Hot on the heels of a severe and unwarranted electrocution at the University of Florida, the City of Eugene has decided to give those who serve and protect some cattle prods Tasers. Prompted by the shooting death of a mentally ill teen late last year, the committee has taken all of ten months to decide that giving police one more weapon to use against drunken college students is the right solution. I might have fired the officers involved, maybe tried to have them arrested for murder, and considered taking away options for force rather than granting more, just a thought. It’s nice they have another committee studying mental illness intervention, but wouldn’t proper intervention technique obviate the need for Tasers which will inevitably get misused?

Most disturbing, however, is that the EPD will be in charge of evaluating the success of the pilot program:

Although the policy has been written, the work is not over for this committee. It will need to shape the evaluation process and decide how police will determine the success or failure of the pilot project.

Brown stressed the policy was designed just for the pilot project.

“The Police Commission will take the data and community reaction and input and then decide whether Tasers are going to be a permanent part of the police arsenal,” he said.

So they’re going to buy a bunch of Tasers, give them to the police, and let the police decide how well the community reacts…hmmm…does anyone else see a potential problem with that approach? No conflict of interest there or anything, move along.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 11:22 by Timothy and is filed under City, Crime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.