I thought my Town of Madison incident was odd, but I was watching CBS morning news as I was writing and it and they reported on two other very bizarre incidents both caught on tape:
1. Police toss quadriplegic guy out of his wheelchair because he refuses to stand up.
2. 4 police officers, including 2 men strip search a woman and leave her naked in a jail cell for 6 hours.
Combine that with the discussion on thedailypage about why police can electrocute/tase people an who they electrocute/tase and you can see why there is some healthy skepticism about police behavior.
When we are deluged with information about bad policing behavior and people dying from taser use, the question for me is, when it comes to the tasing issue, who has the appropriate power to review policing matters (Police and Fire Commission or Public Safety Review Board) and will they? Where does the public take their concerns? I believe it is the Public Safety Review Board, but I don’t see much action from that committee. They also would have been an appropriate place to provide a forum when the west side folks had concerns about the services they were (n’t) getting. How can we beef up that committee to make it work so when the public has concerns they can bring them to this committee? Or are discussions like the one about tasers on thedailypage to be left to speculation on a internet forum?
