Don’t want to get tazed? You’d better lock up your walkers and soda cans.

“Advocates for the mentally ill are questioning Houston police officers’ use of stun guns on suspects with mental problems, many of whom were unarmed and then never charged with a crime” (Physorg.com).

Hmm. When I first heard about Tazers, or “stun guns,” I thought, “What a great idea. Now the risk of shooting and perhaps even killing suspects – guilty or not – will decrease.” Of course, the idea that officers may get a bit overzealous with them crossed my mind, too, but I suppose we’re dealing with a “lesser of two evils” situation.

But to stun someone with a mental illness? Well, I suppose I’d never given it any thought. I suppose I’d just assumed our nation’s police officers knew what was best and would act accordingly. (If you can’t tell, I was much more naive in 2004 than I am today.)

When I began reading Stun Gun Use on Mentally Ill Questioned, I initially thought there are situations in which the mentally ill should be stunned, too. Tazers certainly weren’t created with only the mentally healthy in mind, right? Surely the mentally ill are just as capable of getting dangerously violent and out of control as the non-mentally ill?

However, I soon realized that wasn’t was the article was about. What tipped me off?

“Often, police knew they were responding to calls involving people with mental health issues but rarely called officers who are specially trained to deal with the mentally ill, according to police records.”

Hmm, OK. I see now. This is another case involving the incompetent decision-making skills of our law enforcement, much like how most of our nation deals with incarceration and the mentally ill.

To further quote the article:

“Using a Taser is easy,” said Arlene Kelly, who became an outspoken advocate for the mentally ill after her daughter was shot and killed by a Houston police officer in 1999. “There’s no waiting. There’s no need to be patient with someone who may not understand orders. The Taser has represented a step backward in how police deal with the mentally ill.”

One case involved a 63-year-old man who needed a metal walker to move around. Another involved Carol Ann Vickery, a 49-year-old woman with a history of bipolar disorder who disrupted a local convenience store. When police arrived, she picked up a can of soda as if to throw it. Police responded with three 50,000-volt shocks from a Taser.

But those aren’t the real kickers.

The department also had its first Taser-related death recently that involved a mentally ill man, the newspaper reported Sunday.

I just imagine this poor man with a mental health condition. He may have been violent; lives may have been at risk. But did he know? Did he fully understand what was going on? The dangerous situation he had caused? We’ll never know. He’s dead now. He died because his brain didn’t function properly and law enforcement didn’t know how to handle the situation properly.

On that note, what is the proper way to handle an escalated situation caused by a mentally-ill person? I won’t pretend I know, but I will assume it has something to do with training police officers on how to detect such a situation and restrain the mentally ill without stunning them unless absolutely necessary (and throwing soda cans doesn’t equal “absolutely necessary”).

Of course, there are always at least two sides to every story, so in Houston’s defense:

Some dispatchers fail to identify people experiencing mental problems and send untrained officers to those calls, said Lt. Michael Lee, who is in charge of the department’s crisis-intervention team that was developed in 1999 to train officers how to calm people with mental illness.

“Most officers are using Tasers to prevent a situation from escalating, and that can happen very quickly,” Lee said. “Sometimes de-escalation techniques just don’t work.”

Well, that’s fine and dandy, Mr. Lee. We’re – or at least I’m – not claiming the same techniques to de-escalate a situation involving a mentally healthy person should never be used on a mentally ill person. But to stun an elderly man who uses a walker? A bipolar woman for acting as if she were going to throw a soda can?

I know parents who’ve sustained worse injuries breaking up a fight between two teen-aged sisters.