>New York’s attorney general is investigating the death of a 29-year-old man who was badly burned when he was shot with a stun gun after dousing himself with hand sanitizer during an altercation with police officers, officials said on Thursday.
This is strange. What kind of hand sanitizer was that, if it was in fact hand sanitizer ? The alcohol content is really low and evev if you light the thing directly, most of the content is not flammable.
Does it? Other commenters are saying that 70% stuff doesn’t light even with an open flame. Maybe it’s what’s in the nonalcoholic remainder that makes the difference?
"Cognac, rum, or other flavorful liquors that are about 40% alcohol (80 USA proof) are considered ideal for flambé. ... High-alcohol liquors, such as Bacardi 151 or Everclear, are highly flammable and considered too dangerous by professional cooks."
The recommendation from the FDA seems to be that hand sanitizer needs to be at least 60% alcohol.
Are you sure about that? Most hand sanitizer I've seen is more than 50% alcohol. Here's a MSDS I found for a common brand: http://sds.staples.com/msds/320863.pdf (they claim > 50%, <= 70%).
I think early during the pandemic we were generally given advice to find 80% or better. Pretty much straight alcohol plus a little bit of stuff to make it gel-like or smell nice or whatever.
Unfortunately this sounds like a case where the officer was probably not really aware they were dealing with a flammable liquid. Tasers can absolutely be fatal (and are referred to correctly as "less lethal" for that reason, but I doubt many officers realistically consider the chance of setting someone on fire.
One of the issues with less-than-lethal weapons, is that the threshold for using force is much lower (at least in the mind of the wielder). Arm an authority with rubber hoses and you'll read stories of said authority whacking everyone as they walk down the street.
edit: In either case, it is stories like this that make me see the police as very poorly trained and generally unprofessional. Don't act like this was a product failure of some sort.
I don't think tendency to misuse is a justification for only providing guns: I think most people would rather be tased than shot. But yes, I'd agree the training needs to constantly reinforce that a Taser is still a weapon that causes serious injury or death, and should only be employed in a situation the officer believes warrants that risk.
Unfortunately a large number of these incidents involve mental health incidents, where officers probably weren't at real risk of physical harm.
I do agree with you, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise. My only point, really, is that it seems that use of force is too often unwarranted in the first place (which goes to screening, training, and professionalism). Where I live, we seem to have had a long trickle of stories of the police tasing the mentally ill, or discharging their service weapons mistaken for a taser.
On the other hand, incidents like this one drive a backlash against less-than-lethal weapons (and various holds), forcing police to deploy lethal force more often. I don’t know what the answer is besides “we need to stop making policy based on the whims of angry mobs”.
Absolutely not. My point is the poor training (or mistraining) that leads to unwarranted use of force in the first place. Train and outfit police like paramilitary warriors and every encounter with the public is a question of how much force to apply. That's the problem in my view.
No kid I knew in elementary school was without knowledge that alcohol was flammable. Playing with this in tiny ways was considered cool. There's no believable way that adult cops didn't know this.
> When the officers deployed the stun gun to subdue Mr. Jones, he caught fire, Mr. Luibrand said.
The article glosses over the fact if Jones was a threat to the police or not. Using tasers/stun guns to "just" subdue people has to stop. These are less-but-still-lethal weapons which should only be used in cases where a gun would be also appropriate.
How else would you subdue someone? You can’t expect all cops to be able to go 1-1 or even 2-1 with someone to subdue them physically. Cops also have guns strapped to their sides that can be reached for. I’m not justifying their behavior, but when I try to imagine subduing someone, I’m not really sure how I would do it. There is definitely room for tools that make it easier.
Usually the argument is "do not try to subdue them, try to de-escalate". Obviously that is not always possible, but before worrying about how to deal with the objectively complicated cases of subduing a belligerent person without hurting them, we should probably focus on the much more common problem of police escalating instead of de-escalating situations.
