Wednesday, August 20, 2014

No, Our Police Are Not Out of Control

Why do you ask?
A woman is suing a South Dakota city, its former police chief and four other officers for shooting her 8-year-old daughter with a Taser.

[...]

An officer fired the electric shock device’s darts into the chest of the girl, who weighed 70 pounds, the lawsuit said. “The force of the electricity shot through her body, lifted her and threw her against a wall,” it said. “After the officers had stunned [the girl] into high voltage submission, they pulled the fishhook-like Taser darts from her chest, gave her emergency medical attention, bandaged the holes left by the razor-sharp hooks and called the ambulance.”

The incident occurred in October 2013, when the girl’s babysitter called police after seeing the girl holding a knife, with unknown intentions.

[...]

Authorities said the girl was suicidal and had turned the knife toward an officer. State investigators concluded that the officer’s use of the weapon was justified because it was the safest method to defuse the situation.

[...]

The former Pierre police chief told CNN news that police may have “saved this girl’s life.”

  alJazeera
And, in case you're wondering... yes, there was a racial element.
Stenstrom and her daughter, both members of the Rosebud Sioux tribe, have since moved back to the tribal reservation, CNN said.

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