Fuck all this taser nonsense!

[garybeck]

I am sick of reading about people killed by tasers. Isn't the very purpose of a taser supposed to be a NON-LETHAL weapon? It seems like every week I have to pick up the paper and read about someone who was just acting a little strange and ends up in a coffin because these freaking things DON'T DO WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO DO. How many more people are going to have to die before the ATF or some other moranic agency taken over by the neocons is going to finally wake up and at least put a temporary ban on these things until they fix them? Could it be any more fucking obvious that something needs to be done?

what do we need - a petition drive? to start calling our legislators and demand a law banning tasers until they fix them?

could you imagine getting a phone call... "hello mr smith this is the police. your son was out partying with some friends... he was in a shopping mall and acting strange. seemed like he had a few too many. since he was acting strange we decided to taser him, just to be safe. oh by the way, he's dead. sorry about that."

this is fucking ridiculous! they should have stopped using them after the first person died! Or at least the second or third. but it's happening so regularly now, WHAT THE FUCK?

=

VANCOUVER, Canada -- A Canadian man died Saturday, four days after police used a Taser stun-gun on him because he reportedly was acting erratically in a store, police said. He was the third person to die in recent weeks in Canada after being shocked by the hand-held weapon.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/11/25/canada.taser.ap/index.html

[rawtribe]

1. Tasers a form of torture, says UN

TASER electronic stun guns are a form of torture that can kill, a UN committee has declared after several recent deaths in North America.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22814674-23109,00.html

[garybeck]

2. I can understand the need for a non-lethal weapon, for law inforcement, but

this clearly is not it!

[havocmom]

16. Where do we find lawyers with the courage to start filing suits charging war crimes?

A couple of those and we might see cities abandoning these devices.

[Joanne98]

3. The police got their noses into everything we do now!

We're all criminals because everything is against the law. We need criminal justice reform. The USA has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners. That makes us the NUMBER ONE police state in the world. It's a SCAM! We need to take away more than their tasers. Repeal half of these stupid laws and strengthen our civil rights. Until then SUE THE FUCKERS!

[slackmaster]

4. Would you prefer that police go back to truncheons, batons, and guns for compliance?

:shrug:

[garybeck]

5. how about they just fix the fucking things.

obviously the voltage is set too high or whatever.

I don't care what they use but not these, at least until they fine tune them.


they can send a man to the moon, they should be able to design a non-lethal weapon that is non-lethal.

[sam sarrha]

10. there are better devices on the market..

[gratuitous]

13. Maybe go back to the truncheons and batons

The Taser seems just too easy to use, you know? Aim the weapon, pull the trigger, and down goes the bad guy with a real satisfying scream. It appears that its ease of use brings out the latent (and sometimes not so latent) sadist in some cops, who give another person multiple jolts for no apparent reason. Giving a cop a choice between wading in physically and maybe, I dunno, talking to a person (are cops trained to do that anymore?), there might be fewer public executions by cops taking on the triple duty of judge, jury and punisher.

[HughMoran]

15. Yeah, the old false choice argument rearing it's moronic head

As if "acting irratically" requires beating the crap out of the person. What ever happened to giving the unarmed person a large circle and tackling and cuffing them once they tucker out? Is time that much of a commodity that we must subdue suspects within seconds? Yes, there are times when there is no other choice, but cops are getting LAZY and their lazyness is KILLING poeple. Your false choice argument here is pathetic and is just the kind of justification I'd expect from fat lazy cops who use these tasers far to frequently.

[lynnertic]

28. good post.

[file83]

24. Yes, because at least with those weapons people KNOW they can be lethal.

So they use them carefully and only as a last resort.

With Tasers, police are using them as a FIRST resort and because they can kill (just like truncheons, batons, and guns) people are being killed.

[lynnertic]

27. How about if the police stop behaving like fascists

for just a second so we can show each other respect.

It's not just the tasers. it's the whole machismo thing that just has to go.

[kurth]

6. 290+ dead and counting

[aikoaiko]

7. I say Fuck anti-taser hysteria.

Yes, people have died after being tasered, but people have been dying while being placed in custody for a long time. Its not clear whether tasers help or hurt overall.

Tasers are a weapon, a tool, for subduing people. It can be and has been abused, but so has every other tool.

And, finally, its not clear how tasers are involved with the deaths of individuals.


Fuck anti-taser hysteria -- show me facts in context and make fair comparisons.

[conspirator]

11. Show me the facts or scientific detailed research data that a taser does not have

secondary effects on the human body, even when it doesn't kill. And offer your own body as a guinea pig for this research.

[aikoaiko]

17. Fair enough. Until one side can show the other they are wrong we can just be mutually smug.

My point is not that tasering doesn't ever lead death or injury, but is the rate of injury or death greater than other situations where extreme force is used to subdue a person.

[flashl]

12. Is Taser Intl product protection lawsuit hysterical?

Taser gets litigious over suggestions the device causes deaths


Anyone who launches a lawsuit against Taser International Inc. or suggests a Taser electronic device was involved in a death are liable to get another shock when the company brings down the full force of its legal team.

Taser International is currently named as a defendant in at least 39 wrongful death or personal injury lawsuits where a Taser was used.

