This is beyond absurd. We’ve already got the police Taser-happy, now we have guards and citizens settling disputes (that would be settled in the past with a civil conversation) by pulling out the shock devices on one another. In this case, a guard claimed the co-owner of a Boulder restaurant had parked his van on property it didn’t belong on and was placing a boot on the vehicle, and then …
Harvey Epstein, co-owner of Mamacitas restaurant on The Hill, was arrested Saturday night after he got into an altercation with two officers from Colorado Security Services, one of whom had booted a company vehicle for being illegally parked in the alley behind his Mexican restaurant.If you read the entire article, there are differing versions of the event, so it’s hard to tell who is at fault, but incidents like these are sure to escalate and increase in frequency in the new Taser Wild West.Epstein said the van was on his property and should never have been booted. When he tried to cut the device off with bolt cutters after the guard refused to remove it, the situation escalated.
“(The guard) pointed a stun gun at my mother’s face and I immediately responded with my personal Taser,” Epstein said Sunday evening, within an hour of being released from Boulder County Jail. “And we shot each other at the same moment.”
Epstein, 36, said one of the guards jumped on his back after the Taser duel and pressed the barrel of his pistol against the back of Epstein’s head.’
In more positive Taser news, the stun-gun manufacturer is seeing a slump in sales due to tight police department budgets thanks to the Bush Economy. So sad:
Taser International Inc., the world’s largest stun-gun maker, may get a jolt as the U.S. economic slowdown drains tax revenue from police forces that supply more than two-thirds of its revenue.Hat tip, Sue.Six of Taser’s 10 biggest investors that reported stakes in March 31 regulatory filings, including Veredus Asset Management LLC and Emerald Advisers Inc., said they sold shares. Taser has lost 48 percent this year and short interest, a gauge of bets against the stock, averaged 18 percent higher in the first four months of 2008 than in the past three years.
…Taser is a defendant in 37 lawsuits alleging wrongful death or personal injury and has won dismissals in 69 others, according to a May 12 regulatory filing.
…While two-thirds of U.S. police departments own at least one Taser, only a third of officers carry them, estimates Minneapolis-based analyst Steven Dyer of Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC. The figures show that some departments can’t afford more, he said.
…”Their customers are municipalities,'’ Dyer said. When cities have to scrape for money to finance schools and repair roads, “Tasers become a lot more discretionary.'’
18 Responses to “Colorado: conflict over parking leads to Taser duel”
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For all the clowns who respond to a Virginia Tech or a Northern Illinois University with “let everyone carry concealed weapons,” take a look at this incident. Yeah, let’s let all the knuckledraggers out there pack heat so that every dispute over a parking space can be resolved with flying lead. Brilliant.
The pro-gun people always try the old saw “An armed society is a polite society”, which I thought was probably bogus.
We lived in an “armed society” out here in the West for quite a few years, and it wasn’t so polite we held onto it. It disappeared because people finally got tired of being worried about their fellow humans all the time.
The way I see it, a universally Taserific future would consist of a few assholes terrorizing the rest of the citizenry to extract the behavior/goods/”respect” they demand. Think The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence on steroids.
Incidents like this one just lend more evidence to support my argument…
This story, ladies and gentlemen, is just yet more proof that stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to leave their homes.
There’s a fine line between asserting your legal rights and asserting that you can do whatever the crap you want whenever you want, and nobody is allowed to tell you different on pain of tasering. Both the restaurant owner and the glorified parking attendant are living way, way far into the latter territory.
What the hell? Cops with tasers are bad enough, but “guards” are not legally permitted to so much as lay a hand on anyone, much less shoot them with stun guns. That would be what you call “assault”. Someone’s going to do some jail time for this one.
If Hamilton and Burr had them, it would have changed the course of US History!
For all the clowns who respond to a Virginia Tech or a Northern Illinois University with “let everyone carry concealed weapons,” take a look at this incident. Yeah, let’s let all the knuckledraggers out there pack heat so that every dispute over a parking space can be resolved with flying lead. Brilliant.
Not to parrot talking points, but if the knuckle draggers have no care for respecting the “don’t shoot people” rule, what makes you think they would respect the “don’t carry guns to campus” rule?
Personally, living in a high-crime gun-free campus affiliated housing where a gun point robberies occurred next door to me, I would be much more pleased knowing that I have a gun to protect myself even if it means my neighbors have guns.
The smarter option, of course, is moving the fuck away from the hideous, awful apartment complex that is robbing my fucking soul.
Actually, formal taser duels sound like a good idea for dealing with, say, road rage or as alternatives to the civil court. At the very least, they’d be entertaining.
“Actually, formal taser duels sound like a good idea for dealing with, say, road rage or as alternatives to the civil court. At the very least, they’d be entertaining.”
Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to another edition of
ThunderdomeTazerDome!…Jonathan: I’m sorry your living quarters are so depressing, but I really don’t think firearms are the answer.
You’re right in that someone determined to carry a pistol around probably wouldn’t care what the law says. But I’m thinking of the borderline cases where people are hotheaded enough to reach for a pistol if it happens to be in their pocket, but would have enough respect for the law not to have the pistol there in the first place if it was illegal. There are probably more of those around than there are hardcore packing criminals.
Colorado Security Services earns a percentage of each boot removal fee, so they’re incented to boot vehicles as often as possible. Their goal isn’t to keep parking lots free of inappropriate vehicles or to keep the premesis safe, but rather to charge as many fees as they can.
