Quote:
Originally Posted by rodder
You do realize there has been more than one incidence of people being killed by a taser, right? The cop needed to weigh emergency knee surgery (which I've actually never even heard of - knee surgery isn't usually an "emergency") against possibly killing the kid and spending the rest of his life either behind bars or financially destitute because of the enormous civil suit that would follow.
Tackling the kid has a possibility of injuring him, maybe a slightly higher possibility for injury than tasing him. The problem is, with tasing, right along with the possibility of injury there is also the possibility of death. That cop would fry if he killed a kid just for running out onto a baseball field.
All I'm saying is tasing the kid could have ended up just as bad or even worse for the cop than tackling him. The best thing to do would have been to get multiple cops involved and just corner the kid. He's not gonna keep trying to fight and run away if he's backed into a corner with 4 or 5 cops surrounding him. Chase him until he gets tired. The problem is most cops these days would have a heart attack if they ever actually attempted a full sprint.
Sorry, I don't see any way that tasing this kid was justified (legally anyway - if that was my kid he get a lot worse than tased when he got home). I've never heard of a cop tasing a fleeing suspect in the back.
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4 or 5 cops chase him down and corner him or chase him till he gets tired? What if they did that and this kid pulled out a gun while running or when they backed him into a corner and decided to fire at the cops, a player, or into the stands. Look at my last post and you can see what some people are capable of. Sure it's easy to look back and say "well he was just having fun, so they didn't need to taser him". Suppose you found out afterward that he had a knife and was planning to pull it out and stab one of the outfielders. I bet nobody would be bitching about him being tasered then. Cops dont always know what is going to happen so he reacted with what he thought was necessary force and the Philadelphia Police Chief backed him on his decision.