Police taser 83-year-old woman in altercation

[TransitJohn]

Source: Niles Herald-Spectator

Niles police officers stunned an 83-year-old woman with a Taser last month after she threatened them with a knife, police say.

Sylvia Ziecina of 887 Washington St., Niles, was charged with aggravated assault of a peace officer Jan. 6, after being released from a mental health evaluation at Lutheran General Hospital.

Police say that two officers went to Ziecina's residence Dec. 8 because she was complaining about noise coming from the apartment next door.

Officers who went to the scene say that they saw Ziecina holding a 7-inch kitchen knife when they arrived.

She refused to drop the knife after officers drew their weapons and commanded her to do so, police say.

Read more: http://www.pioneerlocal.com/niles/news/1985252,niles-taserlady-011410-s1.article

[coyote]

1. Pathetic. N/T

[enough]

3. Truly. (nt)

[ShortnFiery]

50. +1000.

Gee, I thought the ZAPPING of the 75 y.o. grandmother was bad ... this reaches new lows. :(

[sui generis]

2. a seven inch knife?

don't they teach these fat fucks how to disarm someone? An 83 year old woman required nothing more than patience.

Good fucking grief what is the matter with those idiots? Oh yeah, tasers aren't just for breakfast any more. Oh my god, the man has a business card! Tase him! Cashier gave me the wrong change, tase her! Somebody didn't fling themselves face down on the ground faster than 9.8 meters per second squared - tase him on the way down.

Old lady with a butter knife - tase her.

:eyes:

insanity.

[izquierdista]

4. Cop defenders in 3....2....1....

[sui generis]

7. I'm usually a cop defender but this is just a bunch of lard ass lazy

bean counters with badges and tasers playing at cops and perps.

[LiberalFighter]

10. I don 't have a problem with police as long as they do their job correctly and legally.

As long as they don't use unnecessary force.
As long as they show respect and courtesy to everyone and use diplomacy when it doesn't work.
As long as they use proper procedures.
As long as they don't try to frame innocents.
As long as they don't lie, steal, or commit other crimes because they think it's their right.

[Hepburn]

15. Wow....

....where does not find a cop like that????

:shrug:

[CanonRay]

6. Sorry, you can get pretty cut up trying to take a knife off someone

even if you know what you are doing. Hate to see this but can't say I blame them.

[sui generis]

8. oh please. 83 year old woman.

Butter knife.

[timtom]

41. "Oh please."

You took the very words out of my mouth.

[ColesCountyDem]

57. Where does it say it was a 'butter knife'?

A seven-inch KITCHEN KNIFE is what the article says...

[mikelgb]

19. If one is worried about being cut by a crazy old woman...

one should not be a police officer and be referred to as that community's "finest."

[ColesCountyDem]

58. 83 or 18...

... being cut or stabbed by a 7-inch knife is a VERY serious matter.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

23. Anyone remember the Eula Love shooting in LA?

I don't think LAPD had Tasers then...they shot her to death

[Vinnie From Indy]

51. You are right

While tasers are certainly being used to dish out some roadside justice by police officers, the fact is that there were many people in the past that were simply shot or beaten half to death. I think many folks lose sight of that fact. In the old days, cops would simply shoot you in these situations. That beings said, zapping an eithy-three old lady is just nuts. They should have simply waited her out, talked her down, threw a blanket on her or gave her a dose of pepper spray.

[WriteDown]

38. You have 7 inch butter knifes?

Where do you get your butter?

[sui generis]

44. a seven inch knife is not a seven inch blade.

If it had been a knife with a seven inch blade I think they would have said so, being professionals and all.

[WriteDown]

45. Most likely it was a chef's knife which can easily be 7 inches...

Or are you assuming that seniors are just so stupid and clumsy as to grab a butter knife if they think they are in danger?

[sui generis]

47. Well I know a few grandma kitchens and quality of edgeware

they keep and it ain't no ginsu knife set. . . .

Seriously? I AM a racist and a homophobe and a senior bigot when I'm not busy kicking puppies and pulling the wings off of baby birds.

You will not in any universe get me to agree that the cops who tased a cranky 83 year old woman holding a knife of ANY Kind were justified.

I would add !!!! but that would be redundant.

[Tim01]

5. The may have busted her up a bit, but they didn't have to use the taser.

Police are trained in some basic martial arts to deal with a person who is holding a knife. Now those methods very well might break some bones on a person that old, it is just very tough to gently subdue a person with a knife, without sending yourself to the emergency room.
But a broken arm or hip is better than being zapped with a taser.

[caraher]

16. You can break bones getting tasered

lots of people get hurt when they collapse without being able to control their fall.

Aren't tasers supposed to be an alternative to the use of lethal force (not just force)?

