What did law enforcement ever do before tasers arrived on the scene? Indeed, what did the police do in Chicago before the beginning of this year? Because the Chicago Police have not just doubled their use of tasers since earlier this year, they’ve quadrupled it:
Chicago Police officers have nearly quadrupled their use of Tasers since the department equipped every beat car with the electric-shock weapons earlier this year, according to new figures released by the Independent Police Review Authority.
The agency, which reviews complaints of police misconduct, tracks every use of a Taser. In the second quarter of 2010, the devices were discharged 285 times by Chicago cops — up from 74 in the first quarter of 2010 and 39 in the fourth quarter of 2009. Only a few of those Taser discharges resulted in an allegation of police misconduct, the police oversight agency noted.
Naturally, this astonishing use of a potentially lethal weapon is excused justified by the Chicago Alderman Anthony Beale who claims that the police had no choice because most of the people tasered were on drugs and that was the only way the police could restrain them.
Really? Do you buy that pitch? That drugs make people so dangerous that our police (many of whom use anabolic steroids by the way to help increase muscle mass and strength) have no choice against these uncontrollable “by any other means” drug “fiends” or are you, as I am, skeptical of that claim?
I don’t seem to recall a wave of dangerous, impossible to control druggies prior to the invention of tasers, do you? You would think that drug users are all turning into mini-versions of the Incredible Hulk according to Alderman Beale?
And what drugs are we talking about? Many drugs make individual reaction times slower (alcohol, opiates), and many make them “dazed and confused” (marijuana, rohypnol) or simply elated and happy (ecstasy) rather than uncontrollable mad dogs who must be brought down with 50,000 volts of electricity?
Meanwhile what about the effects of steroids, which we know are used by many many police in the United States? Here’s some of the more alarming symptoms of anabolic steroid use:
Administration of AS [i.e., Anabolic Steroids] may affect behavior. Increased testosterone levels in the blood are associated with masculine behavior, aggressiveness and increased sexual desire. Increased aggressiveness may be beneficial for athletic training, but may also lead to overt violence outside the gym or the track. There are reports of violent, criminal behavior in individuals taking AS. Other side effects of AS are euphoria, confusion, sleeping disorders, pathological anxiety, paranoia, and hallucinations.
Anabolic steroid users may become dependent on the drug, with symptoms of withdrawal after cessation of drug use. The withdrawal symptoms consist of aggressive and violent behavior, mental depression with suicidal behavior, mood changes, and in some cases acute psychosis. At present it is unknown which individuals are particularly at risk. It is likely that great individual differences in responsiveness may exist. Some individuals try to minimize the withdrawal affects by administration of human choriogonadotropins (hCG), in order to enhance endogenous testosterone production. However, it is unknown in how far the hCG administration is successful in ameliorating the withdrawal effects.
This is what is commonly referred to as “roid rage” in which an individual “loses it” and becomes hyper-aggressive in situations in which aggression and violent behavior is unwarranted. Police officers who use steroids are not immune from this phenomenon. Quite the contrary and its a problem we’ve know about for decades:
A segment of the CBS-TV program “60 Minutes” had already made that point on November 5, 1989. “Beefing Up the Force” presented interviews with three officers whose use of steroids had apparently caused the hyper-aggressiveness that had gotten them into serious trouble. The worst case involved what one psychiatrist called “a real Jekyll and Hyde change” in the personality of a prison security guard in Oregon who had kidnapped and shot a woman who made a casual remark he didn’t like. He got 20 years in prison, and she was paralyzed for life. The personality he presented during his prison interview made it seem utterly improbable that he would have been capable of such an act. But his testosterone level when he committed the crime was 50 times the normal level. This broadcast conveyed the message that steroid problems were lurking in many police departments across the country, and that police officials were turning a blind eye to a significant threat to public safety.
