The Gaming Den

Twitter tells me with alarm that Texas police have a drone that can be weaponized (tasers, beanbags, etc).

Can anyone explain to me why that's uniquely bad?

I can accept an argument that says it's ubiquity of surveillance or whatever, but anything similar to that seems to apply equally well to helicopters, and I don't hear outcry about those.

It looks like you're talking about this. From what I understand, it's not even the first drone used, but just the first capable of having weapons (and it doesn't, yet).

I imagine most of the outcry is probably from the word "drone", which has it's own connotations. It's probably something along the lines of drone + weapons = dead Pakistanis Texans.

I'm not sure it's "uniquely" bad, but some areas of concern would be

1. As a remote weapons platform, it means that the police operator who is pressing the fire button is further removed from the scene than an officer on the spot. It could very well be the case that due to more limited information, such remote operators make poorer use of force decisions than on-the-spot officers. (of course this could also turn out to run the other way, with remote operators less likely to be swept up in emotions and mob mentality and actually better at following established use-of-force guidelines - so I really hope that the Police Department is having such things monitored in these early deployments)

2. As an aerial drone it will have different sightlines than citizens are used to police having. Due to it's size it will be able to fly nearer to ground level in dense urban areas than manned helicopters do. This could potentially run up against Fourth Amendment guidelines by violating citizens' reasonable expectation of privacy. Especially if the cops are recording what that zoom lens camera shoots. Imagine if during a pursuit of a prime suspect, the drone zips through a back alley and, incidental to the current operation, the camera records brief footage of a large quantity of illegal narcotics only visible through an open bathroom window that faces a brick wall in a back alley. Is that recording admissible evidence, or is that a warrantless search and a violation of wiretap restrictions ? That's going to be up to courts and lawyers to sort out?

3. As we all know, there is significant cultural weight behind the notion that Robots are a threat in and of themselves. I think President Obama even said something to that effect earlier this year.....

Josh_Kablack wrote:I'm not sure it's "uniquely" bad, but some areas of concern would be

1. As a remote weapons platform, it means that the police operator who is pressing the fire button is further removed from the scene than an officer on the spot. It could very well be the case that due to more limited information, such remote operators make poorer use of force decisions than on-the-spot officers. (of course this could also turn out to run the other way, with remote operators less likely to be swept up in emotions and mob mentality and actually better at following established use-of-force guidelines - so I really hope that the Police Department is having such things monitored in these early deployments)

It seems highly unlikely that they would make poorer decisions, since they would almost certainly have better, not worse information, and not be concerned for harm to their person.

2. Is that recording admissible evidence, or is that a warrantless search and a violation of wiretap restrictions ? That's going to be up to courts and lawyers to sort out?

It's admissible. If it can be seen without entering onto the property, it's in plain sight. Cops can flyover places, this is no different.

Neeeek wrote:It seems highly unlikely that they would make poorer decisions, since they would almost certainly have better, not worse information, and not be concerned for harm to their person.

How is it "almost certain" that an officer viewing events through an aerial camera will have better information than an officer on-the-spot?

This one really could go either way.

Neeeek wrote: It's admissible. If it can be seen without entering onto the property, it's in plain sight. Cops can flyover places, this is no different.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not sure that it will in all cases be no different and I can perhaps see lawyers making cases for lower-than-helicopter flying drones violating property holders air rights.

If the police collect evidence by placing an officer in aCherry Picker and then extending the boom over a privacy fence at the boundary line of a property, do they need a warrant? It's conceivable that drones could inadvertently collect evidence from a similar vantage point - much lower than helicopter overflights.

I suspect that at the very least the legal definition of "reasonable expectation of privacy" will have to change to accommodate the use of such technology as it becomes more commonplace.

fectin wrote:Twitter tells me with alarm that Texas police have a drone that can be weaponized (tasers, beanbags, etc).

Can anyone explain to me why that's uniquely bad?

I can accept an argument that says it's ubiquity of surveillance or whatever, but anything similar to that seems to apply equally well to helicopters, and I don't hear outcry about those.

