The Police did What???
This is insane.
Here’s the story: There was an 8 year old girl at home with her babysitter. (The little girl’s parents were not home obviously)
The little girl took a knife from the kitchen and was threatening to hurt herself, or even kill herself. The baby sitter didn’t know what to do so she decided to call the police for help.
3 police came (all men) and tried to help the situation. Remember, this is a little girl, and this little girl is only 8. I wasn’t there so I can’t know exactly what happened, but we can all imagine how this might have looked. Is it possible the girl could have hurt herself seriously with the knife? Maybe. Is it possible she could have really hurt the adult male police officers with the knife? I can’t imagine it.
Anyway, the police were asking the girl to put down the knife and she kept refusing. So one complete dumb-ass cop took out a “Taser” and used that to shock the girl. If you don’t know what a Taser is, you can look it up on Google. It’s basically a hand held machine that police in the US use to “stun” people. It’s supposed to be used on adults and isn’t designed for young or old people. It’s strong enough that several hundred people have died accidentally from “being tased” by police. This Taser shoots some kind of electricity at you and makes you shocked. It’s obviously very powerful, but it’s still a better option than the police shooting someone with a real gun.
So what happened to this girl? She was so hurt and “messed up” from this Taser that she had to spend 24 hours in the hospital to recover. Shooting some little kid with electricity? Wild. Sick.
When I read the news story, I saw the comments from many people underneath the news article. I was very surprised to see that MOST people were not blaming the police, and were instead saying that this little girl must have been acting so badly from poor parenting.
Maybe the parents are not great, maybe the little girl has some kind of emotional or psychological problems to be acting that way, but COME ON, is this how pathetic some police are?
That would never happen in China because the police don’t carry around weapons, and I can’t imagine a Chinese policeman thinking that was a good idea. I think it wouldn’t happen in most countries.
My belief is that some (certainly not all) cops love the “power”. They LOVE getting the opportunity to use their guns and other “police toys”.
This makes me sick. Another fact is that the police who used the Taser on the little girl is still working and getting paid. Why not fire the guy for being such a total fool.
Ok, now for your comments… Am I being unfair? Do you agree with my opinion or not. How would the police handle this in your country? How should they handle it? Should this cop be fired?
Please share all your thoughts below. Here is the article for you to get another perspective.
By the way, the VIP section is really getting to be an awesome idea. If you aren’t already a member, or your old membership expired, you might want to get in there! There are over 220 lessons and podcasts in there PLUS all the written transcripts! A new awesome one comes out each week too! AW YEAH 
October 11th, 2013 at 9:18 am
Hello Andy. This topic touched my soul, because in my country Bulgaria I had problems with the police. I think everyone has had such problems and will have their opinions on this story here. in my case it comes to competition and corrupt policemen. But anyway. only someone would think I’m a criminal. i am encouraged people to break unjust laws and to instead have
respect for what is good, right, true, and just.
I definitely think that this could happen anywhere in the world and will tell you why. First I want to say that when have a human factor that immediately comes down to two things. Corruption and highhandedness .
The law gives it and here’s the scary thing is happening. What I mean if you’re a cop or a doctor you have to attended a course on mental fit person. Anything for me depends on the person and the cop will get away without punishment. Why? Nobody wants to question an organization such as the police, it would reduce their authority, and I’m sure they will say that this child 8 years endangered the life of that cop, which to me is absurd.
For me, that cop is for psychiatric treatment and he is unfit to be a police officer.
But unfortunately the law is on their side, here in my country it happens often.
It does not matter if the child is mentally healthy or sick ……. it is still a child and can not treat him like a criminal.
Andy’m not completely familiar with the laws of America, but from what I know the people there love cops because they were cared for them. Here in my country we hate them because they are criminals in uniform.
Nice weekend for me Andy and all here.
October 11th, 2013 at 9:22 am
If it happened in nepal police of nepal could be punished cause she was just 8 years child.she was not totally filled with conscious.people of nepal might wish to punish the polish cause he didn’t take any approprite approach to handle her…
October 11th, 2013 at 4:56 pm
Hi
I’m form Iran. That’s funny to say that in my country a policeman was punished because he didn’t take any necessary action to avoid being killed a man in street by another one who had knife. The killer threatened people not to get close to him. Unfortunately, it was too late when the victim was brought to hospital. I don’t know if the policeman had gun or not but I think that a policeman should learn how to act in different situations even without using a gun to avoid happening such unpleasing events. I mean that a policeman should know how to behave using his intelligence .A cop must be taught to be ready for such occasions. That’s the difference between a cop and other people.
