55th Person In Florida Dies From Tasering

On a balmy fall night, two police officers in a squad car in east Bradenton spotted a man on a bicycle without a headlight.

Derrick Humbert, 38, rode a bike around town because seizures from a head injury prevented him from driving. He worked odd jobs as a short-order cook and gardener. He took care of his three kids, 2, 8 and 11, while their mother worked the evening shift at a 7-Eleven.

On this Monday in late September, he was riding home from a convenience store just after midnight when police told him to stop.

Instead, he pedaled around a corner past three houses, jumped off the bike and ran into a yard, the two officers chasing him on foot.

It is not clear why Humbert fled. Police later said that they wanted to stop him because it was a high-crime area, though Humbert was not wanted in connection with any crime. Only later would they learn that he had a misdemeanor conviction for marijuana possession, with unpaid fines.

Officer Del Shiflett yelled that he was firing his Taser. Humbert, who was hard of hearing, scrambled over a 4-foot chain-link fence and made it into a second yard. One probe hit Humbert's left shoulder, the other went in his lower back. Hit with 50,000 volts of electricity, he fell face down in the dirt. Twenty-eight minutes later, he was in a deep coma in an ambulance on the way to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/article1089912.ece

The debate to ban tasers is on going, what do you think?

I say ban them, it seems cops think that tasers are just a safe gun and dont know how to properly use them which leads to deaths and many injuries

I agree, I say ban them, 99% of the time police use them as punishment for not being co-operative as opposed to restraining a violent criminal.

Many situations are going to involve good citizens who feel the police are harassing them without cause, like the case above, and not co operate.

Making up bullshit excuses to detain people on the street and run their name for warrants is harassment.

I'm sure a seasoned piggie could make up anything and pass for a legit reason but I've never seen them do it to certain demographics of people.

Bottom line is they are not safe, and misused, kill people, and a waste of tax payers money.

If a pig cant snag collars without one then he's in the wrong business.

Absolutely ban tazers. It's just another way that the police an fuck you up and get away with it. I'm gonna go get one before that shit gets taken off the market.

If a pig cant snag collars without one then he's in the wrong business.[/size][/color][/u][/b]

THIS

I agree, many cops use tasers as a crutch to "keep people in line"

Most of the time they just use tasers because they seem to be lazy to do the right thing.

Ban em, they only cause more harm. If they are a non lethal device, then how come 55 people just in the state of Florida have died so far?

If a pig cant snag collars without one then he's in the wrong business.

Exactly the point I was ganna make.

Fuck a tazer, just another tool for lazy ass cops who probably couldnt even have chased down a 38 year old man.

I guess the ''long'' arm of the law aint so fuckin long anymore.

i've been against tasers since the cops started carrying them. they absolutely abuse the "non-lethal tools

of detainment". we've all seen the videos of cops tasing the shit out of some guy for asking why he was

pulled over. fuck that shit, cops don't need these things - a badge, a gun, handcuffs and a baton seemed to

work pretty well for quite a while. we don't need fucking militant cops running around with all these things.

Tazers should only be used if its too dangerous to physically deal with someone (like a dude waving a knife on PCP). If they get rid of the tazer than they'll have to shot their dumb ass and then every cries that they shot someone. Tazing a guy for running away from you is retarded. Tazing someone because they dont want to be handcuffed is stupid.

LOL they was talking on the news about how a cop was trying to taze a suspect and ended up hitting another officer the footage was so hilarious

It's actually kind of a peripheral issue but an alarming number of folks have been 'accidentally' shot to death after police "confused" their tasers and their pistols. It's probably not going to be news until it happens to a pretty young white girl but... something to think about.

either way, scumbag criminals are gonna bitch about how any police officer may apprehend them. keep tazers for police, and maybe encourage other people you care about to learn to fucking deal with police encounter situations. that dude in florida clearly fucked up by running away from the cops for doing nothing. had he stopped when they initially tried to talk to him, he'd still be alive.