More police (UK) tazer brutality

international | crime and justice | other press

Wednesday December 19, 2007 12:48

by Mariella F

Ban tazers now!

An entirely innocent business man on his way home from work is tazered eight times. Guess what? He's black. These weapons are cleary designed to intimidate ordinary people.

Stomach turning account of how, without warning and despite presenting no threat of any kind, the man was first tazered on the back of the head and then seven more times while on the ground:

"Police fired a 50,000-volt Taser into the head of a 45-year-old company director who later proved to be unarmed and innocent. Daniel Sylvester, the owner of an east London security firm employing 65 staff to guard council offices, pubs and nightclubs, was driving home on October 20 when he was stopped by armed police because of "firearms related intelligence".
According to Sylvester, he got out of his car and was surrounded by officers, at least two of whom were carrying automatic weapons. Without warning, one officer fired a Taser into the back of his head which made him drop to his knees, he said. A second shock caused him to fall on his face, breaking a front tooth. A further six shocks made him wet himself and left him lying in the road in pain while the officers and sniffer dogs searched the car and found nothing.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission has started an investigation and David Lammy, Sylvester's MP in Tottenham, north London, has written to Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, to say he is "deeply concerned".
The incident was part of Operation Neon, a crackdown on guns on London's streets by using armed response units to stop and search cars. Sylvester said the incident had left him traumatised and he now suffered from short-term memory loss. He doubts the police would have stopped him had he not been black. A spokesman for the Met said: "Just after midnight, officers on an intelligence-led operation stopped a car in Bounces Road, N9. The driver got out of the vehicle and was subsequently Tasered. Our information is the Taser was deployed once."

Sylvester had been followed by police cars for about three miles through Tottenham before they boxed him in.

"Armed police jumped out and opened my car door," he said. "I said OK, I'm coming. I asked what was going on and as soon as I stepped out of the car I felt something touch me on the back of the head and then I was on my knees. Then it happened again and I was on my face and I felt somebody pressing my head down with their foot. By the fifth time I realised officers were pinning my arms together. It was like they were trying to break my arms and I was in pain, screaming out.

"I was shocked eight times altogether and I had urinated on the floor. It was like being tortured. It went on and on and I felt they were going to kill me."

According to guidelines set by the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers, Tasers should be deployed "where officers are facing violence or threats of violence of such severity that they would need to use force to protect the public, themselves and/or the subject(s) of their action". Tasers have been used 47 times in London this year, with black people accounting for almost two-thirds of those stunned.

The government extended the right to use Tasers for all firearms officers in England and Wales this summer."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,2229041,00.html

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Comments (8 of 8)

BBC report

Wed Dec 19, 2007 13:18

"A taser stun gun uses a 50,000-volt charge to incapacitate its target. Earlier this month Taser guns were rolled out to non-firearms Metropolitan Police officers as part of a government trial.

In London, officers used Tasers in 47 incidents between January and August."

If we don't mobilise against these weapons, they're surely coming our way sometime soon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/71500...8.stm

PSNI to get tazers by next March?

Wed Dec 19, 2007 13:50

Article in Irish Times:

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/1206/bre...8.htm

Hugh Orde puts a rotten spin on it. Claims that tazers would be a less lethal alternative to a gun. This is hugely disingenuous because where tazers are used, they are used with much more frequency and in far less dangerous situations.

Dont blame the

by Zapper

Thu Dec 20, 2007 23:19

Tazer,it is an inaminate object.Blame the idiot behind it's trigger.
Not surprised at the reports though.Give a Brit thug aka a police an officer a gun or weapon ,of course they will use them at will.Ask Menzies,some fellow who was shot dead by the elite So19 for having a chair leg in a bag which was mistaken for a gun.

beeb link

by irish reader

Sun Jan 20, 2008 11:39

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7198742.stm

interesting that they colour them like pound/euro shop trash... a man died in Bedford after
being attacked with one and an eminnent Irish broad-caster interviewed the purveyor of
these items and advertised her web-site in the not too recent past.

yep!
Newstalk 106 allowed a lady hock her cheesy wares on National radio as 'Self-defence' items.
try this- learn self-defence.
shins 1.
bollox 2.
eyes 3.
if you are attacked.
(head-butting the nose full whack is also good, and using elbows :-)

decorated like a child's toy...UK tazzzzzzzzzzer

Euro-peer-crap on Tasers & Kubatons.

