How come a nonprofit group that’s dedicated to opposing torture in such places as Bosnia, Cambodia and Chile is fighting efforts to provide stun guns to Santa Clara jail deputies, who frequently have to defend themselves against dangerous inmates?
It makes no sense. Stun guns are a remarkable tool for law enforcement officers, who are always criticized for using lethal force when attacked. Stun guns aren’t pleasant to experience, but they’re not lethal, and they get the job done. So why is the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) so opposed to them?
The answer provides a glimpse into how the prisoners’ rights movement, a relatively new obsession of the Left, has insinuated itself into the Black Lives Matter movement. The two have morphed together because so many prisoners are Black. As CJA’s chairperson, Richard Konda, said, “We know that Tasers kill people…and we know this weapon has been used against Black people, brown people…Indigenous people. It’s really a weapon of torture.”
A few facts. Yes, some criminals have died after being tased by cops, which is why tasers are technically called “less than lethal” rather than “non-lethal.” Those at risk of death usually have pre-existing conditions, such as heart problems. For healthy adults, tasers are not lethal, with one exception: if the person tased is high on drugs, particularly stimulants, which can overload the heart.
Of course, any time a criminal chooses to resist the cops, he should know he’s gambling with his life. The way not to get killed by cops is to surrender peacefully to them if they want you to. If you try to fight them, or to flee, the cops have the right to tase you. So don’t fight back or run!
I never fail to be astonished by how vehemently some of these so-called “civil rights” groups try to take every single tool away from cops. Whether it’s vehicle pursuits or drones or surveillance cameras or stun guns, there always seem to be whiners who complain that some thug’s “civil rights” are being violated. These whiners never seem to mind that innocent peoples’ rights are routinely violated by thugs, every day of the year in a town like Oakland. You never hear leftwing groups complain about that! No, they make it sound like cops are the biggest threat to our safety and security. Why do they play this game of denying reality and trying to make cops the bad guys?
The answer comes down to racial politics, as it always does. The woke president of the Silicon Valley NAACP, Sean Allen, offers a good illustration. Weighing in on the debate about providing Santa Clara jail guards with tasers, Allen insisted “The county needs to stop this [Santa Clara] sheriff from using our people as a pilot project to test a weapon that…could lead to death. We need to stop this today.”
Again, I ask why it is that these “civil rights” organizations hate law enforcement so much. Whether it’s Pamela Price or Carroll Fife or Cat Brooks or Nikki Bas or Barbara Lee or the Center for Justice and Accountability, we know two important things about them: (1) they consistently oppose anything and everything that could make policing more effective, and (2) they justify their reasons with a far-left racial ideology. For them, it has nothing to do with public safety, about which they couldn’t care less. It’s all about catering to their base, the unions and the anti-police extremists (the two are the same). Working in tandem with the Oakland Police Commission and the city’s “anti-violence” bureaucracy, they remain determined to undermine and weaken law enforcement, and put officers’ lives, and ours, at risk.
Look: tasers are great. They work as intended. As the President of the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors observed, dozens of potentially dangerous incidents in the county jail were “de-escalated [by] simply unholstering the Taser.” Little wonder: not even hardened criminals wish to be tased. Of course, woke politicians can never be persuaded by facts or anecdotes: as one of them, a progressive Santa Clara Supervisor, opined, using tasers is “fundamentally at odds” with the board’s “commitment to fostering a culture of reduced trauma, enhanced dignity and rehabilitation in our jails.”
That Supervisor would feel right at home on the Oakland City Council, with the other criminal-coddling wokes. Frankly, fewer and fewer of us care about “enhanced dignity” for jailed thugs. If they wanted dignity, they would have led lawful lives that actually contribute to society’s greater wellbeing. They chose differently and are now paying the consequences.
Steve Heimoff