Shocking science news

To protect and to serve, to protect and to serve, just keep repeating it, over and over. Maybe you'll believe it in spite of it all, such as this from AP for July 1:

RoboCops and robot soldiers got a little closer to reality Thursday as a maker of floor-cleaning automatons teamed up with a stun-gun manufacturer to arm track-wheeled 'bots for the police and the Pentagon.

By adding Tasers to robots it already makes for the military, iRobot Corp. says it hopes to give soldiers and law enforcement a defensive, non-lethal tool.

Yep, it's a robot armed with a taser. They still have to be guided by a human, but it makes the use of tasers one step more a standard procedure, one step easier, as now the shooter doesn't even have to be anywhere near the victim in order to deliver a 50,000 volt shock - repeatedly, if they so desire.

It's not even the first example: A rival company already makes a track-wheeled robot that can be fitted with a taser with a laser-dot aim.

John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org is concerned that it's a step on the road to a time when autonomous robots would decide on their own when to use force, even lethal force. Admittedly, it's hard to be reassured on that score when a company executive says "Right now, we have no plans to take any robot with a lethal-weapon approach to the market," emphasis of course added, but my real concern remains what it has been since the beginning, that instead of how they were pitched, as a next-to-last alternative to lethal force, tasers would become a first alternative, a convenience, a way not to avoid violence but to "secure compliance," i.e., enforce meek submission to orders.

I maintain that the history bears that out. I've noted numerous cases before, and here's another, this one from May and found via Left End of the Dial:

Waxahachie [Texas] resident Allen Nelms says a call to 911 to get medical attention for his diabetic seizure got him Tasered by police instead.

He said he still has no answer as to why police broke down his door with their guns drawn before shooting him multiple times with a Taser as he lay in bed.

Nelms, 52, is not only diabetic, he's partially disabled and has rheumatoid arthritis. Early in the morning of April 28, he was having a diabetic seizure, prompting his live-in love, Josie Edwards, to call 911 for paramedics. Instead, a police officer arrived, asked what was going on, and called for backup.

A half-dozen cops arrived, kicked in the couple's front door and with guns drawn stormed the bedroom where Nelms was lying in bed. They screamed at him to get on the floor, ignored his pleas that he had called for medical help, not the police, shot him at least three times with tasers, and handcuffed him, relenting only when paramedics intervened as the cops went to pull the taser barbs out of him.

In her statement, Edwards, who has Lou Gehrig’s disease and is on oxygen, said the cops were "laughing." They also demanded to know what she was doing there and upon being told she lived there, they wanted to know

about what time Nelms came home and if he was drunk or on drugs, if he ever got into fights or if he had hit her.

Nelms said he'd never before had a problem with calling for paramedics and had no history of violence during seizures. After he was checked over, the police and paramedics left. No charges were filed.

Nelms and Edwards filed a complaint, which resulted in a bored one-paragraph response five days later that claimed an internal investigation had determined that - wow, as much of a shock as the taser hits - the cops had acted properly.

Footnote: The case isn't over yet; local attorney Rodney Ramsey has filed notice with the city on Nelms’ behalf to preserve all documentation and evidence relating to the incident.

“I don’t care if I make a dime on this case. I don’t care if this costs me money,” he said. “I want to know what policy says you can kick somebody’s door down and Taser them for asking for medical help. This is not going to happen in this town anymore.”

Ramsey said he wants the names of the officers involved in the incident and that he will renew his efforts to see a citizens review board of police established in the city....

Footnote two: Another real shocker: Nelms is black. Mister Injustice Roberts, any comments?