by bzzzzzzzzz

Thu Mar 13, 2008 15:13

This week my local minister of the interior finally heeded lots of medical data & sackfuls of letters (as if) demanding both the Taser & Kubaton be withdrawn. He's a slow man in the main, I'll be fair to him. But I remembered that a link to the "Irish Times" up the page on this thread hinted that the PSNI would get Tasers in March 2008. So thought I, expedient & helpful to inform the readership that somewhere else in Europe a police force which has had the weaponry for just over 18months has finally had a rethink. (here was a vid produced in the name of barcelona okupas on taser & "kubaton" use last May http://youtube.com/watch?v=4nFJ0_8VZRU ) They also decided shooting warning shots into the air was a "no-no" (c/f & most interestingly that their boys & girls in blue won't be allowed use the "kubaton" anymore. If you don't know what a "kubaton" is, & haven't looked at the video, check out the wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubaton

this was really good Taser thread with useful tips on how to avoid getting tasered just in case you can't get your lobbying pressure up to "sackfuls of mail". I was quite proud of the I have a pacemaker don't tase me T-shirt idea.
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/84287 Oddly enough "don't taze me bro!" was the New York Times quote of 2007 ( c/f http://www.indymedia.ie/article/85574 )

& by now we all should know "how to escape the headlock".
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_To_Escape_the_Headlock

A kubotan can be anything

by A10

Thu Mar 13, 2008 22:46

A roll of coinds will do the same.So will a good pen.How are you going to complain that a PO did you in with a roll of coins???
self defence,Head,eye,balls...BOLLOCKS. Like to see anyone try that nonsense against any thug armed with a blade.Especially a woman.You only good selfe defence is a 9mm 16 shot pistol.

sure I have on my key ring.

by bzzzzzzz

Thu Mar 13, 2008 23:21

The thing is the kubaton made national headlines (over here where I am not over there wherever you are) because the riot squad at a demonstration had been supplemented by the local emergency response unit. Ample video footage was had not because of any particular sympathy with the protesters that day (Barcelona squatters) but rather because the police force had just deployed "nationally" in Catalonia replacing the "Spanish national police" as part of the "estatut" reforms which had been expected to devolve lots of powers & almost act as a stepping stone to increased independence. The Catalan police force had to recruit thousands of new officers who were bilingual & the result was spanking new uniforms on thousands of young people with what I for one considered a poorly tested psychological profile. Within months of their national deployment allegations of torture had for the first time in democratic history outstripped those in the Basque region. I reported on various abuses on other threads on this newswire, abuses which included forcing student demonstraters protesting at privatisation of universities to kneel on the kerb for 50 minutes, shots fired above the head of teenage graffiti miscreants. The Catalan minister of the interior lives up the road from me and is an eco-communist. His partner is the number 2 of the city government. Their little party has paid the price of junior coalition in the recent Spanish state general elections & been almost completely wiped out. They were in their time put through the cells of the Franco era guardia civil but being tortured over 30 years ago is no guarantee of anything once a ministerial portfolio sits on your bicycle every night as you peddle home. I had to phone that couple three times before they finally declared David Dukes of the KKK persona no grata when he was invited to speak in a neo-nazi bookshop three streets from their flat. We've come a bit of way. But nowhere near far enough. Even a girl from Derry was so horrified at police brutality by the force who the Catalan independence factions & eco-communists unleashed on the young introduced me to a case of hooded torture of an immigrant. This year torture allegations are down by over 400 reports for this first quarter. All cop stations now have independently monitored CCTV & police officers are required to do classes & courses on how not to be bastards. I and others still want CCTV in vans. I want CCTV on their uniforms. These abuses by far are felt by the most marginalised, but have also touched the Irish diasporic or tourist community. Duncan might have seemed to be exagerating when he reported an attack on a former squat he & other Irish people were in over the last Christmas period. Without any other reason than mere fun, that police force filled the house with tear gas.

so as we must never forget - in any society which wishes to embark & be seen to promote democratic values, it is essential that those who answer the recruitment call to become law enforcement officers be psychologically profiled, denied the possibility of a "job for life" (rather see it as temporary or vocational service) & completely accountable & transparent.

i quote Juvenal :- Quis custodiet ipso custodies?
I refer you to a past feature on irish indymedia which tweaked the Latin quote of "who shall guard your guards" in true dog latin style -
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" which reported on the Garda Ombudsman
https://www.indymedia.ie/article/82457

by the way - the answer is "we do". The youtube link above includes footage of the Kubaton being used on BCN squatters.

Tazering in the County of Limerick

by ERU

Fri Apr 11, 2008 14:37

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/breaking/1260...omnet

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More police (UK) tazer brutality

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