Mom Allows Cops to Use Taser on 10-Year-Old
A mom told police they could use a Taser on her ten-year-old daughter for resisting arrest. So they did. And now the little girl’s father is outraged.
Anthony Medlock told 4029 TV his daughter didn’t deserve to be “treated like a dog.” If officers couldn’t restrain a ten-year-old, Medlock said, why did they join the police force?
The cops’ defense: the girl kicked him in the groin. They’d been called to the house by the girl’s mother specifically to take her away to a juvenile facility because she was acting out. When police arrived, she was already kicking and screaming. Simply trying to restrain her, the cops say, might have hurt her worse.
Perhaps – but sticking a stun gun in the back of a ten-year-old and sending electric current through her body is the answer?
It’s a sticky situation – chiefly because the mother Kelly Hamlert gave them permission. Which takes this out of the realm of “what kind of cop are you?” to “what kind of parent are you?”
The police say their official guidelines for Taser use do not have age limits – they’ll tase “someone who is a threat to others.” But as recently as last month, the ACLU (which, it should be noted is a vocal opponent of Tasers) released a study that linked the lack of regulation and oversight over Taser usage to the resultant one hundred forty-eight deaths from Taser usage in the past decade (that’s U.S. and Canada).
The biggest win on the side of Tasers was a study published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine, which called them safe and effective. But Taser International partly funded the research. And those tests were all performed on adult subjects – not little kids.
Granted, this child needs serious help if she’s kicking cops. Ten years old is still pretty young in terms of neurological development, which again begs the question – Mom, your kid is out of control, but is putting her at that sort of risk going to help matters?
Image: hermanturnip via flickr
More by this author:
[...] Allows Cops to Use Taser on 10-Year-Old Mom Allows Cops to Use Taser on 10-Year-Old | Strollerderby __________________ http://www.n8andnoah.com/ And I hear them saying you’ll never [...]
[...] in a week that featured cops tasing a ten-year-old, we can’t blame you for that bit of eye-popping rage. And if you were attracted to the idea, [...]
I think the reason she’s acting that badly is because her mother is the type of parent who lets comps taser her.
[...] threatened him with a pipe. But remember, this child was ten years old. And after an Arkansas mom allowed a cop to use a taser on her ten-year-old daughter last month, the officer was fired and the FBI moved in to [...]