That’s not really an answer to the question. It would be nice if all situations could be de-escalated, but that’s obviously not the case. De-escalation also has its own risks for the officer. Again, not saying I support what happened, but it seems so hard to manage a situation with a belligerent person when I imagine trying to do it myself. Even doing something relatively benign, like removing a loitering person, is not something I’d want to attempt.
Nightclub bouncers do this all the time. They don't have weapons or legal immunity or a fat pension or even a good salary. It should not be beyond the capability of police officers.
Perhaps people could be respectful toward authorities and follow directions when a stressful situation is happening. Deal with issues at a later point as appropriate.
This comment is, with respect, wildly delusional. There are many instances of the "authorities" (the police) murdering people after issuing conflicting instructions, or even when people follow their instructions anyway.
Furthermore, many of the people in said situations are often mentally ill (and thus require healthcare, not the police), or intoxicated.
Please make your substantive points without name-calling. It never helps, and in the case where you point is correct, it's actively harmful—because in that case you're discrediting the truth and reinforcing people in rejecting it.
> How else would you subdue someone? You can’t expect all cops to be able to go 1-1 or even 2-1 with someone to subdue them physically.
Why not? We hold all firefighters to the standard of having the physical strength to break down doors and carry people to safety; and a large part of their downtime is upkeep of their physical fitness, to enable that. We hold all soldiers to the standard of being able to haul huge packs over miles while being shot at; and a large part of their downtime is also constant upkeep of their physical fitness, to enable that.
And, in fact, by closest analogy, we hold all EMS personnel (and also orderlies for in-patient wards) to the standard of being able to bodily subdue people who are in a state of violent delirium, to get them strapped onto a gurney. And, again, we expect them to work out to achieve and maintain the requisite level of physical fitness.
So why can’t we hold all police to the standard of having the physical strength to bodily subdue people, and expect them to do the required upkeep on their physical fitness to enable that?
(Yes, the people police are dealing with sometimes have weapons. Mostly they do not. Even in America; even in the most gun-carrying parts of America, they mostly do not. The strategy for subduing someone should focus on the majority case — subduing people with no weapon, where it is safe to overcome strength with strength — with subduing people with a weapon as a tactical exception, rather than that tactic being the general-use rule. The expectations for police should be built around the requirements to carry out the general-case tactic [physical subdual of unarmed offender], not the requirements to carry out the exceptional-case tactic [armed takedown of armed offender].)
And note that I’m not suggesting police go in and wrestle people to the ground. They should be using tools, like man-catchers. It’s just that those tools are just multipliers for the effectiveness of physical strength, and so you still need to be highly physically strong to make effective use of them in a one-on-one or two-on-one confrontation.
If they are hesitant, then they should be better trained. There are enough "moves" to subdue and fixate someone without suffocating or killing them. The real question should be: Why is police in other countries capable of doing this?
> We hold all firefighters to the standard of having the physical strength to break down doors
Doors don't fight back.
> The strategy for subduing someone should focus on the majority case — subduing people with no weapon, where it is safe to overcome strength with strength — with subduing people with a weapon as a tactical exception, rather than that tactic being the general-use rule.
If the person you're trying to subdue has a concealed weapon, this will get you killed.
There’s a fair number of videos from eg the UK where they do exactly this. The usual playbook seems to be: get a few people distracting the guy from the front, and another few rush them from the back whilst distracted and hit them with batons or just jump on them.
Or just distract them for a long while and wait for more backup and people with shields.
But that's what police in a lot of countries, for example in Europe, are doing. Go 2 on 1 or call for backup and stall. If that is not possible they use peperspray and batons.
If there is no immediate threat, sometimes its better to use time. The person may well just calm down, think through the situation, and give in peacefully.
I know that intelligence is not sought out in police candidates, but I think we need to be requiring a basic elementary school level of education, such as knowledge that "alcohol is flammable, and we don't apply electricity to flammable things". I mean the problem isn't just tasering; it is tasering someone drenched in alcohol. Kids know alcohol will burn, so were they trying to burn him to death intentionally, or are these officers really going to claim to be that stupid?
