The Electrocution of the Ancients

The Chicago Police have shown us the way: It takes tasering to stop the rise of the octogenarians.

The police tasered an 82-year-old woman who held them up at hammer-point. With her immense strength, she could have easily punched holes in the drywall or accidentally busted out her TV. Chicago PD could take no chances with their safety when facing down this wrinkled whirlwind of fury.

And with that, they were tasering their way into the history books. This could have only been a bigger story if we could have actually watched it on YouTube. These guys have managed to blow past the “Don’t tase me, bro,” guy as the greatest potential for jokes involving unnecessary taser use.

They had to be wondering how funny it would be to shock the crap out of this woman, because one look into her cataracts and anyone could see that she wasn’t a threat to anyone, even with a hammer. She was more likely to break her own wrists from the shock of actually making contact with something.

Not only that, she was suffering from schizophrenia AND dementia. Chances are, she didn’t even know the cops were in the room. She was probably swinging at her hallucinations of the giant, singing lollipops that were fighting the Teletubbies.

But the cops couldn’t be too sure, because this clearly insane woman had the reflexes of a person nearly two to three hundred years older than she was and the dexterity of a person with only one broken hip. This highly trained police force was in mortal danger and could only rely on potentially hilarious technology to quell what could have been a bloody attack led by a person who, according to people on the scene, “constantly struggled with her juice box.”

There’s a lot of outrage surrounding this incident, as the police could have used a different tactic to disarm and subdue the toothless assassin. Of course, there was no way to know when she was going to need her diaper changed and willingly put the hammer down.

I probably shouldn’t be making jokes about this, because I remember just last year when the Atlanta SWAT Team, when fearing for their lives, shot the hell out of an old woman who thought the cops were burglars and bravely held off an entire squad with a six-shooter. Those cops couldn’t be bothered to see if she’d ever run out of bullets so they matched her force with over 120 rounds of machine gun fire. It sounds so ridiculous that it’s probably what I would have compared this situation in Chicago with if it didn’t actually happen.

Or maybe we’ve all missed the point. Maybe all these incidents are calculated tactics intended to lower crime, because either these cops have gone completely crazy or they haven’t quite figured out where the line is drawn for “excessive force.” And if these so-called trained professionals can’t see how sending 100,000 volts of electricity through a woman three times their age might be considered “excessive,” their gambit is working, because I’ll never give them any problems next time they tell me I ran that stop light.

They’ll have a funny story to tell, though, because it’s a safe bet I’ll have already pissed on myself next time I see blue lights flashing behind me.