The company is aggressive in defending itself in such lawsuits and has entered into agreements to prevent its own insurance provider from settling out of court,

It has even filed a lawsuit demanding an Ohio coroner change her conclusion that a Taser was a contributing factor in the deaths of two men.

Taser also sent out legal demand letters to 60 organizations after its latest public relations black eye where a Polish man was jolted with a Taser by RCMP at the Vancouver International Airport and died minutes later.

Taser Intl also funded "phony" studies to demonstrate that its product is safe as it viciously attacked "real" independent studies. In this climate, there will not be ANY "fair comparisons".

[aikoaiko]

14. Do you have any references or links to the real studies?

Of course company produced research should be viewed with skepticism, but I'm open to studies from non-partisan organizations.

As far as the Taser lawsuits go, it doesn't impress me either way that a company would defend its product in court.

[Gormy Cuss]

21. There aren't any large scale, non-partisan studies.

There are limited studies which all suggest that tasers are far more lethal than the manufacturers' influenced studies suggest. One reason for that is that these studies are done on healthy individuals who are not inebriated or under the influence of drugs. They've also not been tested on children.

There are also retrospective studies, examining cases where taser use was indicated as a contributing factor by coroners.

Go to the Amnesty International site for a good summary report (2006) on tasers. It includes a discussion of the limited independent data and AI's own analysis of taser-related deaths.

[flashl]

23. Journal of the National Academy of Forensic Engineers JAN 2006

James Ruggieri published an article in the peer-reviewed Journal of the National Academy of Forensic Engineers.

Here link to story published shortly after study:

Study raises concerns over Tasers' safety

Tobacco, Prozac, OxyContin, HMOs, and many others successfully defend their pratices because they use same lawsuit tactics to suppress unfavorable information. n/t

[aikoaiko]

26. Results like that should be easy enough to replicate and, if they are, hold Taser accountable

The article mentions that both groups that did testing are trial consultants on such issues. Its hard to know who to trust. But I'm open to evidence.

[sam sarrha]

8. and the schizophrenic wheel chair bound woman, police killed with two tasers, tased for 2 minutes

http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/09/police-taser-wheelchair-bound-granny-to.html

[kurth]

9. And don't forget how the Smith brothers raked in $92 million in just 3 months because of Kerik:

In 2002, Taser brought on former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik as the company's director. Kerik had attained popularity in the wake of 9/11 as a law-and-order-minded hero; the company had seemingly picked one of the best spokespersons imaginable.

With Kerik's help, company's profits grew to $68 million in 2004, up from just under $7 million in 2001, and stockholders were able to cash in, including the Smith family, who raked in $91.5 million in just one fiscal quarter in 2004.

Unbeknownst to most stockholders, however, sales have been helped along by police officers who have received payments and/or stock options from Taser to serve as instructors and trainers. (The exact number of officers on the payroll is unknown because the company declines to identify active-duty officers who have received stock options.)

http://www.alternet.org/rights/44455/?page=entire

[Warpy]

18. A death four days after a taser was used

would seem to have other causes. However, tasers can kill in some cases.

However, your original point was solid. Discharging a taser must be treated like discharging any weapon: a day or two of paid leave while IA investigates the incident to make sure it was justified.

Most incidents where Tasers are used have saved lives, not cost them. They also save people from things like broken bones and head injuries.

The problem is that there are bad cops out there who use them for convenience, for revenge, and for fun. That's why discharging them needs to be investigated, to weed out the bad guys because the next time they discharge a weapon for the above reasons, it could be a gun.

[JBoy]

22. Yes, in this incident I'm not sure the taser caused his death

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/11/19/bc-taser.html

"The 29-year-old man became "extremely agitated, aggressive, and combative with the two responding officers," according to Const. Lea-Anne Dunlop, a media relations officer with the Upper Fraser Valley RCMP.

A violent struggle ensued and numerous methods of intervention — including pepper spray, Taser and baton — were used to try to subdue the man, Dunlop said."

Here's the guy face down on a gurney:



Tasers don't do that...

[pdxmom]

19. We pull food products off the shelves because 10 people don't cook

their pot pies long enough and get salmonella. Toys are getting the royal going-over because of the lead found in toys from China. But it's evidently okay that people are dying from a "non-lethal" weapon, because it's being used to "protect" us. Sorry, it doesn't compute.

[ladjf]

20. Tasers are just another sign that shows that the U.S. has

become a police state. Of course it's torture. Of course tasers aren't necessary except for a rare set of circumstances.

Last night on the Alabama-Auburn football TV game, I saw two police officers standing right on the back line of the field with two large dogs, one of which bit an Auburn player. I have attended thousands of football games and have never seen police dogs used for crowd control. Why the hell didn't the officer at least pull the dog back from the player? He just stood there and allowed the bite to happen. I don't know the extent of the injury. The player had on gloves. But, two or three plays latter he was still examining and rubbing his hands.

[lynnertic]

29. a civilian's dog would be put to sleep

and/or the civilian would be charged with a crime.
But a cop can let his dog bite someone for no good reason.

[windoe]

25. The myth of the arms race

Fighting violence with violence, as a effing solution--is really an excuse to simply use more violence to quell any dissent whatsoever. Whatever happened to ' We fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here??!!' Now we have to fight them over here because--uh, we can't win over there? Military Industrial Complex ran out of enemies, we are it for the time being till they think of another evil entity to fight.