Police use Taser on blind man, thinking his cane was samurai sword

rockin'robin

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A blind man carrying a white cane received a 50,000-volt Taser shock from British police who thought his walking stick was a samurai sword.

"It felt like I was grabbing an electricity pylon," 61-year-old Colin Farmer told the BBC.

Lancashire police officer Stuart Williams said authorities had received several calls describing a man walking through the streets carrying a samurai sword.

"One of the officers who arrived in Chorley believed he had located the offender," Williams said. "Despite asking the man to stop, he failed to do so and the officer discharged his Taser."

However, even in offering an explanation, Williams said the police had "deep regrets" over the incident and says the Independent Police Complaints Commission has launched an investigation into the matter.

"We have clearly put this man through a traumatic experience, and we are extremely sorry for that," Williams said.

In fact, Farmer says he thought the police were criminals attempting to mug him when the assault took place. He said that once police approached him, he became "absolutely terrified," and repeatedly attempted to inform them that he was blind.

"I walk at a snail's pace. They could have walked past me, driven past me in a van or said: 'Drop your weapon,'" he said.


However, as far-fetched as it may sound, the samurai sword angle did not come out of nowhere. But the reality of the situation was far more mundane as opposed to resembling the plot line of the 1989 Rutger Hauer action film, "Blind Fury." After Williams was taken to a nearby hospital, police later arrested a 27-year-old man who was carrying a samurai sword and was suspected of being drunk and disorderly.

Williams said the police stayed with Farmer at the hospital until he was released and escorted him to a meeting with friends afterward, at his request.

Police use Taser on blind man, thinking his cane was samurai sword | The Sideshow - Yahoo! News
 
Yes, who is the blind person in that story? :hmm: I did not know samurai swords came in white.
 
diehardbiker said:
Thank god I don't live in UK
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Right, because in the US there have been cops that have outright executed people who weren't doing anything to resist the officer. There's a video on Youtube of (I think) two officers talking to a man on a California train platform (I might not have all the details right). They were talking to the man and one officer just put a handgun to the man's chest and fired. Bang. Clearly an execution. I have not heard whether that officer was charged with murder, but he should have been.
 
DeafBadger said:
Right, because in the US there have been cops that have outright executed people who weren't doing anything to resist the officer. There's a video on Youtube of (I think) two officers talking to a man on a California train platform (I might not have all the details right). They were talking to the man and one officer just put a handgun to the man's chest and fired. Bang. Clearly an execution. I have not heard whether that officer was charged with murder, but he should have been.
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ah yes - the BART shooting of Oscar Grant

the officer shot him point-blank in the back because he thought he took out a Taser. He resigned and plead not guilty. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
 
Jiro said:
ah yes - the BART shooting of Oscar Grant

the officer shot him point-blank in the back because he thought he took out a Taser. He resigned and plead not guilty. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
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I see... he grabbed the wrong weapon.

There was a case in Minnesota where an off-duty county sheriff's deputy waved over a car and did not identify himself. The driver struggled with the officer (not knowing he was a cop) and stopped fighting the officer when he showed his badge. When the driver backed off, the officer pulled his gun and killed him. There were other witnesses in the car.

Sad to say, this stuff happens.
 
Sad to think that people growing up today would be scared of police and I won't blame them.
 
Jiro said:
ah yes - the BART shooting of Oscar Grant

the officer shot him point-blank in the back because he thought he took out a Taser. He resigned and plead not guilty. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
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At first, I thought this might have been it, but looking at the videos for this, it doesn't seem to be the one that I saw. The officer uniforms are different and the victim was standing, not on the ground. The victim was, if I remember right, homeless and a military vet. I distinctly remember that the officer put his handgun into the victim's chest and fired. I can't find the video on Youtube now.
 
DeafBadger said:
Right, because in the US there have been cops that have outright executed people who weren't doing anything to resist the officer. There's a video on Youtube of (I think) two officers talking to a man on a California train platform (I might not have all the details right). They were talking to the man and one officer just put a handgun to the man's chest and fired. Bang. Clearly an execution. I have not heard whether that officer was charged with murder, but he should have been.
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In the UK, elderly people have been put away for life from killing their assailant with a cane in self defense. They're also the same people who chased and killed a Brazilian man who didn't understand English...so they just assumed he was a terrorist. If you're so convinced the UK police do a better job, you should move there. For every one bad cop in the U.S., there's ten good cops trying to do their thankless job while being branded murderers.

Laura
 
Lau2046 said:
Maybe the police force in the UK needs mandatory eye testing. Put a poor man through that and have "deep regrets?" :mad2:

Laura
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Did the police identify themselves and tell the blind man to drop what he was holding?
 
i must say the film "The Mall Cop" aka "Paul Blart" can't be far from fact.....dumb cops
 
First, it's good that he didn't die....
I read it somewhere else that say that it's high chance we would get kill by police than terrorist.

That's what taser is for! More low risk to kill.
 
I do wonder how you mistake a cane used by a blind person, for a Samurai sword??
 
dogmom said:
I do wonder how you mistake a cane used by a blind person, for a Samurai sword??
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The guy cried out to the cops that he was blind 2 times ! The cop had to been an idiot as he still putted handcuffs on the poor guy!
 
Lau2046 said:
In the UK, elderly people have been put away for life from killing their assailant with a cane in self defense. They're also the same people who chased and killed a Brazilian man who didn't understand English...so they just assumed he was a terrorist. If you're so convinced the UK police do a better job, you should move there. For every one bad cop in the U.S., there's ten good cops trying to do their thankless job while being branded murderers.

Laura
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Excuse me? I said nothing about the policing skills of UK officers. I was showing that there are cops in the US that do bad things, not just in the UK. It was not a comment on the policing skills of "most officers" in either country.
 
I'm being sarcastic but here is fact, UK has much stricter gun control laws than here in America.

Of course, there is bad cops here in America, know why? They THINK they are above the law, and thinks that gun control is there to protect themselves.

We really don't need two things, more police and people that don't have life complaining about others. Police responded because one complains about something else where they should have mind their own funkin business.

DeafBadger said:
Right, because in the US there have been cops that have outright executed people who weren't doing anything to resist the officer. There's a video on Youtube of (I think) two officers talking to a man on a California train platform (I might not have all the details right). They were talking to the man and one officer just put a handgun to the man's chest and fired. Bang. Clearly an execution. I have not heard whether that officer was charged with murder, but he should have been.
Click to expand...
 
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