A major shift in the relationship between Americans and law enforcement is now occurring quickly and quietly. Under the guise of new technology that will help reduce the number of fatal police shootings, electro-shock weapons are rapidly being deployed in increasing numbers by police departments all over the country. Along with the technology update, rules governing the use of force are being re-written to give officers the means to enforce immediate and absolute compliance with their orders. The true impact of this modernization of policing will be the diminished capacity for free speech or civil disobedience to exist in the face of the threat of disabling pain.

The Taser, the “Kleenex” of the electronic control device market, is the most popular brand of stun guns sold to law enforcement, and Taser International announced excellent financials this quarter and is looking forward to what could be its best year ever, with continued growth in the law enforcement sector.

While President Bush recently vetoed a Congressional ban on waterboarding, and the Justice Department circulates memos analyzing just how much pain is considered torture and which techniques are legal and which are barbaric, little attention is being paid to the Taser, which the United Nations Committee on Torture recently classified as a form of torture.

There are several models of electro-shock weapons used by police departments, but most devices deliver 50,000 volts of electricity either from a distance by firing darts with electrodes, or when set to “stun mode,” directly from the device to the victim’s body. This generally incapacitates its victims, and in most cases they drop to the ground screaming, and often lose control of their bladder.

Three hundred people have died since 1999 in North America after being Tasered, according some estimates by the American Civil Liberties Union. However, Taser International Inc. has taken a very aggressive posture towards critics, maintaining that none of the deaths can be directly attributable to the device. They have also been highly litigious, filing suits against Gannett Newspapers and Amnesty International, and successfully defending over 100 wrongful death suits, including at least ten settlements of cases the company claimed had been dismissed.

Several high-profile Taser incidents have made the national news. Perhaps the most well-known incident involves Andrew Meyer, a student at the University of Florida, who tried to question Senator John Kerry at an appearance the former Presidential candidate made at his school. Police at that event moved to arrest Meyer, but he resisted being cuffed, as he believed that he was acting within his rights to ask questions at the Q&A portion of an event at his University. An altercation ensued in which he was surrounded by several officers and repeatedly Tasered. This incident was captured on video and seen on YouTube millions of times, known popularly by the phrase Meyer used to beg officers not to shock him, “Don’t Tase me, bro!”

If you search on YouTube for Taser videos, you will get over 5,000 results, the vast majority of which are of police using the devices on people who are simply not complying with their instructions fast enough. Some of these videos might make your blood boil as you plainly witness abuses of power in which a police officer shocks someone who obviously poses no threat to his safety. However, many of the videos show belligerent victims and generally unsympathetic characters who quite possibly could be dangerous, and it is easy to get caught up in the police drama almost enough to cheer when they are knocked to the ground. Not a single one of the videos that I could find, however, was an incident in which a cop would ordinarily have drawn a gun and chose instead to use non-lethal force to prevent a shooting. While these videos are unquestionably not a representative sample of overall Taser deployments in law enforcement, they do serve as more than adequate evidence of use that is contrary to the oft-stated justification for why these devices exist — to reduce police shootings.

Collectively, the videos serve as a sort of Extreme Home Edition of COPS, and the number of hits some of these videos receive are in the millions. Another popular video on YouTube shows Jared Massey, a Utah man, with his pregnant wife in the car, inexplicably Tasered twice by a Utah Highway Patrolman Jon Gardner after being stopped for a speeding ticket. The officer quickly gets annoyed at Massey and pulls a Taser on him almost immediately after ordering him to get out of the car. Massey asks, “what is wrong with you?” before being shot to the ground with electricity, screaming out in pain. The rest of the scene plays out as you might expect something in a movie about a futuristic police state, a grown man crying out in pain, “What did I do?,” his pregnant wife screaming and crying, and the sickening drawl of the officer’s condescending response, “because you did not obey…” An investigation followed, but Officer Gardner was cleared of any wrongdoing. Unsatisfied with that outcome, Massey, sued Gardner and the state of Utah for violating his civil rights. The two sides settled the case last week for $40,000.

Another YouTube video shows an incident from 2007 in the Powell Library at the University of California at Los Angeles. Campus security can be seen Tasering Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a student at UCLA who is a US citizen of Iranian descent. While it is difficult to determine exactly what transpired from watching the video, it clearly documents a student denouncing what he sees as unfair treatment and racial profiling at the hands of the security officers. He is seen passively resisting arrest, and can be heard screaming at the officers, while other students try to stop them and demand their badge numbers (some reports indicated that officers were also threatening to Taser the students asking for badge numbers). The incident sparked an outcry and protests on the UCLA campus, and an internal police department review found that officers were acting properly and according to guidelines, while an independent review laid blame for “an avoidable incident” on all parties. As a result, policies were re-written around the use of force by UCLA police, and they are no longer permitted to Taser passive resisters.

For now, these incidents are considered “ isolated” and are all being covered by the local media on the crime and police beat. However, as these devices become more commonplace, so will their abuse, and gradually we will learn not to challenge police officers in any situation under any circumstance, or else face possible electric shock. The effect that this will have is to universally dampen the will to challenge authority. As police brutality makes its way into the suburbs and comfortable gated communities of America, will the demands grow for more stringent regulations or will we just submit?