Inside of every child there's a decent American waiting to get out.

May 3, 2009 5:07 AM

Florida warden tases kids. (via)
posted by bardic (41 comments total)

I really thought that said "tastes".
posted by horsemuth at 5:09 AM on May 3, 2009 [2 favorites]

I can't believe I'm doing this --

MetaFilter: intended to be malicious, but educational
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:14 AM on May 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

Well that's not a very good explanation for electricity at all. 50 kV of power indeed.
posted by Pimonkey at 5:14 AM on May 3, 2009

Don't give 'em permission to taze me, mom!
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:22 AM on May 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

A good electorate need to understand the value of a strong policing body.
posted by zerobyproxy at 5:25 AM on May 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

Read some of the comments below the story if you really want to be disgusted. This one, for instance...
"Awww did someone's little snowflake get a taste of what happens when you go to prison... If you're calling for the guy to be fired you just need to smack your head a couple of times on that tree you're hugging."
posted by Thorzdad at 5:27 AM on May 3, 2009

"The big shock came when I got fired."

I suspect the taserEID was redundant, he could've floored the worst felons with a pun from twenty yards.
posted by GeckoDundee at 5:31 AM on May 3, 2009 [4 favorites]

Your headline has it backward, doesn't it? The warden didn't tase kids. He FIRED the guy who tased kids.
posted by planetkyoto at 5:32 AM on May 3, 2009

Isn't there some sort of basic aptitude test that prospective cops have to take? A little bit of arithmetic, some grammar, the ability to do simple reasoning? I admire the highly functioning mentally disabled as much as anyone, but I don't think they should be given weapons and almost unlimited authority. If they can't be fucked to give out a test, they could at least fire every cop who wears velcro shoes and raise the iq of our police force ten or twenty points.
posted by stavrogin at 5:41 AM on May 3, 2009 [4 favorites]

Awesome, I bet the video on this one will be even better than the naked wizard tasing video on coachella.

What, this isn't fark?
posted by sebas at 5:46 AM on May 3, 2009

this is why god invented torts...
posted by geos at 5:49 AM on May 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

I've actually been meaning to ask an acquaintance who is a state trooper to tase me because I am curious. I use "I thought it would be educational" as my excuse for a lot of stupid shit, though.
posted by little e at 5:50 AM on May 3, 2009

Well that's not a very good explanation for electricity at all. 50 kV of power indeed.

The article doesn't mention electric power, from what I can see. Looks like your brain inserted that all by itself.

What, this isn't fark?

Looks like Reddit cirka late 2008 to me. MetaFilter, not so much.
posted by effbot at 5:50 AM on May 3, 2009

My parents tell the story of the new youth pastor their church hired a few years back. His first Sunday at the church, he spoke during the services to introduce himself and give a sense of his vision for the youth programs at the church.

Normal enough, right?

Now, my parents are first-service types; get up early, go to the first service and sunday school and then head out for lunch before everyone else hits the restaurants. So they were there when the guy spoke, and explained that one of his major focuses (foci?) in education was giving kids a real sense for things, rather than just talking about them. Why, as an example, in a unit on the persecution of Christians at the last church he worked at, he pulled the wires from a lamp and used them to apply electric shocks to teenaged volunteers from the class in order to give them a better understanding of the persecution that Christians face.

Apparently his office was cleared out by the start of the second service.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:57 AM on May 3, 2009 [2 favorites]

Who are the moron parents who said, 'Yes, please go right ahead and taze my child?'
posted by leotrotsky at 6:01 AM on May 3, 2009

His last church was in Guantanamo?
posted by orthogonality at 6:01 AM on May 3, 2009

Who are the moron parents who said, 'Yes, please go right ahead and taze my child?'

I think that's why it was his, you know, last church.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:04 AM on May 3, 2009

It wasn't the warden, and it wasn't a taser, either:

Unlike the Taser, which is fired at a distance and delivers its shock via dart-tipped wires, the EID Schmidt used must be in direct contact with the person to shock them. The 50,000 volts emitted by the device are 450 times as strong as the current in a household electrical outlet.

Nice LOLFlorida tag, though.

*sigh*

It's never, "Florida scientist wins Nobel prize" or "Top candidate for Poet Laureate is Floridian".
posted by misha at 6:10 AM on May 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

Isn't there some sort of basic aptitude test that prospective cops have to take?

If there is, candidates are expected to fail it. Wasn't there something a while back about someone being disqualified from police employment for being too smart?
posted by fleetmouse at 6:13 AM on May 3, 2009

"The big shock came when I got fired."

Hey-Yo!
posted by chillmost at 6:17 AM on May 3, 2009

Schmidt, the arsenal sergeant at the Panhandle prison, said he asked parents for permission to shock the kids.

Didn't we just have a post on parents saying, "Sure, principal Smacksalot, go on and beat my kids for me for you think they need it"?

I wonder if this does not tie into the American willingness to outsource torture.
posted by adipocere at 6:22 AM on May 3, 2009

If there is, candidates are expected to fail it. Wasn't there something a while back about someone being disqualified from police employment for being too smart?

Every year the local news runs a story about the latest graduating class of police cadets, and they try their best to emphasis just how difficult it is.

Personally I think we should make it like a mini-Olympics. Invite the public to watch and have competitions. The stories you could tell from the captive stun event, or beating to death with a nightstick. Plus, it'd boost the local economy.