[ManiacJoe]

49. No, tasers are not alternatives for lethal force.

Tasers are alternatives for non-lethal force (batons, pepper spray, hand-to-hand).

[caraher]

54. Realistically, I think you're right

but it seems like the fallback position I hear over and over again is, "It's better than shooting them."

[ManiacJoe]

56. For example, this case.

The knife is a deadly weapon, thus the cops are allowed to shoot grandma with their handguns.

However, often times there are extra circumstances in a particular case where the non-lethal weapons can be successfully deployed against deadly weapons. An example that might work for this story is that grandma with the knife is within taser range but on the other side of a large table so that she is not yet a direct lethal threat due to the table blocking her directly at the cops.

[Gormy Cuss]

20. Taser might very well cause just as much harm, even kill a senior.

For example, a shot to the chest may cause cardiac arrest.

[paulsby]

40. not really

fwiw, i have TAUGHT police defensive tactics.

realistically speaking, it's accepted that if you try to to disarm ANYBODY with a knife, that you are going to get cut. we aren't frigging ninjas. it is always preferred to use a gun against somebody with a knife, OR if you have multiple officers, a few can choose less lethal like a taser as long as they have other officrs with firearms backup

in the years prior to taser use, this woman likely would have been shot.

and a broken arm or hip is NOT better than being zapped with a taser. i've been zapped twice. i wouldn't volunteer to have my arm or hip broken.

[Mojorabbit]

46. As a retired nurse

I will say that you have a very high chance of a broken hip if an 80 something year old person hits the floor.

[Raschel]

9. The average citizen has more courage. Fighting intruders in their homes, fighting off muggers.

Civilians know they'll be prosecuted using a gun.

When cops answer a call these days there's three or more against one and they still taze or shoot.

[Tim01]

18. Courage? You really have no idea what you are talking about.

People in their homes fight out of fear and survival instinct, not courage. Their homes are their last safe place, they feel they have run away as far as they can. They did not go out and find a bad guy to get into a fight with.

I really can't fully express my lack of respect for your opinion on this. I have stood my ground in my own house on more than one occasion, and I can tell you it sure as hell wasn't because of courage. I've stood my ground in the streets a couple of times too, same thing.

Name your actual real life experience that shows that a cops who pursue dangerous people are less courageous than average folks.

[Raschel]

21. Yeah, I do know what I'm talking about, and I don't have to name anything to you.

Ever hear of civilians chasing muggers without a weapon? That's courage.

How about civilians who jump in to save someone being attacked (again WITHOUT a weapon) that's courage.

Happens all the time. But go ahead and characterize it as fear.

You know what fearful is? Using a taser on an 83 yr old woman.

[Tim01]

22. I thought so. nt

[TransitJohn]

28. It's obvious silly.

Helping others under sanction of government authority=courage.
Helping others without sanction of government authority=fear.
Simple really.
Oh, yeah: :sarcasm:

[Raschel]

31. Here's an example. Man and biker chase down attacker yesterday.

http://kstp.com/news/stories/S1357665.shtml?cat=1

[Dappleganger]

36. Oh great, my anecdotal experience vs. your anecdotal experience.

:popcorn:

[Iggo]

11. Wussies. (n/t)

[Piewhacket]

12. You gotta be kidding. I'd just fire the two officers, "stupid" and "whimp".

What's hard about this.
The lady reasonably believed she was in danger.
Geezus.

Drop all charges. (they are just covering their civil ass,
which in my opinion is a misuse of the courts and an abuse
by the prosecuting attorney. Hmmm.... there's a thought.

[KansDem]

13. I thought police officers were taught defensive techniques...

...like how to disarm an 83-year-old woman with a knife.

What are they taught now? Just "aim and shoot?"

[WriteDown]

39. Sure, joint locks and pressure points work great on seniors. nt

[Hepburn]

14. Jesus fucking Icon Christ...

...they cannot control an incompetent 83 year old woman on their own without excessive force?

Maybe they should not be cops...for a lot of reasons.

JMHO

[shadowknows69]

17. I'm out. I can't read the news for a while.

[superconnected]

24. How long until they taser toddlers?

At this point, it's going to happen.

[hootinholler]

29. He pointed his binky at us!

Yeah I can see it coming too.

-Hoot

[lostnfound]

52. Let's not exaggerate. The youngest so far was 6 years old.

That's so far past toddlerhood he might as well have been driving.

:sarcasm:

[lostnfound]

53. Unless you count the one-month old in his teenage mother's arms.

http://www.dose.ca/music/story.html?id=2b9b5d88-3c1e-4fb6-9f59-5f3492483c47

Misha Peterson, 16, said Vancouver police held her down on a bed and shot her with a Taser twice on Monday while she held her one-month-old son, Taige.

"Three or four cops were holding me down and they Tasered me twice in the neck until I let go of my baby," said Peterson.

