Trey Smith
The fire was all around Dan Jensen.
He could see it. He could smell it. He could hear it.
It was close enough to touch. It was burning down his neighbor's house. It was creeping toward Jensen's own fence 10 feet away, and he started spraying the fire with his hose.
Police ordered Jensen to get back, and he complied.
But after a few minutes passed without firefighters arriving, a frustrated Jensen stepped forward and leaned down to grab the skinny gray garden hose once again.
That's when he heard the order.
"Hit 'em! Take him down! Tase him!"
Within moments, Jensen was on the ground. He felt electric.
"It was all over me," Jensen said. "Crawling all over me."
The 42-year-old commercial fisherman is still struggling to comprehend exactly how things deteriorated so quickly Thursday. He said he doesn't understand why police shot him with a Taser that night as he tried to battle a house fire at 3420 Beechwood Ter. N.
Jensen's family, friends and neighbors have been quick to defend him and accuse police of crossing a line.
"It was wrong," he said. "There's no way around it. … I was fighting a fire. I wasn't fighting police. I thought they were here to help me. Instead, they hurt me."
Police said they can sympathize with the stress Jensen was under. But they said he put himself and officers in danger when he refused to back down from fighting the fire.
~ from Florida Man Describes Being Shot By Police Taser as He Sprayed Fire with Garden Hose by Kameel Stanley ~
I'm sorry, but I don't see how a man spraying water on a fire with garden hose endangers the police! If the police were that concerned, why didn't they simply shut off the water?
Sadly, we read or hear about situations like these with growing frequency. Police discharge their tasers in all sorts of non-emergency situations and, more often than not, they get away with it. All this does is embolden them to use them more frequently. Unless this specific case involves a circumstance not reported, it looks like a clear case of police brutality.
What else could you call it?
Yeah, that's straight up bullshit. Just goes to show that this Authority mindset is infecting everyone. Time was, a whole community would get together to fight a fire, not sit there as passive spectators while they waited for some official team to show up.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, if a man chooses to place himself in danger, that is his choice.
That's a good point about the overall trend toward passivity! We are becoming a society of watchers, not doers.
ReplyDelete