You Don't Flee To Use A Taser!

I've awaited inevitable defenses to emerge regarding the SC police shooting of Walter Scott. The trending defense is Scott was running away from the now-former officer in order to tase him??? I would laugh except that this is a deadly serious matter.

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A taser is often a close range weapon, which makes claims of running away to use it all the more comical. While it's been quoted that the taser in question had a 25 foot cord, why would an assailant flee if his intention was to incapacitate the former officer, as a preamble to further assault? Immobilizing a cop with his own taser is a deadly close range advantage, since you could easily kick him or grab his pistol, baton, pepper spray, tactical knife or even handcuffs. Scott's running away blows mountain-sized holes in this theory. I'm a proponent of alternatives to lethal force like tasers and pepper spray-used reasonably-and especially the Enhanced Non-Lethal ( ENL ) option pioneered by Guardian 8 for private security. ENL also has profound law enforcement applications. Innovations like this represent the trend in life saving measures which can help reduce death, costly law suits and inflamed social tensions arising from confrontations between protective personnel and subjects. Had the former officer been equipped with an ENL device, it would have automatically issued an automated warning-which can be deactivated-recorded the encounter and dialed a programmed number-perhaps police dispatch. A steady stream of disabling pepper spray could have been shot into Scott's face during their contact- thus documenting and safely ending the incident. Sadly, the former officer didn't have an ENL in his possession and the service weapon he did have was used illegally. There's no defense for that.