Peterson said social services were trying to take Taige because her 17-year-old boyfriend, Scott Michell, broke a supervision requirement.

Michell can't see his child without adult supervision after an argument about Peterson moving back to her mother's "got out of hand," she said.

********
Taige and Peterson, who is five feet one and about 110 pounds, were taken by ambulance to B.C. Children's Hospital. She was held for observation under the Mental Health Act for two days.

[cbgb2112]

25. If she had stabbed herself

then there would be an outcry of why didn't they tase her....That was a no-win situation. I would have tased her also. If her back was to a wall where there was no way to restrain her without getting cut/stabbed or her injuring herself, that was the correct thing to do.

[TransitJohn]

26. Bullshit

Worst. Reply. Ever.

[cbgb2112]

33. You have not met my mother.....!

[Hepburn]

34. +1

[Bluebear]

30. >I would have tased her also.< LOL..that came our pretty easy from just reading the account, eh?

Maybe there's a video game you can buy, Taze Grandma LOL

[cbgb2112]

32. I said IF. You are guilty of judgment by reading the account also

Everyone hates cops.....until they need one.

[TransitJohn]

35. Until they need one.

Yeah, I'm afraid to work issues out with my neighbors...please send the cops. Pfffffft. Whatever. What the fuck would I ever need a cop for? To randomly fuck over someone's life? Not my style.

[L0oniX]

27. Holding a 7" kitchen knife in or at her own home ...uhm ...did I say I hate cops?

[Soylent Brice]

37. ridiculous.

i don't even know what else to say.

[sui generis]

42. speaking from personal experience

About 10 years ago I was at home after happy hour on a Friday night, and in about 20 minutes just finished making up a batch of homemade oatmeal cookies, in my pee jays, shirt off, when there was a loud banging at the door. I had just divided the dough using a kitchen knife and had the knife and bowl and butter fingers all in the crook of my arm, when I answered the door.

Standing outside were two cops, guns drawn, who claimed they heard a gun shot coming from my home. Anyone who knows me knows that would be technically impossible unless I was killing an intruder who had a gun that discharged, but I was a little high on the oatmeal cookie dough and amicably let them in. When set down the bowl in the kitchen and reached for a towel to wipe my hands they raised the gun on me again and told me to step away from the bowl.

As it turned out this was a "knock and talk" instigated by a new neighbor who thought he'd fuck with the gay boys across the alley, but had I actually been holding a cooking spoon when I opened the door I would probably have been shot.

And of COURSE, the cops don't ever fuck with you unless you don't have a shirt on - what's up with that?

Best of all when I asked them how they came to have their guns drawn when I opened the door, they said they had seen me from the alley, wielding a knife like I knew how to use it, which I do, in the kitchen, very well.

These cops were fucking idiots, and I ran their ass into internal affairs for refusing to share how they came to knock at my door and no other neighbors' and sent a detailed description to every member of city counsel to embarrass the police department as much as possible. they said they were looking for a freshly killed, freshly cut up dead body. In my kitchen cabinets. 20 minutes after I got home, whilst baking oatmeal cookies. No not the good kind, just plain old oatmeal raisin cookies.

She was an old woman. These cops are fucking idiots - they could as easily just have waited her out, but I repeat they were idiot beancounters with a badge and a ball tickler. I mean really - their ability to assess whether they were truly in danger or not really is not defensible. A paring knife is 7 inches long, the kind you use to peel the skin off an apple. It was probably a grapefruit spoon, which is technically a knife. Also classified as a "kitchen knife" and seven inches long.

Idiots. Flaming idiots.

[juno jones]

43. Oh fer gawd's sake.

An 83-year old woman is capable of standing off several large male cops in good health precisely how long?

How long til she has to pee, sit down, gets hungry, perhaps even loses intrest or forgets? It used to be that cops were trained to 'talk people down'. The guys on the ledges, the old ladies wielding breadknives were coaxed down, not tased right off the bat.


If I am reading this right, she's the one who called them in because she was feeling threatened. Doesn't appear they approached her in a manner that would assuage her fear, either.

[fascisthunter]

48. "Screw that... I'm Tasing Her..."

real tough... :sarcasm:

[buckrogers1965]

55. I normally don't like police taser stories...

Usually they use the tasers instead of talking to some citizen whose only crime is exercising their first amendment rights. However in this case, assuming they didn't use it more than necessary, they were justified in using their tasers on an armed person who was threatening them with harm. Their only other choice would have been to shot the person with their side arms.

For the people who say they could have disarmed the old woman, good way to get stabbed in the neck. Old people aren't entirely useless, which is what you are assuming. Some of them could gut you and leave you for dead in the blink of an eye.

[ColesCountyDem]

59. Spot on! n/t

:thumbsup: