Few people reading this have ever suffered an electrical shock so substantial that body muscles contract on their own, briefly stealing speech and hobbling balance as consciousness flickers. But that's what happens in a tasing.

Fewer people yet have found themselves face-down on the ground, only to be instructed by a police officer to place hands in full view and been promptly tased, and then tased again, and again, and again.

Did you not get the message? Where are your hands?

But that and worse happened less than two years ago, when Portland police accompanied a Multnomah County mental health crisis team that needed help. The troubled subject followed instructions at first, yielding to a search that showed him to be unarmed. But he soon started speaking incoherently -- enough so that officers, when asked to place him on a mental health hold, grabbed his arm. Things went badly from there.

When the tasing failed to produce compliance, an officer punched the fellow up to six times in the ribs. Yet another officer landed his fist on the back of the subject's neck or shoulders. But the subject, apparently terrified -- or at this point experiencing a quite coherent thought? -- continued to resist handcuffing.

Really?

Police gave the man another six Taser shocks before handcuffing him and delivering him to a mental health hospital for evaluation.

The U.S. Department of Justice reviewed this case as one among several that showed Portland police still do not know how to handle themselves in the company of mentally ill citizens, more and more of whom go without social services and cross paths with law enforcement. DOJ dryly concluded: "On balance, the intrusion into the subject's Fourth Amendment rights outweighed the legitimate government interest."

We conclude: On balance, the action was outrageous.

So, too, were the broader findings of the

released last week.

A lot of folks characterize the challenges surrounding Taser use and mental illness as of highest concern to the

, which invited the DOJ review -- and we doubt they are anything less. But the bureau immediately must craft a crisis intervention plan that is in step with evolving case law specifying proper Taser use. And the plan needs to show respect to all citizens, mentally ill or not.

For the decade leading up to 2006, the bureau staffed a crisis intervention team whose officers were trained to deal with difficult mentally ill people. But it traded the team in for a mandatory 40 hours of crisis intervention training for all officers -- this,

reported, following the controversial case in 2006 of James P. Chasse Jr., suspected of urinating in public and who died from blunt force trauma to the chest while in custody.

The resulting one-size-fits-all approach to brief crisis training for all is a failure. Among other things, it ignores the fact that not all officers are created equal in experience, temperament or aspiration. In cases involving the mentally ill, only mature officers who work well with health professionals and impaired people can and should receive the bureau's best long-term support at preparedness and deployment.

Health advocates have found the bureau slow to move on their input, and a subgroup of the Portland Citizens Review Committee, tapped for its recommendations on Taser use, has experienced like frustration. Significantly, Bernstein chronicled the best efforts of a deputy city attorney tasked with keeping the Police Bureau up to speed with case law on Taser use but whose policy recommendations have languished within the bureau.

The foot-dragging must be over. Too many people are getting hurt. And all too frequently our hardworking police come up looking like thugs.

The pale promises of Mayor Sam Adams and of Police Chief Mike Reese to get this right have one gasp of encouragement left: the fact that the bureau this week characterized the DOJ's findings as Portland's best guide for moving forward and avoiding the next Taser debacle.

But we don't need a new plan tomorrow. We need it yesterday.