Well you know how Obama kills innocent people with drones? Like, a lot? Well since government law enforcement is so inefficient, you can bet they'll be tasering, bean-bagging, teargassing, and spying (or whatever) on innocent people. A lot. And maybe occasionally they will taser, bean-bag, teargas, or spy on a bad guy along the way.

Dumb police + crazy weapons = bad situation. Heck, just think of how badly tasers have been abused.

Neeeek wrote:It seems highly unlikely that they would make poorer decisions, since they would almost certainly have better, not worse information, and not be concerned for harm to their person.

The police officer also faces significantly lower odds of retribution, however.

infected slut princess wrote: Dumb police + crazy weapons = bad situation. Heck, just think of how badly tasers have been abused.

Better than getting shot in the same situation. Or brutally beaten with a nightstick.

Fuchs wrote:Better than getting shot in the same situation. Or brutally beaten with a nightstick.

Maybe. Maybe not. The police have killed people with tasers. And the police have shot and brutally beaten people who survived the encounter. I guess my point is that police are abusive by nature -- so giving them more weapons just creates more abuse than otherwise. And if you are an innocent person who gets killed by the police that's total bullshit, so you want to minimize abuse by not giving the police more crazy weapons like tasers and drones.

infected slut princess wrote:

Fuchs wrote:Better than getting shot in the same situation. Or brutally beaten with a nightstick.

Maybe. Maybe not. The police have killed people with tasers. And the police have shot and brutally beaten people who survived the encounter. I guess my point is that police are abusive by nature -- so giving them more weapons just creates more abuse than otherwise. And if you are an innocent person who gets killed by the police that's total bullshit, so you want to minimize abuse by not giving the police more crazy weapons like tasers and drones.

The police is not abusive by nature. Tasers do far less damage than guns. If you take them away you end up with more guns being used. That's more abuse, not less.

Fuchs wrote:The police is not abusive by nature.

Ok.

Tasers do far less damage than guns. If you take them away you end up with more guns being used. That's more abuse, not less.

Except now the police have another weapon. And that weapon is supposedly "non-lethal" and "safe" for subduing people, so they have fewer compunctions about using a taser than they do a gun.

So, for instance, a cop wouldn't use a gun on a kid having a tantrum (I hope). But a cop would use a taser on a kid having a tantrum. And that is completely abusive.

Yeah, ONE cop did it. Out of tens of thousands. You do realize that you cannot use one cop as an example for every cop, right?

Again, Tasers ARE safer than guns. Sure, some might die - but then, people also died from getting arrested and handcuffed on the floor, no stick or taser used.

Look bro, the point is not that one cop did it. The point is not that statistically speaking you are more likely to survive a taser shot than a gunshot.

Instead, the point is the kid would have been less likely to be the victim of totally excessive violence if the cop had only a gun, and no taser.

Basically, the taser just increases the number of situations in which a cop will tend to use abusive force than would otherwise exist.

Think of it like this: You have a super orbital laser cannon that can blow up an entire city blow in one blast. If you are "abusive" with that thing, it's a real fucking mess. So you are reluctant to use it except in supremely dire circumstances.

Now you get a new weapon, say a sonic gun that makes people puke all over the place for 10 minutes. Usually that's not fatal, not like a super laser cannon, although it could be (if someone chokes on their vomit or slips in their vomit and cracks their head open). The results of abusively using the puker gun are quite a bit less disastrous than the super laser. End result: you have a weapon that you will be more likely to use in less dire situations, creating more situations for abuse.

Fuchs wrote:Yeah, ONE cop did it. Out of tens of thousands. You do realize that you cannot use one cop as an example for every cop, right?

Wait, are you rejecting the premise that cops will use tasers more readily than they will use guns?

Fuchs wrote:Again, Tasers ARE safer than guns.

We would know more about this if companies that produced tasers stopped suing professionals who ruled tasers as cause of death. It's probably the case that they are safer, but not by anywhere near as much as you might think.

