I am surprised nobody has posted about this yet.

 

Yesterday afternoon, 62-year old Viola Young was arrested after being tased in the back by Tallahassee Police Officer Terry Mahan.

 

Video:

I personally think he should have made more of an effort to grab her before deploying his tazer, you can see him Camly walking behind her at a slow pace, I know when I told somebody I was going to arrest them I didn't just walk non chalantly up to them. So I honestly think in this case he was wrong to deploy his tazer it was not used to prevent escape because a few more steps would have accomplished that

Edited October 3, 201411 yr by gatekeeper

All is said above.

It may not have been the way I would have handled the situation but like many of the videos of police out there it only shows what happened as the incident was happening, not everything leading up to the incident. According to the news article an officer was trying to physically restrain her prior to tasing her. She broke free from him and continued to walk towards the other officers as they were trying to make an arrest on a different subject.

 

Anyone in law enforcement should be familiar with the use of force matrix and knows that law enforcement is technically supposed to stay one level above the suspect's resistance level. The suspect was at a passive physical level (level 3) and possibly moving into an active physical resistance level (level 4) in which case the next level above that for law enforcement is the use of incapacitating control (level 5) such as the taser. The officer has already attempted to use physical control (level 3) and that had failed. He could continue to attempt to use physical control tactics but those had already proved ineffective once and with the suspect getting closer and closer to the other officers who were already involved with two other subjects there was not much time or space for screwing up the second chance. By the book and according to the use of force matrix published by the FDLE and taught in police academies across Florida (and most other states) this was an appropriate use of force.

It may not have been the way I would have handled the situation but like many of the videos of police out there it only shows what happened as the incident was happening, not everything leading up to the incident. According to the news article an officer was trying to physically restrain her prior to tasing her. She broke free from him and continued to walk towards the other officers as they were trying to make an arrest on a different subject.

Anyone in law enforcement should be familiar with the use of force matrix and knows that law enforcement is technically supposed to stay one level above the suspect's resistance level. The suspect was at a passive physical level (level 3) and possibly moving into an active physical resistance level (level 4) in which case the next level above that for law enforcement is the use of incapacitating control (level 5) such as the taser. The officer has already attempted to use physical control (level 3) and that had failed. He could continue to attempt to use physical control tactics but those had already proved ineffective once and with the suspect getting closer and closer to the other officers who were already involved with two other subjects there was not much time or space for screwing up the second chance. By the book and according to the use of force matrix published by the FDLE and taught in police academies across Florida (and most other states) this was an appropriate use of force.

Well said.

Although personally I believe he should have kept trying to physically restrain her... It was a woman... Just what I would have done.

Well said.

Although personally I believe he should have kept trying to physically restrain her... It was a woman... Just what I would have done.

Yes, like I said based on the information we have on the incident (which is very little) I would have probably done something different, however, we have no idea what was really going on at the scene therefor no one can really say what they would have done. And the fact that she is a woman doesn't mean she isn't capable of causing serious injury to others. I have seen some of the most unlikely people change in a split second and do things I didn't think they were capable of so while it might dictate how you talk to someone or handle them you should never let your guard down or underestimate someone. As far as I know she had not been frisked for weapons yet so she very well could have had a gun or knife on her that she was planning to use.

I am surprised nobody has posted about this yet.

 

Yesterday afternoon, 62-year old Viola Young was arrested after being tased in the back by Tallahassee Police Officer Terry Mahan.

 

Video:

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CNN article: http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/01/us/florida-police-tase-woman/index.html

 

Local Tallahassee news station report: http://www.wtxl.com/news/update-tallahassee-police-launching-internal-investigation-on-potential-use-of/article_c0b1e862-493b-11e4-aec1-0017a43b2370.html

 

Thoughts on this? What do you think? Did Mahan use excessive force? Was it an assault? I encourage you to read some of the comments below the video; there are some interesting points there.

Edited October 4, 201411 yr by unr3al