It's never, "Florida scientist wins Nobel prize" or "Top candidate for Poet Laureate is Floridian".

It would make a nice change of pace, but I don't see it happening.
posted by Talanvor at 6:25 AM on May 3, 2009

The article doesn't mention electric power, from what I can see.

he tased them with the sheer force of his AUTHORITAH
posted by pyramid termite at 6:31 AM on May 3, 2009 [2 favorites]

he tased them with the sheer force of his AUTHORITAH

Comparing MetaFilter to Reddit was overly optimistic, obviously.
posted by effbot at 6:36 AM on May 3, 2009

"It wasn't intended to be malicious, but educational," Schmidt said. "The big shock came when I got fired."

Steve Carell to play Sgt. Walter Schmidt in the upcoming TV comedy series, The Prison.
posted by Xoebe at 7:01 AM on May 3, 2009

Coincidentally, we were at the Tyrrell Museum in Alberta yesterday, and they said that the climate here during the Cretaceous was very similar to that of modern-day Florida. So there you go.
posted by sneebler at 7:16 AM on May 3, 2009 [2 favorites]

The 50,000 volts emitted by the device are 450 times as strong as the current in a household electrical outlet.

Someone needs to school the author on the finer points of electrical current and voltage. Van de Graaff generators produce similar voltages and kids touch them all the time without incident.
posted by cleancut at 7:22 AM on May 3, 2009

I think Fark accounts are free.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:24 AM on May 3, 2009

It's not the volts that kills you, it's the amps.
posted by infinitewindow at 7:32 AM on May 3, 2009

Schmidt, the arsenal sergeant at the Panhandle prison, said he asked parents for permission to shock the kids.

"When they said 'sure,' I went ahead and did it," he said by phone Friday.

Wait, he thought it was okay to taser a child for no reason, arguably against their will, because the parents gave their permission? That pisses me right the hell off, right there. Getting parents to sign off on corporal punishment at school is one ugly bucket of worms, but this pretty much goes several levels beyond into some sort of smelting-vat full of angry, writhing grubs the size of cats. These demon grubs eat oil sludge and rust and the very essence of the souls of the good.
posted by tehloki at 8:13 AM on May 3, 2009

The article doesn't mention electric power, from what I can see.

No, but it does mention that 50,000 V is some multiple of household current, which is also wrong. They might as well express the voltage in kilogram-inch-knots per coulomb-week.
posted by oaf at 8:20 AM on May 3, 2009

They shocked the kids with 2.3 TRILLION kg•in•kt/C•wk!
posted by oaf at 8:22 AM on May 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

Well, if the Ritalin isn't working anymore, you've gotta do something.



"Turn off the X-Box!" BZZZZZT! "It's time for dinner! Turn off the X-Box!" BZZZT! BZZZZZZZZZT!
posted by orme at 8:26 AM on May 3, 2009

I really thought that said "tastes".

I nearly finished the article wondering when they were to mention him tasting the kids. Man I need my coffee this morning.
posted by hillabeans at 8:32 AM on May 3, 2009

Schmidt, the arsenal sergeant at the Panhandle prison, said he asked parents for permission to shock the kids.

Wait. They're taking a tour of a prison. Shock them like Scared Straight? Shock them with the facts? With prison conditions? With tales of woe?
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 8:37 AM on May 3, 2009

I couldn't agree more. Every child has the potential to grow up to be a decent adult.
posted by bennyzebs at 8:38 AM on May 3, 2009

I'll probably regret saying this, but the US deserves every single bad thing that happens to it.
posted by tommasz at 8:39 AM on May 3, 2009

They shocked the kids with 2.3 TRILLION kg•in•kt/C•wk!

One point twenty-one chigawatts!?!

This guy is a historic figure like a Stanley Milgram, except a Stanley Milgram who never graduated eighth grade. Or maybe a William Tell, except a William Tell who is a specialist with the shotgun instead of being a sharpshooter.
posted by XMLicious at 8:46 AM on May 3, 2009

I know I am supposed to be appalled by this but frankly I am jealous.
posted by srboisvert at 9:04 AM on May 3, 2009

Coincidentally, we were at the Tyrrell Museum in Alberta yesterday, and they said that the climate here during the Cretaceous was very similar to that of modern-day Florida.

What does the Cretaceous have to do with replicants?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:05 AM on May 3, 2009

I can tell by some of the comments here that most of you have never had children. There are lots of things you can do to children that you can't do to adults, such as shoot them with a less-than-lethal-but-occasionally-still-lethal device intended to incapacitate grown men who present a clear danger to a law enforcement officer. I think most of you loony libs must have been a real pain in the ass when you were kids, because I was tased repeatedly by my unemployed alcoholic father and I turned out just great. I graduated from Tuscaloosa Community College with an associate's degree in criminal justice and I currently am assistant guard at Jamaica Bay Children's Farm, where bad seeds from all over the U.S. are shipped to be re-educated in the finer arts of pain. My two boys, Kage and Dustin, get into trouble sometimes but as soon as the Taser comes out you can bet that they and their whore of a mother shut their goddamn yapholes and understand that a Godly household is one in which the man is the disciplinarian and he doesn't hesitate to use force on his charges. We have another one on the way - it's going to be a girl - and once when she was kicking I shot her mother with my own personal Taser to make sure she learned a lesson. It's been six weeks since they let my wife out of the hospital and I tell you this: that baby hasn't kicked once since then.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 9:24 AM on May 3, 2009 [5 favorites]