Last month Miami police used a TASER gun on a 6 year old boy who was allegedly trying to hurt himself with a piece of glass. Rather than let the boy continue to cut himself, police shot him with the TASER and took him down.

I didn't think much of it at the time because it seemed justified. But now police have done it again, this time shooting a 12 year old girl with 50,000 volts because she was fleeing a truancy rap.

According to the incident report, officer William Nelson responded to a complaint that children were swimming in a pool, drinking alcohol and smoking cigars on the morning of Nov. 5.

Nelson said he noticed the girl was intoxicated and was walking her to his car to take her back to school when she ran away through a parking lot.

Nelson, 38, said he chased her and yelled several times for her to stop before firing the Taser when she began to run into traffic. The electric probes hit the girl in the neck and lower back, immobilizing her.

Nelson said he fired "for my safety along with (the girl's) safety..."

It has long been my contention that while TASERS were originally deployed as a less than lethal alternative to shooting a suspect, they are being increasingly used out of sheer laziness and intolerance. The threshold used to be that an officer's life was in danger. Now it seems as though they zap anyone who gets the least bit uppity or doesn't toe the line.