Discussion: Florida Police Officer Tased 62-Year Old Woman In the Back

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Discussion for article #228327

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She was going for his gun, she moved in a threatening manner, his life was in danger, her actions were menacing, yadayadayada.

Maybe they will test her for marajuana and a super secret police source will reveal the results.

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Glad it was taped Otherwise they’d charge her resisting arrest and obstructing justice. She was leaving and didn’t interfere at all. Assholes.

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Don’t forget that they’ll post unflattering pictures of her drinking and smoking 30 years ago. If they can’t find some, they can just pull any black woman’s photo and the RW blogs will run with it.

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AND post pics of the innocent officer with a battered eye socket and say that she attacked him with the intent to kill.

Unfortunately you are right; it’s a damn good thing there is video. They would have indeed made the claim that she was obstructing justice - as he did in the repot - and no one would have questioned it, blinked and eye and it would have been taken as the unvarnished truth.

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In the video, Mahan is seen walking past two police cars toward the woman, Viola Young…A released police report said that Mahan said Young and another man were yelling at officers.

So is Young a woman or a man?

When Mahan told people to step back, the man complied, according to the report, but Young did not…Young “yanked away” according to the report and walked away “in an attempt to defeat her lawful arrest” which prompted Mahan to use his stun gun.

So she was complying after all with his order to step back when he tased her.

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Hair nets and peppermints are the new hoodies and Skittles.

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Related, breaking news: “Breaking News: Michael Dunn convicted of first-degree murder in Jordan Davis’ death” (the ‘loud music’ case)

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Over the past 15 years or so, police have killed about a person a week in the U.S. using this “non-lethal” technology. You’d think that sort of thing would get reported more often. Given that Tasers are lethal, you’d think the police would exercise restraint before using them. Then again, they don’t do that much with guns, either, so I guess it’s a waste of time to ponder that.

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Guilty of asking cop a question. Never got close enough to interfere with anything, but did not scurry away quickly enough on command. That’s Contempt of Cop, punishable by summary tasing, at minimum. Police have been taught to fear citizens and to behave like an occupying army, but they lack the discipline to do that correctly.

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Tasers are dangerous weapons. Police men are not medical personnel; they can’t diagnose health problems that that would dangerously contra-indicate electrocution.
I have also wondered about another taser health issu:, perhaps you can answer this.
Doesn’t the point penetrate the body? Are the points cleaned between uses? I can’t imagine that a cop’s fingers or gloves are sanitary when the device id untangled and reloaded.

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I still think the charges the victim gets nailed with are worse than the physical assault they endured.

The charges cost jail time, loss of a job, a record, a fine that is often unpayable if poor, etc.

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Note to Daniel Strauss—

There is no such verb as “tased.”

The police used a Taser—you could stretch this to say she was “tasered,” but you should say the police used a Taser against the woman, or some similar construct.

Good English matters, Daniel—and I speak as a former reporter whose editor would have flayed me alive for writing what you wrote.

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I just watched the video which is quite different than the printed account.

  1. It’s quite bright for an “evening” confrontation.
  2. If the police were responding to “drug deals”, with initially 3 cruisers (later 6), they seemed very nonchalant about the arrests.
  3. The man on the porch filming the episode remarks that the police arrested a boy and a girl for walking on the (one car width) residential street with no sidewalks. An officer is heard talking to the arrested boy about walking in the street.
  4. Ms. Young walks past the cruiser with the arrested boy, says nothing audible to the officer standing by it and keeps on walking. He says something (unclear on the audio) to her after she walked past. There is no “other man” with her.
  5. Officer Mahan leaves his cruiser further down the street, walks quickly by the original car and officer chasing down Ms. Young, who is about 50’ away up the street by this time. It’s hard to tell whether Mahan said anything to her as he approached from her rear, but clearly she did not “yank away” from either officer.
  6. When Mahan gets within 6’-8’ of Ms. Young, he tases her in the back. Other officers then rush to where she lies in the street. A black officer (the only one seen) positions himself in the street between the video man on his porch to keep anyone from approaching the downed Ms. Young much further up the street.

I really doubt that such an incident would happen this way except in a black neighborhood. The only violent behavior was the tasing; there wasn’t even shouting from the residents.

Thank goodness for this video. Every potential victim of assault, whether by police or others should always carry a smart phone and know how to quickly start the camera mode.

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I saw no yanking…although I did see him make a grab at her and miss. The only yanking involved here is this trigger-happy bigot pig yanking our chain.

There was no self defense involved here, just self-righteous defense.

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The winds are changing

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Trying to ask a police officer to explain himself is an arrest able offense obviously

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This whole resisting arrest needs to be codified for police so that they know when they can legally use it. It seems like they use it all the time when things don’t go they way the police want it to go.

If the police arrest someone on “resisting arrest” and then let them go without charges, the officer who made the arrest needs to explain in detail as to why they really made a false arrest.

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The state of the police force in general is what I would consider “out of control” and in need of some serious intervention. We are all criminals (or maybe just people with skin color other than white), we are all considered dangerous until incapacitated and by god we had better respect their authority otherwise whatever sadistic punishment they deemed appropriate, we had it coming.

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Agreed. Encounters with police are a LOT more expensive for poor people. The punishment tends to go on and on.

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