87-year-old woman dies after standoff with deputies, who shoot her with a stun gun!

At least beaten!! I dont like the police but i dont think they were out of line here....lady was crazy.

haha I love how she runs away when he want's to show her the crack he was selling.
Eating crack can kill you btw. He was probably saving the guy's life.

I'm not fond of the guy telling everyone to get the fuck out and threatening them, but I am starting to see how the cops are getting tired of video cameras. Oh the poor little crack dealer, Don't keep your kids away from the crack dealer btw just from the video camera. *facepalm*

did you even read what happened?

spraying mace into someones mouth is not an attempt to save their life.

you say cops are tired of video cameras,
well i'm tired of the cops behavior shown in these videos

The fact remains, pepper spray and mace are harmless if swallowed. Crack can kill you.

The guy was guaranteeing himself a trip to the hospital at a city cost of probably ten grand or more in an attempt to save his life (which might not succeed) in order to help him destroy evidence of him being a crack dealer.

I personally feel that:
1) I'm glad he didn't die
2) I'm glad I didn't have to help foot the bill for his trip to the emergency room
3) I'm glad that the evidence was recovered and the guy can be charged for selling crack around kids.

Exactly!

They did try to talk her down. And they succeeded. The problem was that after they rid she Haddon few Brownies left in the pan that She picked the gun up again while they were in the middle of advancing which is what caused the tazing.

Maybe people are getting tired of gushing oil in the gulf and the criminal corporations that are still business.

Whee! someone reads here! You rock. +^

In the defense of the news agency if you will notice, the publishing entity is not a big city oranization , but a rural county newspaper. http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/

This was probably the only police shooting they had had in years. I'm sure if it was a black person that woudl have been news too. Heck the very existence of a black person in rural Oregon might be news in and of itself. These are often very very racially homogeneous areas, with local accents and turns of phrase often hearkening back to the original language of the settlers a hundred or more years ago.

I grew up in North Dakota, and I never even saw a live black or Hispanic person (not counting TV) till I was 13.

Now that's what this discussion needs, a proactive approach in a investigative mode!
It was also 95 degrees yesterday, and she was living in a trailer maybe she was over heated?

Better training for our centurions in mental health responses could be a good start.

Sorry if I have offended supporters of the police, but this is awful disturbing!

nothing is wrong with our police. Read the whole article. The woman had a gun and was threatening to kill people.

the question is what is wrong with people who think there is something wrong with the police based on misleading crap like this.

And how would that solve the cazy lady with a gun issue? It sounds more to me like hse had advance Alzheimer, because she forgot the existence of the men from one hour to the next as well as the time of day.

I can see your point that this might be a result of a failure of the medical system, because this woman obviously needed care. Still not a failure of the police though. Once they pick up a hand gun the options get very narrow.

you are SSOOOO right about the meds . They could have called her pastor , neighbor , trusted friend , landlady ect . , since they could not or were just too lazy to TALK to her in a constructive manner....

And while they are placing those phone calls, the manager she was waving a gun at would have been shot dead.

The police need to think quickly in situations with an armed assailant threatening innocent people's lives. And that's exactly what this was- it does not mater if the assailant is a sweet old lady on prescription drugs, or a street thug on meth.

She had a gun.

The cop had only two choices- shoot her or taze her.
He made the compassionate decision, but she died anyway.

I , meant , call someone else , if they were too stupid , or , too bothered , to talk her down . At one point she put the gun down .
They were in such a rush to do what ? Time is money . I guess they couldn't just back off untill she calmed down . It was her home . To me , this is purely a communication problem . They couldn'y communicate so she had to die .

Sad indeed, but something has to change.

What needs to change is that we need to restrict access to guns.

In many places, people over a certain age can't have a driver's license anymore- we should have similar restrictions for gun ownership.

If your bullet's can't hit the target, you can't have a gun.
If you can't read an eye chart, you can't have a gun.

This is NOT a gun law issue. If a person can't hit a target from 20 ft away, it doesn't mean they can't defend themselves from an armed intruder with a shotgun.

There used to be a time when Cops asked suspects to, "put down the gun" - more than once. I know, it would really suck to have a crazy-old-bat waving a gun around but that's the "downside" of being a peace Officer. Now it seems. if you have a gun, you're screwed(dead).

Well I say it IS a gun law issue, since if that woman did not have a gun she would still be alive.

And how do you know how many times the police said "put down that gun"? She DID put it down, she was negotiating with the cops, then she decided to pick it up again.

Did you even read the article?

The cops gave her EVERY opportunity to behave rationally, and she did not.

You say having a crazy old bat waving a gun is the downside of being a police officer, well being dead is the downside of being a crazy old bat waving a gun.

If you make the decision to have a gun, then you make the decision to hold life and death in your hands, and to do so RESPONSIBLY.

If you cannot do that, then you SHOULD be screwed.

Yeah, it'd be really cool to see some creative solutions here!

Awesome, here here! Two thumbs up for that comment.

Well, if it's anything, I'd like to rule out pain and psychoactive deterrents like ads, rubber bullets and the insanity of acid as a weapon. But, a few armys have use malodorous agents to some effect. Think, rotten food, skunks and nausea.

Ah yes. The famous Soviet vomit gas. IIRC It killed about 5% of those affected when used on protesters in the 80's.

No, actually. You're confusing malodorants with vomit inducing chemicals. As for the differences, think skunk musk as oppose to bleach and ammonia. Or, Israel's actual skunk dispersant to said soviet gas.

