Police defend Taser actions - Greenwich Time

If this incident happened 20 years ago that kid would had got the whooping that he deserved, and if he had decent parents, they would have given him the same treatment when he got home. The liberal yuppies who are going to complain about this are the ones who allow children to behave this way. Kids no longer are accountable for their actions and it disgusts me. As for the parents, it sounds like they are just looking for a reason to sue the town so they can go to Foxwoods for a week with my tax dollars.

The GPD should be commended for their actions and that little brat should sit in a jail cell for a couple weeks to learn respect for authorities.

TDM wrote:

If this incident happened 20 years ago that kid would had got the whooping that he deserved, and if he had decent parents, they would have given him the same treatment when he got home. The liberal yuppies who are going to complain about this are the ones who allow children to behave this way. Kids no longer are accountable for their actions and it disgusts me. As for the parents, it sounds like they are just looking for a reason to sue the town so they can go to Foxwoods for a week with my tax dollars.
The GPD should be commended for their actions and that little brat should sit in a jail cell for a couple weeks to learn respect for authorities.

Amen to that. These kids are out of control and there parents are just as bad. He looks like a punk and probably is one as well. Good job gpd!!!

I think this is outrageous Greenwich High School is a role model school for the region and we shouldn;t have police officers tasing students in a low risk school just a bad example of why resource officers can take their powers as a police officer too far especially in greenwich,connecticut

For those who are applauding the cop's assault on this kid with a taser, consider a couple of facts. First, corporal punishment has been illegal in America's public schools for a lot longer than twenty years. No school official is permitted to punch, slap, spank or otherwise assault a student. And the reasons for that come from long experience in the abuse of kids by school officials. Indeed, teachers sometimes are suspended or put on probation for making comments that are considered particularly mean or abusive. Yet for some bizarre reason, Greenwich High School thinks it's OK for a police officer in the school to put a taser directly onto a kid's body and delivers painful electric shocks to his chest, his stomach, and his leg. That is brutality, plain and simple. No other member of the teaching staff or the administration or, for that matter, the security guard, would be permitted to do that. So it seems that the school is rolling the clock back to the old days of abuse, skirting the law by permitting police officers to administer the "whoopin'". That's wrong.

Now look at the double-talk from the police department: the article stated that the student's behavior only became "criminal" when he kicked a chair and refused to put his hands behind his back....Huh? Is it a violation of the law to "kick a chair"? No one was injured, and not even the chair appears to have sustained damage. Then the kid refused to put his hands behind his back- clearly to be arrested. Yet the police department's double-speak suggested that it was only after he refused to let himself be arrested that his behavior became- well- illegal and made him subject to arrest....Huh? Only because he refused to be arrested did he become subject to arrest? The Greenwich Police Department has a lot to answer for.

It is shameful that the school board and the administration have enabled this sort of ugly assault on a kid by putting police officers on permanent duty in the school.

Tom Gogola, in an editorial in Fairfield County Weekly, hit the nail on the head when he wrote:

"What kind of police force can't constrain one high-school kid? And what kind of school administration is so out of touch and afraid of its students that it lets armed police officers deal with its disciplinary problems?..

"There are very few valid reasons why a student should ever be Tasered- or even be threatened with a Taser- at a high school (or any school for that matter). We're hoping that the Londonos sue, sue, sue!- and that the money comes out of the security staff budget, or the $250,000 yearly salary paid to schools superintendent Betty Sternberg. That'll be a real shocker."

Exactly. There was no excuse for what the police officer did. None.

Amy Karshian wrote:

I think this is outrageous Greenwich High School is a role model school for the region and we shouldn;t have police officers tasing students in a low risk school just a bad example of why resource officers can take their powers as a police officer too far especially in greenwich,connecticut

Exactly! Greenwich is the 5th safest town of its size in all of America. It's crime rate since 1992 has fallen by well over 50%. It's rate of violent crime is negligible. And the rate of out of school suspensions and expulsions place it among the safest in the state of Connecticut, far better than the average for its socio-economic grouping.

Yet last year the police arrested 54 students on campus alone, a figure equivalent to 2% of the entire student body. Over the first two months of the year, students were arrested at a rate of three a month. If that held up, there would have been 27 more students arrested up to this point. That is far in excess of the experience at similar schools in the state.

If the police officer gets away with tasering this kid, you can bet that he'll use it more in the future.

I submit and end my desire to speak freely about this.

This incident IS about water ballons! How the hell do you suspend a student for a week, this close to the end of the semester, for throwing water ballons?

The student was probably very upset at a punishment that did not fit the crime, and school officials attempted to handle an already aggrivated teen by using security & the police. Great thinking! Maybe if you had someone calmly talk to him the situation would not have gotten out of control.

The fact that this situation got to the point where an officer used a taser on an 18 year who had simply thrown water ballons & kicked a chair is insane. I hope Greenwich is prepared for the lawsuit that will inevidably be following shortly.

"If this incident happened 20 years ago that kid would had got the whooping that he deserved, and if he had decent parents, they would have given him the same treatment when he got home."

If this happened 20 years ago, the kid would have gotten a 1-2 day suspension MAX, and if it got further out of control, he might have ended up with some community hours. Using a taser in this situation is uncalled for. If THAT happened 20 years ago, the students would riot.

"Amen to that. These kids are out of control and there parents are just as bad. He looks like a punk and probably is one as well. Good job gpd!!!"
BTW - Nice raciest comment - how can you say that?

The kid sounds like a spoiled BRAT! I'm glad he was tasered. Good job GPD!

Anyone ever ask why we have cops in the schools all over the state now? If greenwich is so safe and you don't want the cops there then pull them out. Then see what happens. Its no skin off my back. I don't have kids in the system. Maybe we need to get the facts about crime in the schools before we bash the cops and the administrators. Go to a rtm meeting and make your voice be heard. Find out the real truth. Maybe there is more going on than you think. Suing is not the answer to everything.

Brat wrote:

The kid sounds like a spoiled BRAT! I'm glad he was tasered. Good job GPD!

If you've been following the story you would know that this student is not a spoiled brat whatsoever, his family cannot afford a lawyer. Idiot.

I live not far from the "real" Greenwich (in the UK.) I'm having fun following this story.

If the student (remember he is an 18 year old man - not even close to a child) was acting disruptive and tossing things about, tasing him seems spot on. You do expect your police to control these holligans do you not?