Hey, what’s a Christmas shopping season without a little tasering from your friendly neighborhood law enforcement officer for using a credit card?
Here’s a written report from The Raw Story about this incident (where you can also view another video of the incident):
While Elizabeth Beeland was trying to purchase a CD player at a Best Buy on Nov. 26, she stepped outside to talk on her phone, leaving her credit card. Concerned about the sudden exit, a store clerk suspected Beeland was using a stolen card and called over a police officer.
Officer Claudia Wright wrote in a police report that when she approached, Beeland became “verbally profane, abusive, loud and irate.” She said she warned Beeland to calm down or face arrest.
In a video, Beeland is seen backing away and avoiding Wright, then crumpling to the ground after being hit with the Taser.
Wright was not disciplined, and police Chief Mike Chitwood defended her actions. Beeland was refusing an officer’s orders, and using a Taser avoided use of other weapons, he said.
Police verified Beeland, 35, was using her own credit card, but she was arrested on two misdemeanors, disorderly conduct and resisting a police officer without violence. She has since pleaded not guilty, and state prosecutors are reviewing whether to pursue the case.
Let’s go through the facts as we know them, shall we? Woman yoga instructor (that makes her suspect already in my book) starts to use her credit card, then absently leaves it behind to take an urgent cell phone call from her husband regarding her own child. The store clerk assumes this must mean she’s using a stolen or fake credit card. Clerk calls over a policewoman to confront shopper, who then backs away from the police officer. Obviously this makes her a very dangerous person during a Christmas shopping season, when the norm is to just shut up and pay for your purchases as quickly as possible. The fact that she was backing away from the police officer approaching her is an obvious indication that she is unstable and in need of a little 50,000 volt electrical jolt to calm her down. God forbid the officer actually try to handle this situation without the use of force. Who knows what this crazy, backward walking woman might have done? She might have have said a really, really bad word that some small, innocent child could have overheard, thus scarring him or her for life. And she certainly failed to show the proper respect for her friendly neighborhood police officer.
Yes, the friendly neighborhood police woman was right to tase this crazy lady. Who cares if she was actually using her own credit card and the clerk made a bad assumption about whether she was a criminal or not. Who cares if she was not acting in a way that threatened the police officer with bodily harm (although the police officer’s aggressive posture and behavior might reasonably have been construed by this woman as threatening her). This is the point: This woman shopper used really bad language! And to one of Daytona Beach’s Finest! Therefore, crazy backward walking lady shopper had it coming to her. I hope the local District Attorney throws the book at her for forcing this poor friendly neighborhood police woman to take the regrettable, but necessary, action of using her taser to bring this “situation” under control.
The moral of this tale? If your friendly neighborhood police officer approaches you anywhere, at anytime, for any reason, quickly drop to your knees, place your hands slowly on top of your head and in your most meek, most timid voice repeat the following: Please don’t tase me officer! I’ll do whatever you say!
I can’t guarantee that following those instructions to the letter will work in every situation, or that you won’t be arrested for disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, or some other nefarious crime related to assaulting or abusing an agent of law enforcement, but at the least it ought to reassure your friendly neighborhood police officer that he or she is in complete control of the situation and there is no need to give you the juice because you aren’t following their orders.
Then again, I have been known to be wrong. From time to time.
