For those of you who are not defending the officer's actions, what should the officer have done? Let him return to the car? Would it change your opinion if the officer did a textbook stop and then the driver tried returning to his car?
You are missing the point that what occurred was preventable had the officer utilzed better judgment and people skills. On the jerk-o-meter the speeder is very low on the scale, and if an officer can not handle that without tazing someone, I fear for him as well as the public.
Also, when he whipped out the tazer over this issue, he was essentially placing himself in the position of either committing himself to this course of action if his verbal demands were not met or looking stupid when the guy walked off. A smart officer is not going to do that - you never threaten to do something you are not fully willing and justified to carry out. He was a long way away from having to pull out a tazer in this situation even if he felt an arrest was warranted. Which brings us to appropriate use of officer discretion.
He made a mistake in deciding to arresting he guy at that point. If the suspect still refused to sign the ticket even after a private chat in or near the partol car, so what? The signed promise to appear means little - the summons on the ticket is still a summons and if the guy no showed, he's found guilty by default and gets mailed a letter to that effect with instructions to pay the fine. More likely the guy would have cooled off and mailed a check anyway prior to court.
So..best case, he speaks with the suspect in a controlled setting (patrol car), and the suspect signs the ticket.
Intermediate case, he refuses to sign the ticket but pays the fine or shows up in court to contest the ticket.
Worst case, he refuses to sign the ticket, fails to appear, fails to pay the fine and a bench warrant is issued and he goes to jail on the outstandiong warrant the next time he is stopped.
Nothing in the "worst case" scenario justifies the use of a tazer as nothing in the worst case scenario is that bad nor does it present a danger to the public.
But...the possible scenarios changed as the officer badly mishandled the situation, let his ego get involved and escalated the situation by deciding to make an arrest for what amounts to "contempt of cop". His decision then escalted the stakes for all involved and the officer further aggravated this by pulling out a tazer to make the the arrest. The suspect in turn, rather than cowering in fear, decided the officer was a few fries short of a happy meal for making this big a deal over a disagreement over a speeding ticket, and attempted to return to his vehicle. (although it would have been interesting to see what he would have done when he got there - I doubt he would have driven off.)
So the tazer got used. But regardless of how stupid the suspect was, the tazer got used because the officer lost control of the situation and relied on what is in my opinion a potentially dangerous and excessive use of force to salvage the situation. The officer has a public trust position that carries a great deal of responsibility and encountering a suspect who may be unhappy, argumentive, and uncooperative (but who is also non-violent, not wanted on any warrants, and is charged with nothing more than speeding) is par for the course and is by no means justification to use a tazer. If it were the average officer would be tazing a couple people per day.
An officer's job goes beyond enforcing the law, it also involves maintaining order and serving the interests of justice and the public as a whole. In my opinion, this officer just did not demonstrate that he has what it takes to meet those difficult demands.
