Arming your police with more weapons you can't have.

The company that makes Tasers is field testing and plans to sell in 2008 a wireless electroshock round that can be fired from any 12-gauge shotgun. It delivers the same electrical effect as the handheld Taser at distances up to 100 feet, and adds blunt impact to that knockdown electrical power.

The round leaves the barrel live and already discharging, and continues to discharge for 20 seconds. Four barbed electrodes embed themselves in the flesh at impact. The projectile then breaks apart to release six additional electrodes to further distribute electroshock. Its outer shell carries more electrodes to enhance shock when the victim reflexively grasps it and completes a circuit through the hand and arm. The round carries a miniature microprocessor to identify the best- working electrodes and reroute electroshock for best effect. Unlike the tasers we are all becoming familiar with, it carries all its charge onboard the round and needs no wires connecting it to the gun.

I can find no estimate of the cost of these rounds, nor any discussion of them being made available for private purchase. Weapons technology has always run ahead of the law. Police departments have a habit of lusting after arms that the citizen can't afford and the law has the distressing habit of making police weapons unavailable to the average citizen. We can hope that this round opens the gap wide enough to require the attention of watchdog agencies and the courts.

This abomination will be released for use against American citizens with absolutely no independent testing or government oversight, no doubt with the same claims of non-lethality made for handheld tasers. Protestors, students, women, children, and other members of the public will provide their services as guinea pigs free of charge. TASER international has done detailed technical and social engineering to make this round everything a police state enforcer could want.

Traceability is gone. Police versions of the hand-held taser have a datalogger in the handset to record the date and time of each firing and the number of times the trigger is pulled to deliver a shock. Privately available versions discharge miniature confetti, each piece imprinted with a unique number linked to the gun. The XREP projectile is completely unrelated to the weapon; it can be used in any 12-gauge shotgun, and carries no datalogger or tattletale confetti. The shooter has no fear of being held to account for the shot.

The stigma of electroshock weapons has been sidestepped. Police will carry only substitute rounds for their existing firearms, not strange-looking plastic weapons stowed in a second holster on their hip.

The marketing point of reduced lethality has been preserved. These rounds will be presented as a humane alternative to buckshot.

The element of enforcer personal risk has been removed. Once these are available, police will no longer approach their intended victim closely enough to put themselves at risk. They can taser trick-or-treaters from across the street. They can taser homeowners filming police activities on their own property from across the yard and never put down their doughnut.

The one-shot limitation has been overcome. One aggressor cop can paralyze mobs of protestors as fast as he can pump his shotgun. The shells probably also work in a 12-round capacity Striker or Protecta street- sweeper style weapon.

There's absolutely no reason to believe this round won't be abused as freely as hand-held tasers are now.

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How little is Too little to Taser in Gwinnett, GA?

The Atlanta Journal Constitution (ajc) reports that police in Gwinnet, GA tasered a 14 year old female trick-or-treater last week. It's OK, though, because the department has a Policy that exempts nobody but pregnant women from taser shots. That exemption will stand right up until some testosterone-deficient cop feels threatened by a woman about to pop one out on the sidewalk.

Apparently the taserable offense was cursing. Loudly. Officer W.A. Bohn heard that, called for backup, and together these two studs managed to cuff the girl. She was tased when she continued to struggle. That took balls, W. A. Two on one, handcuffs, and a taser. Fun date. No roofies? Did you swipe her candy?

But they have a Policy. A WRITTEN Policy. "People who are handcuffed are still a threat no matter what age," said Cpl. Illana Spellman, a Gwinnett County Police Department spokeswoman and custodian of the department's lone pair of cojones. What about a 5- or 6- year old? That's OK according to the policy. Gwinnett police Maj. Keybo Taylor is reviewing the incident. "We are still reviewing it to see if any policies were violated, and so far we do not see any policies violated," Taylor said. Thank goodness.

Apparently Georgia cops statewide fear handcuffed teen girls. Frank Rotondo, director of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police, said his organization believes age should not be the deciding factor in use. "You have to look at the behavior of the individual rather than the age. And in the Gwinnett case, the Taser was able to stop the behavior." The young lady is lucky those cops had tasers, because that stop-the-behavior reasoning works for shotguns, too.

When is tasering justified? Georgia cops have answered the question: Any time they feel like it and have their blue asses covered with a nice, broad policy not subject to citizen review. And want some candy.

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Chicago Granny channels M.C. Hammer- It's Taser Time!

CBS2 reports that a Chicago police sergeant tasered 82 year old, 5'-1”, 160 lb. granny Lillian Fletcher last week. Workers with the city's Department on Aging saw her through the window of her apartment with a hammer in her hand, swinging it back and forth. The social workers called police. A landlord opened the door with a key and when police stepped inside, Lillian was seen swinging the hammer. Officers immediately wet themselves and, fearing for their lives, tased Granny Fletcher in self defense.

Fletcher's granddaughter told the Chicago Sun-Times that Fletcher suffers from schizophrenia and dementia. "She can be belligerent," Traci Taylor told the newspaper. "I just don't think they should be tasing 82-year-old women."

Amnesty International USA agrees, and voices concerns that police use tasers routinely rather than in cases of serious danger. In 2005, the Chicago Police department suspended the distribution of stun guns following the deaths of two people police shot with tasers. They've reconsidered that cautionary step in response to the surge in grannies with easy access to hand tools. About 200 cops have tasers and 150 more will be issued to field training officers.

Police stress the need for additional training and seek citizen volunteer taser targets to “help teach officers how to use tasers effectively when faced with physically intimidating perpetrators in life-threatening situations,” said department liaison patrolman Suzy Bluesuit. “Candidates should be at least as fierce as drunken blond waitresses or infants. Catatonic paraplegics, the blind, triple amputees, and patients confined to iron lungs” are encouraged to apply.

