US cops taser battling granny

[buckthesystem]

It gets worse, as in:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/21/granny_spark_out/

A South Carolina police officer is under investigation for zapping a 75-year-old granny with a Taser. The stun gun can fire its wire-trailing darts into anyone within 20 feet and delivers an electric shock of up to 50,000 volts to the miscreant.

The police officer, a mere stripling of 35, was called to a nursing home where the woman was visiting a friend. She refused to leave because staff would not tell her where her friend was. So the police officer, Hattie Macon, took her down with a quick jolt of juice.

The zapped OAP, Margaret Kembrell, told AP she thought her end had come: "I thought I was dying, I could hear myself screaming...I didn't want to hurt her and I can't believe she would hurt me." Kembrell was handcuffed, arrested and charged with trespass and resisting arrest.

But the local police chief defended his officer's actions saying she had acted properly. Officer Macon says she only resorted to the Taser when the fiesty old-timer tried to thump her - a charge Kembrell denies.

Showing remarkable restraint, Margaret's son Jack Kembrell said: "I really don't understand why a police officer, a trained police officer, would have to use such force on a 75-year-old woman. If it was a 75-year-old man, I could maybe see it. But a 75-year-old woman? What could she do?"

(article continues - go to link)

[Leonard]

Hey, I volunteered to be zapped by one of these things once......NEVER AGAIN! They DO zap you!!!

[Scarletprayers]

Hey Buck, if I remember correctly your not American right?? No unseemly news in your neck of the woods, or anywhere else in the world? Or is it just Americans, in your eyes, who need all their faults/problems/foibles pointed out to them?

[buckthesystem]

Hey Buck, if I remember correctly your not American right?? No unseemly news in your neck of the woods, or anywhere else in the world? Or is it just Americans, in your eyes, who need all their faults/problems/foibles pointed out to them?

Silentprayer, you are getting dangerously close to "I have nothing to say about the news item so I will attack the messenger".

I just got home from working nightshift and it is 2.43 on Saturday morning, it is pouring with rain outside and I got absolutely "soaked" coming out of work, so it is just great to get home and see that I am seen to be picking on Americans.

The fact is that yes, of course, lots of "unseemly news" happens here - far too much in fact, totally out of proportion for a national population of 4 million odd. However, I rather doubt if you would be interested in anything that goes on here. My reasoning is that as the people posting to these boards are mostly American, they are better able to relate to news from America. If I posted an item about "police shoot and kill unarmed man in Waitara" (which I might find to be utterly abhorrent) you would probably just think "yawn! Big deal! It happens a lot here".

Seriously I am not "picking on America" really, at all. It is just that America is a far bigger country, so it stands to reason that far more happens there.

[Guest yod]

that'll teach the old coot....

(just kidding) Who knows what really happened? The cop might have actually been scared/intimidated by the old lady. I've met some scary seniors in Miami before. Wouldn't want to tangle with them!?!

[other one]

Question is.... did the old lady really try to thump the officer. If she did, then she should have tasered her. It is really easy to break bones of most 75 year old ladies. What kind of a Headline would that have made......

"Police officer breaks the arm of 75 year old."

Nah, if a person doesn't do what a uniformed police officer asks/tells them to do, the safest thing to do is to zap them. Unless it stopps their heart or somehting it almost always causes less harm.

I'll bet next time the old lady will listen.....

[buckthesystem]

Question is.... did the old lady really try to thump the officer. If she did, then she should have tasered her. It is really easy to break bones of most 75 year old ladies. What kind of a Headline would that have made......

"Police officer breaks the arm of 75 year old."

Nah, if a person doesn't do what a uniformed police officer asks/tells them to do, the safest thing to do is to zap them. Unless it stopps their heart or somehting it almost always causes less harm.

I'll bet next time the old lady will listen.....

Maybe the "next time" (shudder at the thought of a future with "the barrier" for police recruiting being so lowered that the police dep't is full of wimps and sadists who go around "zapping" old people and young children and there will be a 'next time") the old lady in question will have a pace maker fitted and it will be "burned out" by the 50,000 volts and the old lady will be rather beyond "listening"...

But then, of course, the policeman could always justify it and say "I was only doing my job and she "tried to thump me" and so I was afraid for my life".