But here is the point ISP is getting at: tasers are used more than guns. A police officer can get in a fuckton of trouble for drawing his gun outside of regulated circumstances. Before he can touch it and not lose his job, he has to be able to demonstrate a potential physical threat to someone. And that's followed by paperwork and a tiny formal investigation/corroboration to make sure that's actually what happened. Those regulations and practices don't exist for tasers. Police are allowed and encouraged to use them more. To get a police officer to (legitimately, from the standpoint of his training) draw his gun, you have to be posing a genuine violent threat. To get a police officer to draw and use his taser, you just have to catch him on a bad day and talk a little too much or take a little too long to comply.

If you think tasers are a less lethal substitute for guns, that's only half the story. The other half of the story is that they are are more lethal substitute for verbal resolution and physical subdual.

Again, we've had a death here when a man was arrested, and suffocated prone on the ground in handcuffs. With a taser he might still be around - but since he was subdued with violence he died. That doesn't mean subdueing people is bad.

Tasers offer a non-lethal option. That's a good thing. Will it be abused sometimes? Yes. But over all it's a very good thing.

Fuchs wrote:Again, we've had a death here when a man was arrested, and suffocated prone on the ground in handcuffs. With a taser he might still be around - but since he was subdued with violence he died. That doesn't mean subdueing people is bad.

You are missing the point entirely. The point is that the number of people you kill increases when you replace physical subdual and handcuffs with tasers. Not at all surprisingly, electrocuting random people is more dangerous than laying them down with their hands behind their back.

DSMatticus wrote:You are missing the point entirely. The point is that the number of people you kill increases when you replace physical subdual and handcuffs with tasers. Not at all surprisingly, electrocuting random people is more dangerous than laying them down with their hands behind their back.

And the number of people you kill decreases when you replace guns with tasers. I do not think more people die because we have tasers now - quite the contrary. Tasers work in situations where subduing won't work, or would be too risky.

Fuchs wrote:And the number of people you kill decreases when you replace guns with tasers. I do not think more people die because we have tasers now - quite the contrary. Tasers work in situations where subduing won't work, or would be too risky.

And the problem with that is back to the start: police draw tasers a lot fucking more than they draw guns, and in more types of situations, because they aren't restricted in use the same way guns are. Police officer gun use is highly controlled. Taser use is not.

Tasers do not replace guns. This cannot be said enough. Tasers get used in situations guns never, ever, ever, ever would have been drawn. So pointing out that "tasers are less fatal than guns" is meaningless, because the actual question is, "are tasers more fatal than not guns?" and the answer is yes. Yes they are.

DSMatticus wrote:

Fuchs wrote:And the number of people you kill decreases when you replace guns with tasers. I do not think more people die because we have tasers now - quite the contrary. Tasers work in situations where subduing won't work, or would be too risky.

And the problem with that is back to the start: police draw tasers a lot fucking more than they draw guns, and in more types of situations, because they aren't restricted in use the same way guns are. Police officer gun use is highly controlled. Taser use is not.

Tasers do not replace guns. This cannot be said enough. Tasers get used in situations guns never, ever, ever, ever would have been drawn. So pointing out that "tasers are less fatal than guns" is meaningless, because the actual question is, "are tasers more fatal than not guns?" and the answer is yes. Yes they are.

The question is: How much more fatal are they?

And the answer is: Not enough to matter when weighed against the reduced risk of injuries to cops.

Remember: Tasers are not meant to be used against non-resisting people, they are meant to be used against people who resist arrest violently. And frankly, if you use or threaten violence against a cop, you deserve to be tasered. A cop should not have to take the risk to get injured just to avoid tasering someone who is, at that moment, committing the crime of resisting arrest or worse.

Are tasers abused at times? Of course, but that doesn't mean they are not a very useful tool to reduce violence committed against cops. Bad cops abuse their authority as well, that doesn't mean we should not have cops at all.

If you cannot trust a cop to use a taser accordingly, then that cop has no business being a cop and carrying other weapons at all.