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Faith vs. Reason 2: Jehovah's Witness mom bleeds out after giving birth.

The earlier post about the tragic burning deaths of Muslim schoolgirls and today's news have spawned a Category here at HABOP. Faith vs. Reason posts will highlight occasions when stupid people put faith before reason.

Britain's Daily Mail reports today that a young mother died hours after giving birth to twins because she refused a life-saving blood transfusion. A Jehovah's Witness, Emma Gough signed a form before the birth barring transfusion. Hospital staff begged her husband, also a Jehovah's Witness, and other relatives to allow it. Believing that blood transfusions are prohibited by the Bible, the family would not sanction the treatment.

Imagine the conversation a few years from now when the twins want to know why they don't have a mommy. What will dad say- mommy bled to death when you were born because God, daddy, and auntie wanted her to die rather than allow her body to be sullied by proven medical technology available to the most indigent of patients? If that chat takes place before they're fully brainwashed the cult has lost the kids for sure. That may be the only good thing to come of this. There's nothing good about blood doctrine nonsense. It's all bad.

It's Bad Science. In a 1961 Watchtower, a doctor and surgeon was quoted as saying "Moral insanity, sexual perversions, repression, inferiority complexes, petty crimes often follow blood transfusion." Another is quoted: “The blood in any person is in reality the person himself. It contains all the peculiarities of the individual.... The poisons that produce the impulse to commit suicide, murder, or steal are in the blood.” This is bad vampire fiction. Cross-matching, screening for infection, anticoagulant preservatives, and control systems all but guarantee safety from less supernatural risks.

It's Bad Religion. Blood transfusions are mentioned in the bible as often as CAT scans, tennis shoes and popsicles; never. The prohibition is generated by parsing and extrapolating scripture beyond its original meaning. Blood doctrine evolved from recommendations for abstinence in 1909 to prohibition by 1945, to a disfellowshipping offense in 1961, and ad absurdum to forbidding transfusions for pets and use of blood-based fertilizer in 1964. It's a classic example of the Making Shit Up school of theology. All faiths do it. Yours does. It's funny or sad depending on the consequences. Furthermore, it's far from universally accepted within their own church. Witnesses, like Muslims, Catholics, and Jews, exhibit a refreshingly human lack of uniformity in acceptance of official dogma.

It's Bad Morals. It's nothing more than assisted suicide. Jack Kevorkian did hard time for that but at least had the decency to provide the feel- good drugs. In the case of denying proper 21^st century post- partum care, it's gender apartheid on a par with enforced marriages and genital mutilation.

I'm a huge believer in the right to be stupid at your own expense. Unfortunately the victims of stupid people's mental and moral lapses are often not themselves but innocents caught under the wheels of their crazy train. By the act of procreation, parents lose the right to flush their own lives down the toilet. A proper god would consign this woman's soul straight to hell.

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Oregon Cop plays fast and loose with the Truth, his DUII arrest record soars

This week the Corvallis Gazette-Times reports that city is being sued over a DUII arrest of a completely sober citizen earlier this year. Officer David Cox is widely recognized for the number of DUII arrests he's made- 27 of the total of 35 for the entire Corvallis police force in May of this year, for example. Now he's become recognized for the lousy quality of those arrests. Six of the 27 he arrested had BAC's under the legal limit and were not found to have been using drugs. About a quarter of those he arrested were either not prosecuted by the DA's office or had charges dismissed by the court.

The police department and the courts failed to rein in this cowboy and he finally busted someone who decided to sue. Cox could not smell intoxicants on the driver's breath but insinuated that he'd been drinking and smoking marijuana. The man passed a field sobriety test, blew 0.00 on a breathalyzer, and submitted urine for a drug test that found nothing but a trace amount of codeine from cold medication. He was stone cold sober.

Undeterred by lack of factual evidence, Cox wrote a highly embellished description of the man's appearance and behavior in a police report. 22 of his 27 May police reports repeated the same creative writing almost word for word. Four of the remaining five spun the language a little differently to support Cox's suspicions that drugs were involved instead of alcohol.

This incompetence would be pathetically funny if those people didn't still have DUII arrests on their records. Oregon law does not allow arrests for motor vehicle violations to be removed from a driver’s record, even if the driver was never charged or convicted. Arrest records are accessed every time a law enforcement officer stops someone, for any reason. Employers see the records when screening prospective employees, and a DUII arrest, justified or not, can have a negative effect.

“An arrest for traffic is not expungeable,” said Corvallis defense attorney Jennifer Nash. So when innocent people are arrested, “There is actual damage.”

Courts give greater weight to the testimony of an officer than to the arrested party. There are too many Coxes in uniform to tolerate this bias. In Livingston County, Illinois, where I live, similar official sleight-of-hand is common. When juveniles are stopped for suspicion of possession of marijuana and released for lack of evidence, the police report records a “street resolution” of the incident; that is, the juvenile was released at the officer's discretion. No record is made of what has not been found. The wording is deliberately chosen to avoid this and create an impression useful to the court. The report remains in the record and is considered damning by the court when the juvenile's record is reviewed. This allows the justice system to dance around the letter of the law. You will find that this is common and occurs to some degree where you live.

Let's hope Corvallis listens to its citizens. Read their comments to the article cited above on the bottom of the paper's webpage. Cox should lose his job, as should his immediate supervisor; his department should be censured, and the DA's and judges who became aware of police malfeasance when these junk arrests came before the court should be punished. Read the Whole Post (opens in a new tab or window)