parent, a careless student, or a gang member might
bring a weapon to school, and we're all too familar with the school shootings
of recent memory in Colombine and elsewhere. But the issuance of a taser, in my
opinion, indicates something else. It suggests that some kind of fight or
disturbance might break out that could not be controlled absent the use of a
taser. And that's the argument that I'm not buying. If schools can't be
monitored by staff and security personnel closely enough to head off such
incidents before they start, then the assigned folks aren't doing their job or
we're not willing to devote enough money to have an adequate number of staff
and/or security officers on duty. A good cop, hell, a good leader, knows how to
head off that kind of potential violence before it escalates. And if he/she
can't do so, that's the time to call the cops (or for more cops). But the
thought that an officer is going to whip out a taser and stop the incident then
and there is illusory and, I think, dangerous. Have you ever seen footage of a
taser being applied? Don't tell me it's not a dangerous weapon or that it can't
trigger a lethal result (as somebody on the list already pointed out). At the
very least, it's dehumanizing, if not sadistic; just think of how the cops who
stopped and beat Rodney King senseless might have reacted if they'd had tasers
available to them back then?
In my opinion, and maybe it's based on watching one too many episodes of Cops
several years ago, it is cops with poor judgment who are likely to escalate
incidents, which is all the more reason to limit the number of "tools" they
have available at their disposal. So while I have great respect for St. Paul
cops, I don't believe the need is there for tasers in our schools, and it only
increases the risk that one will be used inappropriately somewhere down the
line. While I expect some on this list to disagree, the most effective tools
that a cop has at his or her disposal is the ability to defuse potential
incidents and, as Anne Carroll has noted, build relationships with kids.
Sometimes fights will break out, as I witnessed after a Central vs. Highland
basketball game last year. Then a whole bunch of cops wade in and break things
up. If god forbid, some kid pulled a gun during such an incident, it's possible
a police officer might have responded with lethal force. But the idea that a
fight or melee can be more effectively quelled by using some advanced weaponry
like a taser just scares me, the same way that we're fed this crap about
"precision" bombs in Bosnia and Iraq. The more sophisticated the weaponry, the
more likely we're moving away from dealing with problems at a human level. And,
as someone else noted, what does that say about the message that we're sending
to kids at an early age?
Tom Goldstein
Hamline-Midway
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