Regarding the story mentioned in this blog, let’s see the event form another aspect. However, I know that shooting to an 8 girl is not correct, but if the girl hurt herself immediately then there would be a bitter ending for this story. Maybe the cop wanted to stop her soon not to let her hurt someone including herself. God knows
P.S: Many thanks to you two guys for interesting podcasts
October 11th, 2013 at 6:06 pm
I am also inclined to believe that the cop might have thought that by shooting to the girl an electric charge , and knocking her out , could save her and third parties life. Balancing the risk involved he might as well have killed this girl .I think that police officers are trained to cope with when a situation like this comes up and that the use of a taser should have never been an option.
October 11th, 2013 at 11:41 pm
Hi Andy
Long time no see
Im glad you wrote this blog after a long time, I’ve been missing you
I think police was not that fool though, what if the little girl hurt herself? or someone? A knife can be dangerous in any body’s hand. in that case it would have been a more serious risk for the girl’ life. however I think police should have thought of a better idea, but in that situation maybe they ran out of ideas and they reacted immediately to the girl’s action. No worries, still better than killing or putting some one in jail without any excuses! some thing that happens all the time in my country.
October 12th, 2013 at 3:41 am
Glad to see another birth of blog post. Love it.
I feel sorry for the girl and was wondering what she was actually thinking when she was carrying a knife against her neck or somewhere else. Obviously, I was probably sleeping like a lazy pig when that’s happening but the reason i brought up neck is for making an assumption. Is it reason for a certain police officer to use the least force to deal with extreme cases like stopping a victim from trying to kill themselves? I’d go for a yes just supposing they are almost gonna succeed in suicide. Other than that, I cant see there’s any reason for the police to use whatever stuff they have to treat that little girl. But then, it really depends on how you see this or on what angle you are gonna comment on the case. Besides, I’m afraid it might be too early to judge the way the police did ’cause almost all of us wasn’t there witnessing the whole process. perhaps, I’m totally wrong, I appreciate the way he chose to use the taser only based on my assumption. But if I were the girl, I wish i could stunned the police just before he was gonna stun me i guess. I’m from Hong Kong, and the police force here is entitled to carry around guns during everyday petrol. In fact, I agree with your point that those are their police toys ’cause most of them never fire once till their retirement unless for a undisputed reason like defending themselves when being assaulted. All of a sudden, I thought of this. If i rob bank for a living and I know the police has handguns, in order to get an absolute advantage over them, i would go robbing with something more powerful like a machine gun. Same idea, if the police realize that I notice they have handguns, they would ungrade their resource up to using even more powerful weapons. The violence would be going nuts. So, no wonder U.S. police having guns everywhere is a total joke. Maybe U.S. residents are supposed to wear anti-bullet clothes when they decide to go shopping or eating out.
BTW, I noticed you guys have stopped making videos on english232. Just wanna say I love watching them and have really mastered something from them, so please dont give up making new ones. I got an idea for the new lesson you guy might want to hear. Very often, we may have to giving presentation with a bunch of graphs, charts, and data to show the audience something like the result of an experiment, the index of the current market, or analysis of returned survey. Could you just take a second or two considering doing a lesson or lessons on that please? You’ve done one with phrases like ‘hitting the plateau’, which is useful and I appreciate your effort. This graph related presenting technique could never be mastering in school but from you.
October 12th, 2013 at 8:07 am
Why do you think it was a bad idea and blame police like that? If the police knew the girl is going to be alright and recover after 24 hours, he has done a great job not letting her hurt herself with the knife. The girl is only 8 years old and she can’t think properly and make the right decision, so what if she had stabbed herself? Is that better than a taser?
October 12th, 2013 at 11:04 am
I 200% agree. “Protect” the girl from herself is not a justification.
This “cop” is a total coward to be afraid of a 8years old girl handling a knife. 1 or 2 cops could have spook with the girl while the other catch her by surprise. I can’t imagine there were so powerless!
What is the suspect were a 30years old determined male?
Furthermore if the Dakota law prohibit the use of a teaser on child or old person, the cops break the law that he is suppose to protect.
Actually he should be discipline or fired!
October 12th, 2013 at 6:40 pm
Hi guys
Thank you Andy for your awesome posts
About this story, I think the cop could do better action than he did. But because she didn’t killed with the Taser shock, then the cop knew what will happen if he use the Taser. And we should don’t forget that she was not a usual and normal kid. She could really hurt herself. But really believe that the cop should be better trained for these situations.
I love you two cool awesome guys
October 12th, 2013 at 8:11 pm
Hello Mojtaba
I want to say that in such a situation is called a psychologist or police officer must be one. ( what if she had stabbed herself? ) The difference in this case is that if a girl had stabbed herself, then there is not a fault – the policeman. Even if she was hurt, no one would blame the policeman. He has done everything necessary. Think about if the girl was dead or was crazy or remain disabled by this taser. Who will be responsible for this? That why all blame the policeman. Put yourself in the place of a parent. You’re the parent of this girl and then she’s dead or remained disabled of intervention of this officer who will blame for what happened?
