Tasers are used in the US and UK I know. And tasers are torture, esp. when used for pain compliance. Pain is very effective? Oh, thank you captain obvious. So is burning heretics and chopping off limbs.
Tasers are used in the UK to subdue violent criminals, it causes them a lot less pain than being shot. As fa as I know, we do not throw them in the bonfire of chop their limbs off. Tasers would certainly be welcome in other parts of the world, where the punishment for theft is getting your hands chopped off and for rape getting other things chopped off.
I'll just say this. People sometimes say the Supreme Court's opinions are never popular. But I tell people they uphold our rights and should be above politics. Their opinions should never be popular. Popular with either end of the political spectrum. And a police officer's job should never be easy. We'll be living in a police state when either of those things are true.
Compared to the US, a police officers job is far more easy in the UK, because they support the law abiding citizens. The also do not carry guns. Guns are also unpopular among criminals, because carrying a gun carries up to 14 years behind bars, even if it is not loaded. Criminals get stopped by police regularly, so they don't risk it.
But I forgot to add. If the police use tasers to save your life, or someone else's, I guess it might be justified (I'd have to think about that more though, and how that would work in every situation). But for pain compliance tasers are always unnecessary and wrong. Which is how police often use it, at least in my country.
Also, not to overpost. But I saw an episode of Cops about 20 years ago. Their taser episode. The police were walking around with their tasers out. They tased everyone in that episode, and they were walking around like that obviously because the producers of Cops asked them to do that. But it was getting more and more ridiculous, each time they used it. One man was in his apartment arguing with his girlfriend. The police asked him to stop, and he did. But he started up again a few minutes later when they were still there. So they came back to his room and tased him. He said that was a lot more painful than the thought it'd be, tasers. Another man they came up to and told him to put his hands behind his back. He said, now wait a minute. And so they tased him. He said that worse than being shot, like he was once. I don't know about tasing when absolutely necessary. In the US when life is in danger and they use their guns they are doing that. But what I just described now, pain compliance, is torture plain and simple. It is the definition of torture and always wrong.
