Yet another cop fuck-up, yet another dash cam

This story passed in the news a day or two ago, but I thought it was one that had already been covered weeks previously so I didn't mention it (you know how it is with "old news" ...). Turns out it wasn't old news, and so, here it is: a cop manhandles a mother who had done absolutely nothing wrong, other than actually asking to see what she'd supposedly did wrong, and then gets tasered – all before her kids' eyes.

Here's a little list of how things went wrong:

First, the cop pulls her over for supposedly using her cellphone while driving, yet she then proves she didn't even have one. Then, obviously out of retaliation rather than her actually being guilty of anything, he writes her a ticket for going 5 MPH over the limit – a figure he apparently guessed, as he never used radar to actually calculate her speed. And even if she had been going 5 MPH over the limit – for fuck's sake, that doesn't even count as speeding. It's nothing. At this point he's obviously just being petty and punishing her for his own fuck-up.

As he leaves, she gets out of the car – yet never approaches him, never uses menacing physical body language. All she does is stand there by her vehicle and demand that she be shown the dash cam footage showing how she supposedly did something meriting the ticket. Yet, the cop orders her, repeatedly, to get back inside her vehicle.

She refuses to comply, and at this point the jerk grabs his taser and threatens her with it, despite her posing absolutely no threat to anyone. I'm pretty sure cops have no right to threaten to taser you if you don't actually pose a risk to themselves or others. This finally works in scaring her, and she tries to get back into her truck – yet Taser Cop seems to have had a change of heart in the last 10 seconds and now orders her out of the car. Yet she's scared and tries to stay in the relative "safety" of her vehicle.

They say the law has a long arm; apparently, so does this cop, who then grabs her and yanks her out into the street again, still threatening her with his taser. She tries to go back in again, and finally, the cop does indeed taser her; she fights it off and tries to get back in, yet he tasers her a second time and throws her to the ground and keeps her there, tasered and all, right in front of her children's eyes.

Yes, I know you're not supposed to just get out of your car when pulled over by a cop, but there are still some fucking limits. Unless you pose any sort of credible threat to yourself, the cop, or others, he simply has no right, at all, to point a weapon at you – and especially to use it. This woman may have been borderline unruly (though I'd defend her for merely demanding to see where she'd gone wrong), but to push her around, threaten her, and actually taser her, is miles over the line as far as overreacting goes.

In the end, the woman ended up with four tickets – speeding (5 MPH over the limit), using a cellphone during driving (which she proved she never did), resisting arrest (which is the moronic cop's fault for scaring her as he did), and disorderly conduct (right, demanding to know what she'd done wrong – true anarchist behavior, no?). Thankfully, the prosecutor threw all these pathetic allegations out the window upon seeing this very video, as any sensible person should.

(via The Agitator)