> At some point, Mr. Jones began to douse himself with hand sanitizer, Mr. Stanzione said.
> “I think they were afraid he was going to hurt himself, and that’s what started it,” Chief Darling told The Times Union, calling the episode “horrible.”
The irony here is that they were apparently trying to protect him from himself, but he was behaving very oddly by dumping sanitizer on himself. This doesn't sound like just a little bit on the hands, but more like someone dumping the jug over their head given what happened.
I'm seriously interested in the use of netguns or bolo-guns or even some kind of goo-gun that can just trap people. Tazers and pepper spray are way too violent and ineffective.
I get your point, but I mean this is an edge case, and yet still after a few minutes they subdued him. Against anyone other than the Hulk they should work pretty reliably.
Uh, no. Tasers are supposed to be used on non dangerous individuals, like drunks. If there's a real threat you don't want to be close enough to use a taser in the first place. If the taser fails, you're literally standing wide open close enough to be physically attacked.
Because they applied electricity to a human covered in a flammable substance. They watched him pour it on himself. Even more fun. They did it to keep him from hurting himself. Gets better and better.
“Halt and Catch Fire”, but IRL. That’s a really awful way to go. I continue to be uncomfortable with so-called “less lethal” weapons since they habituate use of force in more situations, and overall use of force by police forces is demonstrably excessive—but ignoring priors, this does seem like it could be a genuine mistake.
There's remarkably little research done on how powerful "less than lethal" implements are. I'm reminded of the anti-police riots down in Austin right after George Floyd died and a kid got hit in the head with either a rubber bullet or sandbag round (can't remember which), suffered a major cranial fracture and brain damage from the shot.
One wonders the morbid question: would you prefer a "less than lethal" round that could severely and permanently alter the course of your life or a real bullet that would end it? There's not an easy answer to that question for me.
i imagine 99.9999% of people would take their chances with a sandbag round than a bullet. the fact that 1 in <some very large number> may hit your head in a way to injur you permanently doesnt change this.
Well, sure. You don’t research what you don’t want to know, let alone have a public debate about. Better to just make loud blanket statements, and when challenged to just make them louder.
>> Among the deaths detailed in the USA Today report, published in April, was one in 2017 involving a suicidal 39-year-old man in Arlington, Texas, who was shot with a stun gun by officers who had watched him douse himself with gasoline. The electrical currents immediately set the man ablaze and burned down his house, the newspaper reported. He died several days later.
A bit like finding a man with a noose around his neck threatening to hang himself and kicking the chair from underneath him to stop him hurting himself.
58 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadThis is strange. What kind of hand sanitizer was that, if it was in fact hand sanitizer ? The alcohol content is really low and evev if you light the thing directly, most of the content is not flammable.
"Cognac, rum, or other flavorful liquors that are about 40% alcohol (80 USA proof) are considered ideal for flambé. ... High-alcohol liquors, such as Bacardi 151 or Everclear, are highly flammable and considered too dangerous by professional cooks."
The recommendation from the FDA seems to be that hand sanitizer needs to be at least 60% alcohol.
I've definitely seen people burning hand sanitizer as well. Here's a random YouTube video (there are thousands): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KZ3JviMNFc
By the way, most hand sanitizer is around 70% or less. Above 70% and it doesn't kill bacteria as well.
edit: In either case, it is stories like this that make me see the police as very poorly trained and generally unprofessional. Don't act like this was a product failure of some sort.
Unfortunately a large number of these incidents involve mental health incidents, where officers probably weren't at real risk of physical harm.
The article glosses over the fact if Jones was a threat to the police or not. Using tasers/stun guns to "just" subdue people has to stop. These are less-but-still-lethal weapons which should only be used in cases where a gun would be also appropriate.
