No Tazer guns, please

On duty, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

The Minister of Interior Affairs, Guusje ter Horst, who was on the gay parade in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago is in the news again because she wants to buy the police force a large number of Tazer guns, from some American manufacturer. These gusn emit a large dose of electricity and so incapacitate the person who they are aimed at. This is supposed to be better than shooting them dead with a real gun.

The police have just been told that they will not be pursued for shooting dead a young Turkish man in Amsterdam West last year, when he had entered a police station in a bad state and had cut the throat of a woman policeman with a knife. Maybe a Tazer gun wiuld have been better.

But, with my recent experience in mind, being had-cuffed and thrown to the ground by a number of police officers before they had botheredto find out what was going on, I cannot help but think that had they had a Tazer gun on them they might have felt tempted to use it and I might nw be dead or suffering the after-effects of having 50,000 volts sent through mwe.

These nasty things are always brought in on the promise that they will only be used in extreme cases, only for mistakes to start happening, which later get excused.

Please Guusje, stick to being friends with the homos (it suits you) and don't waste our money on expensive American weapons.