Seattle? Are You Sh!tting Me?

Before we go any further, I need to ask you to set down any beverages or sharp objects.

Are you sitting comfortably? Good.

Read the following sentence from CBS news:

Three Seattle police officers were justified when they used a stun gun on a pregnant mother who refused to sign a traffic ticket, a federal appeals court ruled Friday in a case that prompted an incredulous dissent.

Got that?

Assuming the original stop was legit - the police should have given this woman her ticket - and moved on.

Now, The Agitator would like to add a few observations:

...the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that three Seattle police officers were justified in using a taser three times on a pregnant woman for resisting arrest. The woman had been pulled over for going 32 mph in a school zone. She insisted it was the car ahead of her that was speeding, and refused to sign the ticket. That’s when they tased her.

The problem is that under Washington law, (a) you aren’t required to sign a traffic ticket, (b) speeding isn’t an arrestable offense, and (c) you can’t be arrested for resisting an unlawful arrest.

So the woman was completely within her rights. Yet asserting those rights got her the business end of a stun gun. Three times. And two of the three federal appellate judges to hear the case see nothing wrong with that.

The lone dissenting opinion by Judge Berzon pointed out that the majority opinion (holding that the woman had obstructed the officers) used an argument the police officers hadn't even made.


Seriously.... What. The. F#$k.