Georgia police use Taser on 87-year-old woman using knife to cut dandelions

87 year old grandmother’s mug shot

CHATSWORTH, GEORGIA — A Georgia police chief said an officer was justified in using a Taser to stun an 87-year-old woman after she didn’t obey commands to drop a knife in her hand.

Martha Al-Bishara was charged with criminal trespass and obstructing an officer Friday, when police held her at gunpoint before bringing her to the ground with a jolt from the electrified prongs of a stun gun.

“An 87-year-old woman with a knife still has the ability to hurt an officer,” Chatsworth Police Chief Josh Etheridge told the Daily Citizen-News of Dalton.

“There was no anger, there was no malice in this,” Etheridge said. “In my opinion, it was the lowest use of force we could have used to simply stop that threat at the time.”

Chatsworth Police Chief [...]
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3 Comments

Laila Denise Selk on Friday, August 17, 2018 at 8:06 am

Hi Stephen, Nice to see you at the recent PA conference.

You know this, right? https://thefreethoughtproject.com/court-police-departments-refuse-hire-smart/

I believe this is your answer.

Best,
Laila

Giles Nowak on Friday, August 17, 2018 at 7:08 pm

I am curious about how exactly this situation actually evolved, as there are important parts of the the events which aren’t clearly presented. From my own experiences I find myself thinking that there could well have been hyped-up fear that came into play. Still, it’s hard to judge without knowing full details.

My background included 20+ years doing emergency response work for the city of Virginia Beach – making after hours responses involving people with mental illness and doing child protection interventions, amongst other things.

There were times when having the police involved in a situation was crucial. There were other times when we politely but firmly asked the officers to leave – as their presence was unduly heightening the crisis. And many times there were collateral individuals – like imaginably the Boys and Girls Club callers in this story – whose own prejudices and mis-perceptions stoked with fear & anger, etc, came strongly into play, and that all had to be noted for what it was and carefully waded through.

For sake of argument, say that the involved officer in this unfolding event is actually a reasonably well intentioned person. I then can imagine that merely how the situation was first presented at the police’s arrival it might have amped up the officers fears and instructed their perceptions. Comments might have been made about the woman seeming mentally ill, or suffering from dementia, and how she was mumbling and acting threateningly. Fears imagined and felt by the Boys and Girls Club worker(s) from the “intruding” “knife wielding” woman, those emotions and images get conveyed and easily push to shape the police’s perceptions, perceptions of the degree which they imagined the woman to be a threat. Having such factors pushing into the forefront of their brains would have helped move the officers responses along a path that ended in this deplorable outcome.

Of course I have no idea what occurred there. But too many times amidst evolving events I ran into, a true story was being subverted by the reactions of by-standers.

The challenge is to not be over-ridden by faulty perceptions. It seems easy to assess that the elderly woman shouldn’t have posed a sufficient threat to warrant use of force. As another article today shows, by and far the police critically need more real training in crisis resolution. They need, as that article demonstrates, to see themselves and to act as guardians and not warriors.