Being tasered isn’t a pleasant experience. Darts are launched into your skin, penetrating the flesh; they’re followed by a 50,000 volt shock, enough to make your muscles contract uncontrollably, causing you to collapse. The result is extremely painful—as one victim told the Associated Press, “It’s the most profound pain I’ve ever felt in my life. It’s complete submission. You can’t move. You can’t even blink.” It can be lethal as well. As Amnesty International reported in their 2007 Annual Report, “More than 70 people died after being shocked with tasers…bringing to more than 230 the number of such deaths since 2001.”

The potential for pain and tragedy indicates that tasering isn’t a step that police officers should take lightly. But statistical evidence and stories in the news seem to indicate that police are increasingly likely to reach for tasers, even in instances of relatively minor disputes. Statistics on the overall number of discharges in the United States are difficult to find, but deaths related to taser use have climbed consistently, from three deaths in 2001 to more than 70 in 2007.

Moreover, an increasing number of cases, many caught on video, have captured cavalier attitudes on the part of police officers toward taser use. The most recent—and shocking—incident can be viewed online. A man with his pregnant wife and two-year-old child is pulled over for speeding in Utah. He believes that the officer pulled him over before he passed the sign marking the revised speed limit, and as the officer orders him to sign the citation, he persistently, but politely, argues his case. The officer tells him to step out of his car. The man complies and tries to point out the location of the sign, but, without warning, the officer pulls out his taser and yells at the man to turn around and put his hands behind his back.

“What the hell is your problem?” the stunned man asks, taking a couple steps back. The officer tasers him on the side of the road, next to oncoming traffic. The man’s screams spur his terrified wife to step out of the car, sobbing. The officer orders her back in as he handcuffs the man.

“Officer, I don’t know why you’re doing this” the man says.

“You did not obey my instructions,” the officer replies. His tone seems amused.

“Tell me what I’m being arrested for,” the man says. “Tell me what you pulled me over for, please.” Eventually he’s reduced to pleading for the officer to read him his rights. Another officer shows up, and, as ABC news reports, the arresting officer lies about what took place.

“I said, ‘Hop out, put your hands behind your back.’ He didn’t do it,” Gardner told his colleague. “I said, ‘Put your hands behind your back.'” When Massey refused to follow his order, Gardner continued, “I said no, I’m not playing that game, pull out the Taser, ‘Turn around, right now, or I’ll Taser you.'” The colleague responded, “Good for you.”

The video is horrible to watch. At every step in the proceedings, the policeman chooses to escalate the incident instead of defusing it. He fails to explain that signing the citation isn’t an admission of guilt. He fails to engage the man verbally. Finally, despite what he says to his fellow officer, he fails to warn the man he’s about to be tasered.

Tasers are intended to be a non-lethal means of incapacitating people when a lethal means—shooting them—might otherwise be required. They’re not a tool for police to use to punish people who have displeased them or whom they’re tired of talking to. Using a 50,000-volt shock in such a way—inflicting pain to intimidate a member of the public—is tantamount to torture. It’s a tactic that would emblematic of a prototypical police state.

As Amnesty International says:

There is evidence to suggest that, far from being used to avoid lethal force, many US police agencies are deploying tasers as a routine force option to subdue non-compliant or disturbed individuals who do not pose a serious danger to themselves or others. In some departments, tasers have become the most prevalent force tool. They have been used against unruly schoolchildren; unarmed mentally disturbed or intoxicated individuals; suspects fleeing minor crime scenes and people who argue with police or fail to comply immediately with a command. Cases described in this report include the stunning of a 15-year-old schoolgirl in Florida, following a dispute on a bus, and a 13- year-old girl in Arizona, who threw a book in a public library.

In many such instances, the use of electro-shock weapons appears to have violated international standards prohibiting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment as well as standards set out under the United Nations (UN) Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and the Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials. (Indeed, CBS News reports that the U.N. Committee Against Torture has recently ruled that the use of tasers can be a form of torture.) These require that force should be used as a last resort and that officers must apply only the minimum amount of force necessary to obtain a lawful objective. They also provide that all use of force must be proportionate to the threat posed as well as designed to avoid unwarranted pain or injury.

Witness the University of Florida student who was tasered for being disruptive during a John Kerry Q & A session. Witness the man who was tasered while sleeping on his own couch, then tasered again and arrested after he verified his identity. Witness the 82-year-old woman who was tasered by police who came to her home for a wellness check. Witness the non-English speaking man who was detained in a Canadian airport, became agitated in his isolation, was tasered by police, and died.

The police have difficult jobs. But they’re trained for those jobs. The idea that craven obedience is the proper attitude for any interaction with the police is disgusting. They are not our overlords. They are not our enforcers. They are our peers, and they work for us.

So what should be done? Police departments that use tasers should evaluate their protocols to ensure that tasers are used as an alternative to lethal force, not as the next step in escalation after verbal suasion breaks down. They particularly should not be used repeatedly on a stunned subject or a person that’s in handcuffs or restraints.

Contact your police department to find out their procedure on taser use. Contact the security office at the college you went to, or your high school. Only by establishing proper standards for tasers can they be used as tools—extremely crude tools—for preventing tragic loss, instead of weapons to shock the populace into compliance.