It seems he was not:
> “I think they were afraid he was going to hurt himself, and that’s what started it,” Chief Darling [the Catskill police chief] told The Times Union
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGWCQvjhHvc
Furthermore, many of the people in said situations are often mentally ill (and thus require healthcare, not the police), or intoxicated.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Why not? We hold all firefighters to the standard of having the physical strength to break down doors and carry people to safety; and a large part of their downtime is upkeep of their physical fitness, to enable that. We hold all soldiers to the standard of being able to haul huge packs over miles while being shot at; and a large part of their downtime is also constant upkeep of their physical fitness, to enable that.
And, in fact, by closest analogy, we hold all EMS personnel (and also orderlies for in-patient wards) to the standard of being able to bodily subdue people who are in a state of violent delirium, to get them strapped onto a gurney. And, again, we expect them to work out to achieve and maintain the requisite level of physical fitness.
So why can’t we hold all police to the standard of having the physical strength to bodily subdue people, and expect them to do the required upkeep on their physical fitness to enable that?
(Yes, the people police are dealing with sometimes have weapons. Mostly they do not. Even in America; even in the most gun-carrying parts of America, they mostly do not. The strategy for subduing someone should focus on the majority case — subduing people with no weapon, where it is safe to overcome strength with strength — with subduing people with a weapon as a tactical exception, rather than that tactic being the general-use rule. The expectations for police should be built around the requirements to carry out the general-case tactic [physical subdual of unarmed offender], not the requirements to carry out the exceptional-case tactic [armed takedown of armed offender].)
And note that I’m not suggesting police go in and wrestle people to the ground. They should be using tools, like man-catchers. It’s just that those tools are just multipliers for the effectiveness of physical strength, and so you still need to be highly physically strong to make effective use of them in a one-on-one or two-on-one confrontation.
Keep in mind. Firefighters are not fighting people with delirium. Its a different job with a different skill set.
After the George Floyd case cops are hesitant to go one on one. Nobody wants to end up becoming a Derek Chauvin even by accident.
Doors don't fight back.
> The strategy for subduing someone should focus on the majority case — subduing people with no weapon, where it is safe to overcome strength with strength — with subduing people with a weapon as a tactical exception, rather than that tactic being the general-use rule.
If the person you're trying to subdue has a concealed weapon, this will get you killed.
Or just distract them for a long while and wait for more backup and people with shields.
https://youtu.be/9mzPj_IaMzY
It takes a bit of effort and coordination but is obviously massively preferable to being executed on the spot by the state.
> “I think they were afraid he was going to hurt himself, and that’s what started it,” Chief Darling told The Times Union, calling the episode “horrible.”
The irony here is that they were apparently trying to protect him from himself, but he was behaving very oddly by dumping sanitizer on himself. This doesn't sound like just a little bit on the hands, but more like someone dumping the jug over their head given what happened.
https://youtu.be/Z4z-gzkb6s4
Battons and pepper spray don’t work well.
https://youtu.be/7M6-NLm0GBM
This one kinda works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yEYRxASpzw
> https://youtu.be/7M6-NLm0GBM
I get your point, but I mean this is an edge case, and yet still after a few minutes they subdued him. Against anyone other than the Hulk they should work pretty reliably.
If an individual is not dangerous then only little physical force should be used. A taser is not that.
> Man Dies After He Is Shot by the Police
Here we go.
> with a Stun Gun and Catches Fire (nytimes.com)
Well that’s a fun new twist.
One wonders the morbid question: would you prefer a "less than lethal" round that could severely and permanently alter the course of your life or a real bullet that would end it? There's not an easy answer to that question for me.
[0]: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/01/austin-police-george...
Well, sure. You don’t research what you don’t want to know, let alone have a public debate about. Better to just make loud blanket statements, and when challenged to just make them louder.
A bit like finding a man with a noose around his neck threatening to hang himself and kicking the chair from underneath him to stop him hurting himself.