Tazing Is Torture...

I'm a bit behind the curve with this one but I think it's worth a mention...

Back in November 2007 both Amnesty International and the U.N. Committee Against Torture expressed concerns about tazers:

Amnesty International: A Taser victim's penalty 'should not be death' by David Edwards and Jason Rhyne
(Monday November 26, 2007)

Police use of Tasers to subdue suspects can rise to the level of torture, according to Amnesty International USA's executive director, Larry Cox, whose organization is calling for a moratorium on the electroshock devices.

Cox appeared on CBS's Early Show to discuss a dramatic spike in Taser-related deaths -- a total of six people died after being Tasered in separate incidents last week in the US and Canada -- and to urge the continued study of potential dangers he says are inherent to law enforcement reliance on Tasers.

"You have people who are often in custody, and when they are in custody and it's being used repeatedly on them, it's hard to describe it as anything else but torture," said Cox. Amnesty International USA first raised concerns that some Taser practices amounted to torture in 2006.

...

U.N. Torture Panel Singles Out Tasers By Mike Nizza
(November 26, 2007, 9:41 am)

All news reports about deaths that follow Taser shocks seem to come with two accompaniments: outrage over police brutality on the one hand, and a lack of definitive proof that the weapon was to blame on the other. A man’s death in Vancouver, B.C., on Saturday was no different. But it happened to come a day after a United Nations panel appeared to take a stand against Tasers.

The U.N. Committee Against Torture singled out Tasers at the end of a conference in Geneva, expressing concern that the most popular model caused so much pain that use of it “constituted a form of torture.”

...

It's not just in various black prison sites around the world, in Guantanamo bay, in psychiatric institutions in China, in Burma or what have you.

Police forces all around the world, especially in so called "first world" or "developed" nations are carrying around a device that exists to inflict pain and use it to enforce compliance, and it seems most people are Aye Oh Kaye with that.

Think about it...

(hat'tip 300 Americans Tortured to Death but Nobody Cares by Stephen Crane)