Pretty good place to visit now and again..

http://police-brutality-blog.blogspot.co m/

Great cause. Toooooo baaaaad the diarist has no credibility on this blog.

The problem isn't the TASER.  The problem is that it's being used for the wrong situations.

There are very specific situations where a TASER should be used:

• As a less-lethal alternative to an officer's sidearm, in cases where lethal force would otherwise be justified.  Example: to subdue a schizophrenic man brandishing a sword who is posing a danger to the safety of officers and bystanders.
• To subdue an individual who is in a position to otherwise bring harm to himself.  Example: to stop a fleeing 12-year-old girl from running into traffic and potentially killing herself.

Situations where it shouldn't be used, but routinely is?

To enforce compliance with officer commands.  As long as a suspect is resisting nonviolently, there is no call to use a TASER.

in the New Yorker last month about developments in "non-lethal" force use in law enforcement. It was informative, but also frightening. You can read an abstract here:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/ 06/02/080602fa_fact_wilkinson

After reading that I was thinking, I believe that most states have laws/regulations requiring police to fill out a mountain of paperwork and take desk time after they've discharged their weapon on duty. We might be able to affect taser usage by making the bureaucratic consequences more cumbersome and requiring a similar level of reporting and review of the use of the taser. I don't know, maybe law enforcement already does this. Of course the easy recourse to a taser is a horrific practice and worthy of condemnation. But at a practical level, we don't have to convince everyone of that in order to have some change.