Contemplating suicide, when done seriously, is a horrific thing. It's best to leave law enforcement far, far out of it.
In general, end-of-life circumstances are a no-win proposition when loved ones learn you've reached the end of your tether. Family -- for very good reasons that evolution probably acculturated in our common humanity -- will not want to let you go. And typically, the pain or the apathy or the emptiness that drives someone to suicide also drives him to internalize the guilt of abandoning his family, accelerating his desire to die. The law, in its absurd imposition of morality, intrudes at the tackiest moment -- your death -- to punish you posthumously by denying your family certain property entitlements that would be uncontested had you opted not to resist your suffering. Perhaps the only additional way to compound the law's insult would be to add non-lethal weapons to compel you to stay alive.
And so we meet Lona Varner, an 87-year old woman from the central Oklahoma town of El Reno, bedridden and respirating with the aid of an oxygen machine. In late December, her grandson called the police in fear that Ms. Varner was in the process of suicide. But the cops discovered that she retained an acute desire to take anyone who tried to stop her into the Void with her.
Newser reports that Ms. Varner kept a knife underneath her pillow and pulled it when the police entered her home. "If you try and get the knife," she warned, "I will stab you and kill you. I killed four Japs in World War II, and I would not bat an eye killing you." An ugly remark at an ugly moment, to be sure.
It was followed up by compounded ugliness. One of the officers reached for a Taser and used it on Ms. Varner, burning her to the point where she would require hospitalization. According to her lawyer, the police also "treated the frail woman brutally, ripping the flesh on her arms as they grabbed her." Police have the right not to be harmed, without question. But is there a policeman alive who can't disarm an 87-year old bedridden woman without the use of a stun gun?
There's something about non-lethal weapons that encourages abuse. YouTube immortalized the obnoxious student whose ranting at Sen. John Kerry led campus cops to needlessly Tase him. Last year, a Texas policeman responded to a reckless driver by zapping her -- a 72-year old great-grandmother barely half his size. An Arkansas mother actually invited a policeman to use a Taser as a parenting tool after her 10-year old wasn't interested in taking a shower.
And it's not just police. "Don't Tase Me, Bro" became a punchline rather than an outrage. Police can sometimes use stun guns to lower the threshold to use a weapon in an otherwise-controllable circumstance. But the rest of us typically react to Tasing somewhere along along the apathy-voyeurism spectrum.
If there's an upside to this ugly episode, Ms. Varner appears to have regained a reason to live: revenge. She's suing El Reno for $75,000.
*Credit: Flickr user *hermanturnip
See Also:
