1. Drug use should be as legal as alcohol with similar laws.
2. Traffic stops should be concerned with the driver's sobriety unless the guy in the back is seen hurriedly stuffing a severed head into a burlap sack.
3. Tasers were initally marketed as a way to reduce lethal force and the claim they would be abused as compliance tools was dismissed. Whoops.
4. "Then he should have complied." No. Hinky or not, non-compliance doesn't grant carte blanche to beat the shit out of someone who is just sitting there, not being a threat. There's a greater harm done in the beating than in the non-compliant sitting. Law enforcement is not a licence to assault the harmless, no matter how annoying you think they are. Campus protesters. Street corner cigarette sellers. Backseat stoners. The cop playbook only seems to call for an immediate and aggressive escalation to violence with non-violent people, as if there's no other possibility that's even worth trying before going to the taser or the spray. It's escalate to triumph. It's brinkmanship. It's stupid, dangerous, unjustified, and criminal, which is why so many people are getting shitty about it these days.
I speak, of course, of the way things should be. It's how they are that's the problem so don't be preaching me on the way of things.
