When 19-year-old Ricky Jones of Cleburne, Texas, collided with another vehicle while driving his car back on April 9, his blood sugar had been running exceptionally low, which put him into a state of extreme disorientation and confusion. Consequently, when a cop rolled up to question Jones following the accident, he was unable to give proper responses to the officer, who quickly became irritated at the young man.
As reported by CBS 11 News in Dallas, the ignorant cop proceeded to threaten the boy that if he did not get out of the car and produce a driver's license and registration forms, the officer would tase him, even though the boy was in no way threatening the officer. As caught on video, the cop immediately proceeded to tase the boy after threatening him, and dragged the boy out of his vehicle to tase him again.
Not long after, emergency crews arrived on the scene -- as a note, the cop should have known to call emergency crews himself from the very beginning -- and it was determined that the boy was diabetic, and had been suffering a serious medical emergency. After discovering the real reason for the boy's strange behavior, the cop can be heard callously saying, "I didn't know he was freakin' diabetic!"
Cops increasingly tasing non-threatening individuals who simply irritate them
Sadly, this recent incident in Texas is hardly an isolated one, as we have reported on numerous cases involving cops tasing non-threatening individuals over the past several years. These include the needless tasing of an eight-month pregnant woman back in June, as well as the tasing of another diabetic man who suffered a seizure back in 2008.
These and many other cases of abusive tasing are becoming the norm, as cops increasingly take the unauthorized liberty to tase individuals that they deem annoying, irritating, or simply non-compliant with their sometimes ridiculous and unlawful demands. In many cases, the individuals being tased are not a physical threat to the cops in any way, which is supposed to be the only legitimate reason why a cop should ever even use a taser in the first place.
UN has already declared tasers 'a form of torture that can kill'
To make matters worse, tasers are not merely innocuous stun devices that temporarily debilitate individuals -- in many cases, they can cause serious injury and even death. The United Nations (UN) Committee Against Torture actually declared back in 2007 that tasers are "a form of torture that can kill," a statement that is evidenced as true by the hundreds of people nationwide who have died in recent years as a result of being tased.
"Tasers are being normalized into everyday policing," wrote Paul Benedek for Green Left Weekly back in March. "They are not used in self defense, but to enforce compliance and even to torture police captives."
