So it is officially summer. Even though I’m still in Massachusetts spending some extra time at my work-study job at Hampshire College, my heart and mind is in New York City, where I’ll finally move into my new apartment in the neighborhood of Sunset Park (where I grew up, where I will live/work this summer, and hopefully, where I will spend the rest of my life). For New Yorkers, summer usually means block parties and bbqs and free concerts in the park. For others, it will also mean direct actions, marches, etc., etc. Out and about, indeed: What better time to examine the newest tool buzzing around weapons-covetee circles?
(In jest) Yes girls, $450 will buy you this metallic pink taser etched with Harry Potter-esque lightning bolt to give you true superhero/wizardry action! Move over, diamond-encrusted pepper spray! Hooray for the commodification and outright essentialism of womyn empowerment/female-bodied safety concerns. Obviously, if we will continue to make female bodies feel vulnerable in society, we should also use that fear to fuel the sagging economy. Take this quote here for the Crosman Pink Air Rifle which can be had for a mere $40:
Pink guns are the hottest trend. They’re the surest way to get girls interested in the shooting sports. Get one for the girl in your family, and you’ll be surprised how much she loves shooting!
That’s not all. Let us take a moment to appreciate the savvy of this treasure’s designers/manufacturers, who have caught the pulse of this edgy trend. Via AP Wire/Gothamist: this summer, 3500 NYPD officers (in addition to the handful of Emergency Services Unit officials) will start carrying tasers in the interest of diminishing the use of deadly force. Oh okay, so that’s why the DA acquitted the three officers in the Sean Bell case, of all charges? If the officers had been armed with tasers, then the use of deadly force in that case would have been negligible at best? What’s the danger of racial profiling, police brutality, and judicial neglect of the former two, when officers are using stun guns that don’t aim to kill?
Of course, this also means that officers can feel free to tase unruly individuals in any context! Witness the stunning of Iranian-American UCLA student Mostafa Tabatabainejad way back in 2006, who was tased while being escorted out of the Powell Library for not having a student ID card. The incident was recorded via cameraphone and watched by stunned thousands on YouTube. Florida, as well, has its own taser martyr, UofF student Andrew Meyer, detained last September for acting rough during a John Kerry appearance (later popularizing the phrase, “Don’t tase me, bro! Owwww…”).
According to Wikipedia, tasers have a long history with urban police task forces, predicated on the assumption that they decrease the number of deaths in officer-involved shootings. The evidence stands inconclusive. However, in January 2007, the Houston Chronicle released a special report assessing police violence since taser deployment, stating:
Since the Houston Police Department armed itself with Tasers [...] officers have shot, wounded and killed as many people as before the widespread use of the stun guns, a Houston Chronicle analysis shows.
Officers have used their Tasers more than 1,000 times in the past two years, but in 95 percent of those cases they were not used to defuse situations in which suspects wielded weapons and deadly force clearly would have been justified.
Instead, more than half of the Taser incidents escalated from relatively common police calls, such as traffic stops, disturbance and nuisance complaints, and reports of suspicious people.
In more than 350 cases, no crime was committed. No person was charged or the case was dropped by prosecutors or dismissed by judges and juries, according to the Houston Chronicle’s analysis of the first 900 police Taser incidents, which occurred between December 2004 and August 2006.
Of those people who were charged with crimes, most were accused of misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies.
So in Houston’s case, officers stunned more than they had previously shot, and kept shooting anyway. What will that look like for New York? Seeing as how one can’t even have a peaceful NY Phillipine Day Parade, the future is bleak.
The Wiki article has another trivia gem: TASER stands for “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle,” immortalizing a turn-of-the-century adventure novel’s hero, who apparently used the weapon to hunt for ivory in Africa, only to have to rescue his white friends from a group of native Africans.
Stun guns to stop the deaths resulting from the sustained and brutal policing of bodies of color. Racist legacy to sustain another racist legacy, indeed.
2 Comments
10 June 2008 at 10:01 pm
That is quite the ironic trivia gem. However, I doubt that the Taser’s creators were aware that or would have cared that the Taser would be disproportionately used on people of color. I don’t think I really need a citation to back that up.
P.S. I came across your blog from Kate Traub during Hampshire anti-racism stuff. I’m a member of Western Mass Copwatch. Check out our site if you have a chance.
13 June 2008 at 7:06 pm
what weapon is not disproportionately used against people of color?
neither lack of awareness (or lack of decency) are really relevant, are they?