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New Hampshire Cops Use Taser On Woman Buying Too Many iPhones
turbosaab writes "A woman who said she was asked to leave New Hampshire's Pheasant Lane Mall because she wanted to buy too many iPhones was pinned down by Nashua police and zapped by a Taser (video) as she shrieked in front of crowds of shoppers Tuesday. The Chinese woman from Newton, Mass blamed a language barrier for the confrontation outside the Apple Store in the Pheasant Lane Mall Tuesday afternoon. Police say Li knew exactly what they were telling her and simply refused to comply. Police said Li had $16,000 in cash in her purse at the time of her arrest and may have been purchasing the phones for unauthorized export resale."
You mean selling her own property for a profit? God forbid.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Police are now so badly trained and so out of shape they can't even handle a 44 year-old, 80 pound Chinese woman, they have to resort to high tech weaponry.
No sig today...
These sorts of events are similar to what I would have expected in countries like China, not the United States. LEOs do not need to taser most people, especially a female who appears much less powerful than the officers holding her down in the video. The tool is used as a second-to-last resort, not as as way to make an arrest easier on the officers.
Sheesh.
But the lady clearly knew what was going on:
Jay said her mother bought two iPhones last Friday, and was told that was the limit. When she took video of others she claimed were buying more, the store manager asked her to leave.
And she was asked to leave and refused:
"The management of the store asked us to have her removed. The officer approached her, told her she wasn't welcome in the store, and she refused to leave," Nashua Police Capt. Bruce Hansen said.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
There are times to use painful, potentially fatal, means of coercion. This isn't one of them.
Unfortunately, we're going to get a lot of people posting here claiming that simply because the police demanded she do something, and she didn't, that they were justified. The simple truth is, no, they weren't. You don't get to do anything you like to someone simply because you have a badge and they didn't do what you told them to.
We do not live in a police state.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
She wasn't Tazed for buying too many iphones, she was tazed for failure to comply with authorities... Whoever made the title is a simpleton. What an Idiot..
It seems the concept that violence is a last resort has disappeared from policing.. Increasingly, even quiet, cooperative people are pinned down, handcuffed and manhandled as a matter of course. Violence has become one of the "perks" of policework, and the evil cycle of abuse and intimidation means fewer and fewer people object. Can anyone see any reason whatsoever for the violent treatment of this woman, who at worst is guilty of conspiracy to illegally export some telephones?
She wasn't tased for trying to buy too many iPhones. She was tased for resisting arrest after refusing to leave private property. I'm pretty sure "get out!" with a finger pointed to the door is near universal language. When it's suggested by men in uniforms carrying badges and guns, you'd have to be a full-on nitwit to miss the picture.
You can claim it was the result of "failure to communicate", but you can't expect officers in Nashua, NH to speak Mandarin. If you can't figure out that resisting arrest isn't a good idea, that's on you. Tasing her likely prevented further serious injury of the woman and/or the officers.
buying iPhones for cash, then reselling them.
Hmmm.. makes perfect sense. Addiction to iThings very similar to addiction to drugs. Both are equally craved; largely empty and useless... they give you a 'kick' for a while, and then you feel wistful and want something slightly better for which you are ready to part with loads of cash for no reason in particular.She must be sent to a de-addiction center to help recover from the fruity company craze.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
The store is private property. You're not entitled to stand in there and disrupt their business in such a manner, any more than if someone stood by you at your workplace and shouted at you, or went to your house and shouted at you in your living room.
You've set up a straw man, because it's reasonable to deduce from the evidence that the Apple store called police to get her to leave, not to "enforce" an "arbitrary sale limit rule". You don't know whether it's arbitrary, for one. I can think of several specific reasons for such a rule: scalping, hoarding, and the aforementioned export regulations. If someone doesn't want to do business with you-- save for obvious violations of the Civil Rights Act-- they don't have to. And you don't have to shop there. And you can picket the store while standing on public property, but not while on private property.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You sir are either an idiot or willfully ignorant. Tasing is not an improvement, previous practice in these types of situations was to firmly and gentley restrain and I'm freaking sorry that you don't understand how easy it is for a healthy police officer to restrain an 80 pound 44 year old woman. Baton chokeholds and other similar measures were and still are used for violent resisters.
violence is only moral when used to prevent violence.
The police used violence without that threat and are in the wrong.
The police tastered this person because she did something perfectly legal, which is to say, buy iPhones. She may or may not have had an intent to later export them, which would be illegal-- but this is no excuse for their actions.
Having intent to export is illegal. Having a plausible reason to believe that someone is disturbing the peace (which she did) or having a plausible reason to believe she intended to export (which she admitted) are both illegal and subjects you to arrest. Furthermore not calling the police when you have a suspicion that someone is purchasing a regulated item for export makes you an accomplice in the crime itself should it be committed. The Apple personnel did exactly what the law requires them to. The police did exactly as the law requires them to.
As far as resisting arrest- I am a man, if I made it out without broken bones and several felonies tacked on I would be grateful.
To anyone that still believes all that "Protect and Serve" shit, tasers are primarily and overwhelmingly used by LEOs as punishment. They are not used to protect anyone. If you do not do exactly as the officer says, no matter how unfair it may seem, you will be tasered. It is immediate punishment administered without judicial review. Plus, it relieves a lot of frustration for the cop.
So let's all stop pretending now that use of a taser is anything legal or moral, it's a circumvention of judicial review, denial of individual rights and a travesty of justice. Tasers should be outlawed or their use outside of life threatening situations should be cause for immediate dismissal of the offending officer. Any other course of action is merely inviting a Judge Dredd type of future.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
For the record: Yes, failing to follow the orders of police in the US is a good way to come in close contact with a taser or baton, fact of life.
So you have these rulers who wander around giving out arbitrary commands to the proles. The rulers pretend to be following some 'law' but really they are above most laws and only have to follow their own loose interpretation of some written law. They meet any perceived challenge to their authority with mild to extreme violence often involving electrical torture devices.
Is that the kind of society you want to live in?
Cash transactions at banks over $10,000 are subject to special reporting requirements, thanks largely to the War on Drugs. It wouldn't surprise me if trying to make any kind of cash transaction for $16K draws unwanted attention in the current police state environment.
Obviously, she was taking the money she earned selling drugs, and laundering it by buying iPhones for cash, then reselling them. Makes perfect sense to a cop, who has been trained to assume that EVERYBODY is a criminal....
You need to come up for air more often. The war on drugs is so 1990's. It's all about terrorists now. We all know she was buying the phones for Al-Qaida. They probably figured out that taping an iPhone to a string attached to a trigger is a 99% reliable way to detonate a bomb. After all, what American could resist picking up a shiny new iPhone.
I think it's more likely that if you get enough of them close together you can achieve critical mass. It's obviously another attempt by Iran to build a boomer.
You might call me old fashioned or sexist here, but where I'm from we get taught not to use violence against women.
Ok, you are old fashioned and sexist. How about not using violence against anyone? You're basically implying that it is acceptable to use violence against men but not women. Gender should play NO role in this discussion whatsoever. Men are no more deserving of violence than women.