Israel is not my first choice for humane police organizations. These are the people quite happy to beat prisoners on the soles of thier feet with metal rods so the damage is dificult to show to the media. For them it's not about actually being humane it's about not getting caught. I'd want to see anything they design to be used on Palestinians tested thoroughly by a third party for hidden effects before I assumed it actually does what they say it does. Ever seen an animal sprayed by a skunk in it's eyes? It doesn't just stink. And it doesn't just go away either.

In any event I doubt it would have had much affect on someone trying to defend their home. Where are they going to run away too? Malodorants are for crowds of people who only kind of want to be there, like protesters, They make it unpleasant to stay in an area. Gas warfare in general is also famously difficult to control. Gasses affect an entire area and are subject to winds. Not only would they have been dosing the whole trailer park, but also the police themselves. This is one reason mace is preferred to tear gas whenever possible.

At any rate if we need gasses we've got them. Tear gas does the same thing and makes it difficult to see which would at least help by ruining aim, but It's still not enough to keep someone from shooting wildly. Not the safest plan in an inhabited trailer park

Vomit gas actually incapacitated people which is what was needed here, which is why I mentioned it. There is also another Soviet incapacitator which is actually a standard surgical anesthetic. That one is really handy for terrorist situations because it is invisible and has no odor. You introduce it to the building, and when it reaches a certain percentage of concentration everyone just suddenly drops. The problem with it is it is also occasionally lethal, and is most likely to kill children, older people, and those with respiration problems. Think MJ.

A malodorant would help to disperse a crowd, but not for something like this.

So what, there's a bad stink- she still has a gun. This would just make her raise her hands up to her nose. She could still fire the gun, shooting herself, the cop, or an innocent person.

Frankly, the cop did the one and only thing he could do- he had to take her down.
His options were gun, or tazer.
Let's say he had a tranq gun.
For all we know, the tranquilizer could have killed her too.
Rubber bullets- could have broken her osterperosis-riddled ribs and killed her.

No mater what he did, she could have died.
At least by acting quickly no one else was killed.

you are like THE fashion plate of avatars...

That's exactly what I am getting at with my outrage. She had put the gun down and at that point before they approached her didn't anybody have the mindset of letting things cool down and make a further effort to negotiate. It was 95 degrees yesterday here in the metro area and a lot of mistakes obviously took place. Hey maybe lethal force was appropriate or maybe it wasn't, it's the fact that more and more of these taser deaths are occurring.

Then yes! Lets move this toward some tazer reform. We do need a better a deterrent. Something that isn't as dangerous as disrupting the electrical pathways in the body. But, lets not call America fascists and cops evil because of this.

Also, the brainwashed comment was a bit mean spirited :P

will incompetent and incapable work?

Anything you wish as long as you say it nicely.

the article says:
" At the time, she was reaching to again pick up a handgun she had put down earlier during tense negotiations with Clackamas County sheriff's deputies."

That says to me that the police were of "the mindset of letting things cool down and make a further effort to negotiate", but she was not.

Negotiations take two sides, and when one side reaches for a gun, the negotiations are over.

There isn't anything the cops can do at that point but stop her from killing someone.

You never know when one of those quick drawing Grannie's are going to draw on ya!

This non lethal excuse is getting quite absurd! How about better training in negotiating and understanding this person was mentally going through something we haven't yet learned from an autopsy. How fast could she have really been?

Speed isn't an issue, it's a gun. Once she has it in her hand, she has the potential to kill. I'm saddened that she had to die, but they weren't trying to kill her. And, if it was a stroke, or dementia, an aneurysm or anything like that, there would have been all most nil chance of negotiations anyway.

Yep we will never know for sure what happened. Hell a few months ago we had from the same sheriff's department a sheriff shoot his wife and two of her friends dead in a bar before turning the gun on himself. Who knows what was going on in that idiots mind, but one thing is sure he was an officer of the law and the mentality of these officers is getting out of control in my opinion.

especially my granny. She was an artist and liked to carry color crayons.

Two thumbs up for that coffee cup to the head! Fascists indeed, fucking fascists for sure!

I'm trying to throw in a sense of humor to something pretty damned serious though. No disrespect to your thread intended.

None taken, and I can appreciate the humor ScottyT.

heh. and how well did that work out for you?

Awesome! I'm getting a good debate. Sometimes you have to put it out there and lay it on the line and step on some toes. I think people have gotten so afraid of the police and law enforcement that they forget the citizens have rights as well. Judge, jury and executioner under one badge seems to be happening everyday wether or not they were right or wrong. We can do better is all I'm saying and if you can't agree to that, then we are in worse shape then I thought.

I'm not sure there's much of a debate. It's those who read only your synopsis and automatically assumed that they killed an unarmed random woman, and those who read the article and are irritated you even posted it. There is practically no one else who thinks the police behaved badly here. With people that old and fragile there is basically no way to restrain them in a fashion that does not risk their death. Especially when they have a gun.

All this article has done is give people who did not read the actual article or it's comments false information. Hense the propaganda tag.

P.S.
Now if you wanted to talk about something where there actually IS a serious problem of reductions of freedoms you could talk about the criminalization of photographing police. THAT is IMHO something worth stopping and focusing on. This is just distraction that is so poorly set it actually weakens the argument of people trying to stop stuff like that.

Well thanks for the tag at any rate!

I PSed the above comment to better describe why I am reacting the way I am.

I appreciate your comments bombastinator. You know I do.