It was no accident that the “60 Minutes” segment paid special attention to a “hard core group” of steroid users on the Miami police force. Two years earlier the Miami Herald had run a long article on steroid-using police officers. The seven notorious Miami “River Cops”, who in 1987 were on trial for alleged crimes including cocaine trafficking and conspiracy to commit murder, included Armando “Scarface” Garcia, a weightlifter who had publicly admitted to taking steroids. “There’s a great potential for an officer abusing steroids to physically mistreat people,” said the police chief of nearby Hollywood, Florida, who had told his investigators to be on the lookout for officers who looked like “small mountains.” (3) The Miami Herald article may have been the first of the tiny number of analytical treatments of this subject that have appeared in American newspapers since the 1980s.
And here’s a CBS report from 2007 that documents the increase in incidents of taser use and police brutality associated with steroids:
Indeed, some victims of taser abuse by police officers have alleged in lawsuits that steroid played a factor in the officers use of excessive force. Take, for example this lawsuit brought by Robert J. Pfeffer, a 64 year old man in Bonito Springs, Florida against two police officers who tackled him and then tasered him as he lay on the ground after he refused treatment by EMTs for chest pain.
Pfeffer refused treatment after being seen by EMTs, and he began to walk home. The two deputies, John Eaton and Thomas Chappell, both of whom were assigned to the Bonita Springs Community Policing Unit, arrived at Spanish Wells and confronted the man. At some point, Eaton tackled Pfeffer — or, as the arrest report states, “escorted him to the ground” — and Chappell shot Pfeffer with his Taser stun gun.
They arrested Pfeffer on a charge of obstruction of justice without violence, a first-degree misdemeanor. Deputies considered taking him to a mental health care facility but instead delivered him to Lee Memorial Hospital and then jail. Pfeffer’s mug shot shows several cuts on his face.
State prosecutors dropped the charge seven months later.
In his amended complaint Pfeffer alleged that the two officers in question were possibly exhibiting indications of “roid rage” in their use of excessive force against him.
The above-described actions by the Defendants and the failure of the Sheriff to properly train and supervise his deputies and to have in place a system to monitor the use of steroids or other drugs by his deputies which could result in them having “roid rage” or other unprovoked violent acts against civilians such as Pfeffer, and to implement a continuing education or training program to ensure that the deputies understood the basic tenants of criminal law, specifically as it relates to their arrest powers and authority directly resulted in violations of Robert J. Pfeffer, Jr.’s constitutional rights.
It should be noted that one officer involved had previously admitted use of steroids in his application for employment with the Lee County Sheriff’s office:
In his application, Eaton admitted to using steroids twice in college, in 1987. He also failed a Collier County Sheriff’s Office polygraph three times and was denied employment.
Attorneys from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office declined to speak about pending litigation.
Which makes me wonder why taser use by police in Chicago rose so rapidly fron the first three months of 2010 to the second three. And that was after the use of tasers by the police nearly doubled from the prior three months (Oct, Nov. and Dec. 2009) once all the cops were equipped with tasers.
Is the good Alderman correct and taser use has sared because of a sudden alarming increase in the use of drugs by the people arrested by Chicago’s Finest that makes those individuals so uncontrollable that only tasers can protect the cops? Or is it because the Chicago police, those on steroids and those who are not, simply have an easy way to deal with anyone who crosses their path, regardless of the risk that tasers pose to the people who get tased?
I don’t know the answer, but I’m not simply willing to accept Alderman Beale’s claim that tasers are the only way these individuals could have been dealt with by the police. Indeed, this dramatic rise in taser use by the Chicago PD ought to concern all citizens of Chicago and its surrounding environs a great deal, especially when you consider the following:
So far this year, men in Waukegan, Riverdale and Melrose Park have died after police shot them with Tasers, which fire barbs connected by wires to the devices. Police said they suspected two of the men had swallowed drugs and that the third man was drunk.
Three people dead from tasers in six months is three people too many. And whether the cops use their tasers “properly” or “improperly” the more that death toll will rise in Chicago and across the United States.