Turning The Tables On Taser Toters...

I just returned from the local mall here in Lombard, IL and while there witnessed an event that has made me completely rethink the issue of giving police Tasers, as well as nearly causing me to upchuck my dinner. Here's the down-low: Two mall security guards straight out of Armed and Dangerous apparently caught some teen-aged pothead trying to roll a blunt in the mall restroom. The kid with the weed tried to run out of the mall and the two mall rent-a-cops, who couldn't have been much more than teens themselves, began chasing after him, shouting for him to stop or he would be "Tasered." This of course got a number of mall patrons' attention, including mine, and we all stopped to watch. Skinny mall cop pulled out an honest to God freaking Taser and shot this kid in the back, who promptly screamed and went down like a bag of jello in bubble wrap right in front of the goddam Disney store. Kids and parents ran screaming. Chubby mall cop finally caught up with Skinny and, gasping for breath, radioed for city cops to assist, although I was hard-pressed to determine what the hell they would assist with, other than scooping this now-whimpering child, who's only crime was rolling a joint, off the mall floor. Skinny was standing over his now compliant and fully disoriented, crazed, evil pot smoker with his foot on his back and yelled, "YOU just made my day! Go on and get up so I can shoot you again!" No, really - he actually said that. A woman who witnessed this shocking display of rent-a-cop brutality in front of a Disney store in a mall full of shoppers at 7pm on a Wednesday night had the unmitigated gall to tell skinny that what he'd done was extremely dangerous and more than a little over the top. Skinny glared at the woman and stated in his best authoritarian man-kiddie voice that, "He was preparing a marijuana cigarette in the bathroom, and we have a zero tolerance policy on drugs here, ma'am." For just a minute, I wondered if he was going to bust a Taser into her chest and then peel her cap with whatever he could find handy for daring to challenge him.... By this time, folks had begun to move along, mothers were calming their children down and I'd seen all I ever needed to see regarding the improper issue and blatant misuse of a Taser. Something is seriously wrong with giving pimply-faced wanna-be rent-a-cops a weapon like that, and something is even more wrong with whoever authorized the use of a goddam Taser on a teenager suspected of using marijuana in a shopping center restroom. I have been forever altered by that experience, and I'll bet every single one of the children who witnessed this unbelievable display of excessive use of force has been scarred as well. I hope someone sues the pants off the mall security service.