Taking guns away from police officers reduces fatalities and serious injuries. Giving them tasers in addition to guns actually reduces fatalities and serious injuries as well. Giving tasers to security guards who don't carry guns increases fatalities and serious injuries.

This is totally unsurprising, as tasers lie in between night sticks and guns in terms of lethality.

Probably the ideal situation is something like the British system: where the regular police have a night stick and a goofy hat and they can call the SWAT who have sniper rifles and automatic weapons if they for some reason need to. But as long as American police insist on having pistols, giving them tasers on top of that seems to be a fairly good deal.

-Username17

Tasers (with longer range and better ammunition capacity) could replace the pistols and nightsticks for all of the cops. If they need real guns they should pick a rifle or shotgun out of the patrol car anyway, not a pistol.

FrankTrollman wrote:Giving them tasers in addition to guns actually reduces fatalities and serious injuries as well.

Any statistics? Because I find it hard to believe that police need to draw and use their guns frequently enough that tasers actually significantly reduce fatalities. It's obvious that in the cases where things would have escalated to full-out violence where the officer would have drawn his gun, the officer having a taser is the better choice and is going to save lives. But the average police officer spends more time tealing with drunks and petty criminals than those types of situations.

Fuchs wrote:Tasers are not meant to be used against non-resisting people, they are meant to be used against people who resist arrest violently

Neither are guns. Which is why the police currently have very rigorous internal regulations about when they should or should not draw their firearms, and this does a fairly good job of stopping people from getting shot for no good reason. Tasers are not subject to the same restrictions and scrutiny. There are less incentives for an officer to avoid drawing his taser. We call them nonlethal and their use is explicitly permissible in situations where guns are not.

If your argument is "it's okay if police don't misuse tasers," then either you have a completely unfounded trust in the infallibility of human judgment, or you are agreeing with the point that we need to treat tasers like they can be misused and restrict the police officer's use of them via regulatory practices. Like we do with their guns.

Fuchs wrote:And frankly, if you use or threaten violence against a cop, you deserve to be tasered. A cop should not have to take the risk to get injured just to avoid tasering someone who is, at that moment, committing the crime of resisting arrest or worse.

You should probably understand that "resisting arrest" comes in a lot of levels. Lots of people "resist arrest" without ever getting violent or running. Plenty of people fail to comply immediately, for whatever reason, or do the whole "verbal stand off" thing where they don't think they've done anything wrong so they want to argue or they demand an explanation or something like that. They don't get violent and they don't run, it's passive non-compliance. In many cases, there's no threat to anyone at all, it's just annoying, obnoxious, and stupid. As current practices stand, a gun is impermissible in this situation but a taser is fine if the cop can handwavingly claim "I felt like the situation had the potential to escalate."

Tasers are permissible in a broader spectrum of scenarios than police side arms. As long as that's true, that means you're going to have people get tased who never would have had a gun drawn on them and that means their chance of death went up because the officer was carrying a taser.

DSMatticus wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:Giving them tasers in addition to guns actually reduces fatalities and serious injuries as well.

Any statistics? Because I find it hard to believe that police need to draw and use their guns frequently enough that tasers actually significantly reduce fatalities. It's obvious that in the cases where things would have escalated to full-out violence where the officer would have drawn his gun, the officer having a taser is the better choice and is going to save lives. But the average police officer spends more time tealing with drunks and petty criminals than those types of situations.

Yeah. When you give Police Officers Pepper Spray, or you give them Tasers, the number of serious injuries and deaths go down.

I remain unconvinced that putting these weapons into the hands of otherwise unarmed civilians and security guards is a good idea however. Since people do in fact die from those things and they are marketed as "nonlethal" even though that is demonstrably untrue. And frankly, I don't trust mall cops with anything deadlier than a walkie-talkie, because they do shit like this.

-Username17

SWAT teams usually refer to them as "less Lethal" not.. "Non Lethal"
That's a much more honest interpretation.