Here’s the story of what they did to me last fall, which was fairly minor — search around a bit, though, and you’ll find many more.
Your college neighbors must be much more well-behaved than mine were. If I’d had a gun when my upstairs neighbors were playing “Sex” (that Berlin song) on a one-hour endless loop at 3 am, serious damage might have been done in my sleep-deprived state.
That said, you REALLY need to move. When you start having home invasion robberies, that’s a sign to get the fuck out of that building.
That said, you REALLY need to move. When you start having home invasion robberies, that’s a sign to get the fuck out of that building.
Wait a second - campus affiliated and it has home invasions?
Time to start raising some serious fucking hell it seems to me … starting with the campus police and moving on from there. Maybe even throwing a good fit when freshmen parents come to visit?? If it is campus affiliated, it needs to be campus patrolled and secured!
Thanks, Pam, for posting a story about Tasers that didn’t have me gnashing my teeth in frustration and anger but instead had me holding my sides in gut-busting laughter. I would so love to witness two assholes, each completely convinced of his own righteous self-importance, zap each other with high voltage at the same time. It’s like a high-tech three stooges routine.
Time to start raising some serious fucking hell it seems to me … starting with the campus police and moving on from there. Maybe even throwing a good fit when freshmen parents come to visit?? If it is campus affiliated, it needs to be campus patrolled and secured!
People raised a stink, but it didn’t really help much other than adding more security guards at night. The only thing stopping me from moving out is that no one wants to sublet the place-knowing the reputation the place has.
I should be out as soon as the lease runs out.
You’re right in that someone determined to carry a pistol around probably wouldn’t care what the law says. But I’m thinking of the borderline cases where people are hotheaded enough to reach for a pistol if it happens to be in their pocket, but would have enough respect for the law not to have the pistol there in the first place if it was illegal. There are probably more of those around than there are hardcore packing criminals.
But couldn’t that be applied to everywhere, not just campuses? I guess age could be a consideration, but you’d think that if it would make sense banning it on campus, then it would make sense banning guns nation wide. (unless you want that, and considering the nature of the blog is a possibility)
A funny side note, in my lease agreement not only are guns banned, but so are javelins, pocket knives, and lawn darts. They actually specify each of those items as not being allowed. And yet kitchen knives, which is allowed, could probably do a better job at harming than any of those things.
Luckily I have my pitching wedge handy incase anything gets too sour.
Bitter Scribe: Knowing a bunch of stupid hotheads who tend to drink more than they should and get into fights, I can only agree.
Though every time that point gets made, someone points out that knives, bier steins and chair legs in the hands of stupid drunks are actually far more dangerous to everyone within a 20-feet radius than guns. Which makes the desire to arm onself against robbery with a gun when there are perfectly good chairs available kind of academic…
Tasers are actually kind of scary to me, given that I’m epileptic and a bit brain damaged. Couldn’t a taser cause a really bad seizure, resulting in status epilepticus? Or what if I’d had a seizure and was all post-ictal and some stupid cop didn’t understand what was going on and tased me to get me to shut up or calm down? Both ideas–or any combination of the two–scare me a lot. I don’t like the idea of dying because someone reached for a weapon in a medical emergency. I think it sucks.
angryyoungwoman, the Taser darts almost always land in your torso, so it’s more likely that the shock would cause funky heart rhythms than a seizure. (Unless of course you were shot in the face, as this guy claims the guard was threatening to do to his mother.)
I’m trying to do some side reading (along with preparing for prelims at the end of this summer) about the actual effects of Tasers on the heart. Lots of papers, in tests done on healthy young volunteers, show no problems — but my question is, how often is someone tasered who does have an underlying heart problem, who is on drugs (legal as well as illegal) that can predispose the heart to arrhythmias (even some common antibiotics fall into this category), etc. I found one guy who was planning to do tests in anesthetized pigs given cocaine, but hadn’t run those tests yet.
I didn’t feel like I had enough background reading to get into an argument with the Taser International booth at Heart Rhythm last week, so I didn’t. Maybe I should have anyway.
Caroline, I hope you come back and see this.
There’s an inquiry into Tasers going on right now in Vancouver, BC, and in Wednesday’s Vancouver Sun the headline read Taser could trigger a heart attack”.
The doctor quoted here is Dr Michael Janusz, a heart surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital.
“Tasers must be regarded as being capable of causing cardiac arrest.”
“There has to be underlying heart disease or other contributing factors, such as lack of oxygen due to asphyxia or massive bloodloss or severe metabolic abnormalities such as acidosis or abnormal potassium levels, he said.” But given any of those, or a combination, it’s possible, and the risk is not trivial.
Another doctor, specialist in electrophysiology at St. Paul’s Hospital and UBC, Charles Kerr, said “there is a small possibility that an electrical discharge from a Taser dart could directly induce ventricular fibrillation.” (This means that even without the underlying conditions Dr Janusz talked about, it could still happen.)
He said the pain of the Taze causes intense muscle contraction, an increase in heart rate and adrenalin-like chemicals and sympathetic nerve discharge. Couple that with physical restraint and the victim could have trouble breathing properly, which could drop their oxygen levels, which changes the acid balance in the blood, “which would make the patient more prone to ventricular arrhythmias”.
Asked later about multiple Taser shocks, he said that would probably cause more muscle contraction and more acidosis of the blood. (Which I guess would increase the chances of arrhythmia.)
Can’t link right to the article: paywall. But I’m sure it’s been picked up and syndicated by now. Hope it serves.