Jesus Christ this is disturbing. A man with his hands on the hood of his squad car, clearly not fighting or struggling, gets tasered in the back of the neck by a Minneapolis Police officer.
Though I consider myself a liberal in good standing, I'm, in general, far more sympathetic to the police than many others. Indeed, by Oberlin standards, my views on police and putative cases of "police brutality" is cautious to the point of Republicanism (eep!). But this is simply disgusting.
I think this makes it creepier: apparently, there were a number of officers on the scene. I understand the use of a taser in self-defense. I really do. And I think that it's much better to taser someone who's threatening an officer than it is to, say, shoot them. And if the taser is able to protect the police, people who put themselves in dangerous situations to protect us, then that's a good thing. But this wasn't self-defense: a fact made clearer by the fact that there were a number of police officers around.
This, as best I can tell, was a police officer running electricity through a man because he could.
(And, a brief side note: The Minneapolis Police Department hasn't exactly endeared itself to the black community, but I'm sure that this incident will help. Good work, guys!)
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