U.K. Police Taser Blind Man After Mistaking Cane For Samurai Sword

By on October 17, 2012 in News 14

Imagine seeing the world through the eyes of taser-happy cops. Via the BBC:

Colin Farmer, 61, was [tasered] by police following reports of a man walking through Chorley with a samurai sword. One of the officers who arrived in Chorley believed he had located the offender.

Mr Farmer, who has suffered two strokes, said he thought he was being attacked by thugs. He was walking to a pub to meet friends on Friday when the officer fired the Taser. It forced him to drop his stick and he fell to the ground, he said. He said the experience had left him “shaking like a leaf” and scared to go outside.

A Lancashire Police spokesman said the incident was being investigated and the officer’s Taser had been withdrawn.

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  • http://www.zoboprepublic.wordpress.com/ zobop republic

    I thought being ‘observan’t was a requirement for being a police officer.

  • Calypso_1

    Magistrates, judges, legislatures…you need to lift the veil of immunity from law enforcement officers carrying out acts that are blatantly illegal in the course of their duties.  This is assault plain and simple – it should be treated as nothing less. 
    This is not a matter of internal affairs or civil process – it is criminal. 
    Do not allow this breakdown of governance to occur and put the desire for justice into the hands of the populace. 
    The evolution of fair and civil society is not complete and it appears to more and more people that the dynamics of control are being forced in the wrong direction. 

    • http://www.ContraControl.com/ Zenc

      Shhh…. be quiet.

      I want this kind of thing to go unremedied  until the whole fucking thing splits open like a festering rotten melon.

      Allowing the courts or legislature to get ahead of this thing before there’s a violent backlash will allow the police and TPTB to set the terms of resolution.

      I’d much rather negotiate the limits on police misconduct against the backdrop of smoldering police stations and the wreckage of burned out cruisers.

      We’ll get much better terms that way.

    • http://www.ContraControl.com/ Zenc

      Shhh…. be quiet.

      I want this kind of thing to go unremedied  until the whole fucking thing splits open like a festering rotten melon.

      Allowing the courts or legislature to get ahead of this thing before there’s a violent backlash will allow the police and TPTB to set the terms of resolution.

      I’d much rather negotiate the limits on police misconduct against the backdrop of smoldering police stations and the wreckage of burned out cruisers.

      We’ll get much better terms that way.

      • Calypso_1

        I thought perhaps that you’ve had sufficient opportunity to observe certain aspects of my MO.
        ; )

      • Calypso_1

        I thought perhaps that you’ve had sufficient opportunity to observe certain aspects of my MO.
        ; )

        • http://www.ContraControl.com/ Zenc

          Once or twice, before I understood what you were actually doing, I interjected myself into a thread where you were setting someone up for a figurative body slam. I’m afraid that my comments in those instances may have spoilt your fun.

          I try not to do that any more.

          When you’ve suckered another hapless idiot into such an attack on you that other posters feel the need to rise to your “defense”, I merely microwave some popcorn and enjoy the variety of intellectual doom you are handing out that day.

          In this case however, I fear that you may spoil my fun.

          I intend to fully savor the richly deserved comeuppance that is to be eventually meted out to the boys in blue.

          We are so tantalizingly close to the day when they are crushed like filthy maggots, ground to slime under our heels…

          I would be tragically disappointed if just before their fate finds them, they realize that they have invited, nay… labored to earn, the hatred of an entire nation and somehow manage to forestall their damnation.

          I’ve got a huge bag of microwave popcorn waiting for when I get to watch that body slam.

          Somewhere, somehow there might one of them smart enough to read words and understand what they portend. I don’t want to risk that your words might penetrate the pigskin and trigger that insight.

        • http://www.ContraControl.com/ Zenc

          Once or twice, before I understood what you were actually doing, I interjected myself into a thread where you were setting someone up for a figurative body slam. I’m afraid that my comments in those instances may have spoilt your fun.

          I try not to do that any more.

          When you’ve suckered another hapless idiot into such an attack on you that other posters feel the need to rise to your “defense”, I merely microwave some popcorn and enjoy the variety of intellectual doom you are handing out that day.

          In this case however, I fear that you may spoil my fun.

          I intend to fully savor the richly deserved comeuppance that is to be eventually meted out to the boys in blue.

          We are so tantalizingly close to the day when they are crushed like filthy maggots, ground to slime under our heels…

          I would be tragically disappointed if just before their fate finds them, they realize that they have invited, nay… labored to earn, the hatred of an entire nation and somehow manage to forestall their damnation.

          I’ve got a huge bag of microwave popcorn waiting for when I get to watch that body slam.

          Somewhere, somehow there might one of them smart enough to read words and understand what they portend. I don’t want to risk that your words might penetrate the pigskin and trigger that insight.

          • Calypso_1

            In the game of both ends against the middle the terms are set by your mastery of the dérive.  There is fun to be had for all as the ground is constantly shifting and those whose faith is fixed to set spatial fields will sorely be taken unawares by the insanity that flows from the maelstroms of chaos that winnow away, heedless of their sorrows or the howls of madness from the children of the night.

          • Calypso_1

            In the game of both ends against the middle the terms are set by your mastery of the dérive.  There is fun to be had for all as the ground is constantly shifting and those whose faith is fixed to set spatial fields will sorely be taken unawares by the insanity that flows from the maelstroms of chaos that winnow away, heedless of their sorrows or the howls of madness from the children of the night.

    • Simiantongue

       I disagree vehemently. Everyone needs to be fitted with a collar.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gcs4Q6_RNs

  • Nunzio X

    The guy said he thought he was being attacked by thugs.

    And, of course, he was being attacked by thugs.

    Pretty accurate guess for a blind dude.

  • http://twitter.com/sabrebIade Sabre

    He’s lucky.
    In the U.S. they would have just shot him.
    I think the cops got tired of tasers over here. 

  • http://twitter.com/sabrebIade Sabre

    He’s lucky.
    In the U.S. they would have just shot him.
    I think the cops got tired of tasers over here.