January 5, 2013
A Dec. 4, 2012, ACLU letter to SF Mayor Ed Lee urged rejecting any SFPD proposal “to deploy tasers or other conductive energy devices”. The letter emphasizes that costly tasers would generate heavy legal fees from officer overuse and abuse, posing serious injury and death risks, especially to SFPD’s targeted populations: people in public mental health crisis and people of color.
September 29, 2012
People in crisis appear to have become the rationale for equipping police officers with so-called “non-lethal” tasers in addition to lethal weapons – guns. Concerned citizens acknowledging taser lethality seek to re-direct the SFPD from weaponry to a focus on verbal de-escalation techniques, especially appropriate in talking down people in mental health crisis.
January 29, 2011
As the police continue to shoot unarmed and mentally disabled people, including a man in a wheelchair, the community is speaking out against these incidents of excessive force. On Martin Luther King Day, Monday, Jan. 17, about 150 San Franciscans and Bay Area activists expressed their outrage with a march and rally in San Francisco.