October 13th, 2013 at 12:25 am
controversial issue because we don’t know exactly how serious the situation was. My opinion is the the officer instead of tasered the girl should have called in the firefighters and that they Dozed her with water. End of the story! !
October 13th, 2013 at 1:45 pm
oh gosh i love to read all u guys oppinions. and u guys hav such power vocabulary . im jealous. anyway if im the boss of that particular polices ill just fired them instantly. thats what am i going to do coz she is just an eight years old little child and she dint know anything.and all the pollices should have a well balance thinking before doing such thing like this.anyway im harry im from france ., i know my english is really bad haha. but ill join this club soon :* see you guys
October 13th, 2013 at 5:17 pm
Hi Andy,
I am Mallesh from India, that was very sad , which the way the policeman acted, because he may act in different , using taser for children or old people is not good , it may cause to death , government should give orders to polices to act as for situation .
This time police should be pushed.
October 13th, 2013 at 8:36 pm
using taser on a 8-year-old child under any circumstances seems totally unjustifiable,no matter how the emotional and psychological state of the girl might be while using the knife.
thanks guys for your great helpful podcasts!
October 14th, 2013 at 3:40 am
I can image that if the girl had a gun in her hand, she would be gundown.
October 14th, 2013 at 6:11 am
IRAN rocks. There were THREE cops for God’s sake and they…, omg, how come they couldn’t talk the girl out of it??? How come they couldn’t come up with perfectly adequate strategy to take the knife off of her hand???? I’m certain they were grown and mature enough to know what sort of consequences stunning people would bring about, anyhow, they sure as hell didn’t wanna use the freakin’ noggin’ of theirs to save the girl’s ass good and proper. American cops gotta take quite a few courses to learn how to deal with little kids, adolescents an all, otherwise there would be body count ratcheting up. The cop should thank God that the girl didn’t go DOA. By the way, your posts are cool.
October 14th, 2013 at 8:40 am
Something interesting ! Maybe this is the practice in USA to use taser on children or very crazy policeman there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Y9mkrGRsc
October 14th, 2013 at 10:17 am
hi there and thanks for your awesome blog.
i think the cop could act in a better way by convincing the girl or deceiving her some how, but after all his action was not as bad as you think. he eventually saved the little girl who can,t decide properly.
October 14th, 2013 at 1:33 pm
I agree to Mariam, and she says that true that they punished the police for not preventing the man to not to hurt and kill the other man.
” A cop must be taught to be ready for such occasions. That’s the difference between a cop and other people. “
October 15th, 2013 at 2:39 pm
Actually, I’m Russian and I work in the police. Russian’s laws allow to use guns and stuff like that in case of danger but you should be half-dead for using those stuffs. If the same situation will happen in Russia a police officer will be behind the bars.
October 15th, 2013 at 8:59 pm
I think that fool cop should be fired right away. It is indeed ridiculous that three police officers can’t control an eight year old girl and needed to use a taser gun. That’s insane!
The cops could have used some other techniques to persuade that little girl to drop the knife. I think the cops should be trained properly on how to handle these situations. I believe some cops only use their power of weapons to solve the situation rather than use their minds. It is like what happened in Toronto, Canada when a cop fired 9 or 10 shots at a guy and killed him for carrying a knife. This is totally unacceptable and the cops doing it needs to be punished.
October 16th, 2013 at 9:15 am
It’s difficalt to me to judge the situation, but it would be more hard to me to taser a child…
October 16th, 2013 at 10:36 am
Hi, everybody!
No, Andy,unfortunately I don’t agree with you. All children are different and some children can be worse and more dangerous than adults. Besides adult criminals don’t apear from nowhere, they all grow up from children, so they have these “bad” propensities from childhood. So, I’m FOR serious punishment for children.
In my country the law is too mild towards children. That’s not good. For example, recently two 8-year-old girls brutally murdered another little girl… because of doll. And the maximum punishment for them was the fine which was less than 1000 dollars. Is this fare? What good can grow up from these little beasts. It’s bad that there is no death penalty in my country.
October 17th, 2013 at 10:35 am
Hi
i am still shocked!!!
why he did that?! she was just a kid! He easily could speak with her
to me he should be fired!!!
October 22nd, 2013 at 6:51 am
Hello all,
It was unbelievable for me that American cops are dealing such situation like this.Anyway,I think there were many ways to end the situation fairly instead using the taser.For example they asked her parents to help the police, responding her
requirement or desire(because in most cases the children asking for something and they desisting if they achieve their needs),or show her interesting toys to focus her attention on that or so.
In my country (Afghanistan) the police don’t allow to do such action against child otherwise he/she would punish if doing so.
Best wishes all
December 8th, 2013 at 11:36 am
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Why my account is as expired???
I paid a renewal last month.
I can not download any lesson.
January 13th, 2014 at 2:47 pm
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