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How Taser inserts itself into investigations involving its own weapons

307 points by jMyles 9y ago

andreasgonewild 9y ago
Tasers need to go, it's bad enough to treat animals like that. At least before they shoot someone they think twice, and getting into a baton fight means risking getting hurt; this is not a bad thing in itself; the goal should be to de-escalate any situation and avoid violence.
- artorias 9y ago
  And how many criminals resisting arrest have you dealt with, this year?
- Taek 9y ago
  Tasers are a really effective way to neutralize someone violent. If a 200 pound man on drugs is charging at you screaming with rage, a taser gives you a good chance to survive without getting hurt and without shooting anyone. I'm certain that tasers have saved many more lives than they have cost simply because they have as much stopping power as a gun, and sometimes you really need that much stopping power. We need to treat them as dangerous, because they are dangerous. But they have a place in the law enforcement toolkit and it's a very important one.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    If you have that level of certainty that you should have no problem providing proof.
  - andreasgonewild 9y ago
    I don't doubt that they are effective, I've seen them being used. What I'm questioning is the states right to treat its citizens like that, no matter how convenient. And they're obviously not as safe as claimed. What it seems to lead to is tasing anyone who doesn't agree with them without missing a beat, is that really the kind of world you want to live in?
  - sp332 9y ago
    200 pounds is the average weight of an adult male in the USA.
    - damnfine 9y ago
      That is depressing as hell. I got up that heavy once and life was signifigantly worse.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    Sure, but how about we put Tasers in the category of firearm alternative where the victim has better odds of living. Treat Tasers as lethal force and tell officers that if they wouldn't use their firearm then they shouldn't use a Taser either.
    - tomschlick 9y ago
      A taser wont (solely) be used in a lethal force scenario. If someone is threatening an officer with a knife, they counter with their own lethal force. Officers are always +1 on the force level. If you are combative, they use mace/taser, if you have a knife they use a gun, etc. The only exception to this is when an officer has backup on scene and they can coordinate enough to allow one or more to provide lethal cover (guns) while the others try to employ less lethal tactics (taser, mace, beanbag shotgun, etc). This way, if those less lethal items dont work (and they dont 30% of the time) they are not scrambling for their gun while a pissed off suspect is charging with a knife.
      - plopz 9y ago
        Is mace lethal? Putting it at the same force level as tasers seems weird.
        tomschlick 9y ago
        No, its classified as "less lethal" which is the same as tasers, batons, bean bag rounds, etc. What people don't realize is that before tasers the method of making someone comply (when fighting handcuffs being put on) was batons or actual punches. Yes tasers may cause health issues in 0.001% of uses but batons and punches would cause many more. Also, a lot of officers don't even carry mace anymore as it generally sucks for everyone when its employed. They are going to get it on them via wind or handling the suspect and it impacts their ability to function.
        megous 9y ago
        > Yes tasers may cause health issues in 0.001% of uses... This is simply not true and weakens your argument quite a bit.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    I'd agree with all those points if use of tasers was limited to situations where guns would've previously been used, but their "less lethal" nature has meant they're used in a lot of situations where shooting would never have been acceptable.
  - jandrese 9y ago
    Most people don't have a problem with using them in a situation like that, but zapping a tagger in the back is asshole behavior and should not be tolerated. There was no self defense here. The suspect is unlikely to be a danger to the community. It's a disproportionate response that ignores the inherent danger in the technology. I think Police should carry stun guns, but they need to be treated like the potentially deadly weapons that they are.
  - athenot 9y ago
    Or... teach the police how to use their elbows, knees and fists. Then again, many members of the police have a hard time chasing a suspect by foot and are nowhere near in condition for even basic martial arts. Fun story: my massage therapist witnessed someone running away from a morbidely obese policeman and asked him if he needed help. Policeman agreed so he chased him accross a small parking lot. The policeman took his car to meet them a few hundred feet away and was still winded from his earlier attempt at running.
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      That's not a fun story. That's a terrifying story. Cops can deputize a random passerby with no training to intervene in a chase?
    - burkaman 9y ago
      That's an and, not an or. Fists are dangerous too if you use them incorrectly. Police should know how to subdue someone with no weapons, a taser, or a gun, and know when each one is appropriate.
    - cc439 9y ago
      >Or... teach the police how to use their elbows, knees and fists. Well say goodbye to women serving as patrol officers. Also, elbows, knees, and fists are lethal weapons, just ask Eric Garner.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    If a 200 pound man on drugs is charging at you screaming with rage, a taser gives you a good chance to survive without getting hurt and without shooting anyone. So do a lot of other methods.
- losteric 9y ago
  That's a good point, but I think that > At least before they shoot someone they think twice doesn't hold in practice. Fight or flight translates to shoot or run, few police have the discipline to think twice and exercise caution despite personal risk. Tasers were adopted because they are a safer option for both the public and police - situations like this play out with both weapons, but the taser is less likely to be fatal. I think a more effective change is adjustable tasers, with a lower default power level. For most situations, the sheer shock of being electrocuted is enough of an immobilizer - the police don't need to start with enough power to paralyze a PCP fiend...
  - iak8god 9y ago
    > few police have the discipline to think twice and exercise caution despite personal risk. Then shouldn't police departments improve their hiring and training practices until this is the case? These are people who are sanctioned to use violence in defense of society. They are widely considered heroes for putting their own lives on the line. It's not too much to ask that they are held to the highest standards of discipline.
    - losteric 9y ago
      Obviously. However, training alone is insufficient - training is the way to trust cops with real guns, but tasers and guns still fill different roles. Tasers are non-lethal ranged weapons, complementing non-lethal close-range (batons/pepper spray) and lethal ranged weapons (guns). To me, this incident highlights a design flaw in tasers - too strong and too inflexible. Years of evidence already highlighted the training failures in some regions.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > Tasers are non-lethal ranged weapons, complementing non-lethal close-range (batons/pepper spray) and lethal ranged weapons (guns). All the examples in that sentence of “non-lethal” weapons are, really, merely less-lethal (than firearms); non-lethal is a factually-inaccurate label used for misleading propaganda purposes.
OliverJones 9y ago
"We serve and protect." "We serve ourselves and protect our own." Some police forces have procedures where they do things like --keep their distance from agitated people. --warn them several times and try to talk them down. --then say "taser taser taser" before discharging the weapon. These seem like good procedures to follow. If I were to assault a person suffering from a condition such as "excited delerium syndrome", and that person died as a result of my assault, I would be guilty of a crime known as "felony murder." I'm pretty sure the legal priniciple is stated as "you take your victim as you find him." It's not a valid excuse to say, "I didn't know the guy had a heart problem" if he has a heart attack right after I assault him." And, if I say, "I knew he had a heart problem," then that makes my crime worse.
- revelation 9y ago
  Eggshell skull: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull
balls187 9y ago
Probably a good thing TASER changed their name to Axon.
- balls187 9y ago
  > The recent high school grad and aspiring art teacher collapsed on the sidewalk in cardiac arrest. Also forgot "vandal suspect"
  - Spivak 9y ago
    Sure, because killing someone is a totally acceptable response to vandalism.
    - balls187 9y ago
      Strawman.
      - damnfine 9y ago
        It is literally the facts ot the story. Repeating strawman does not further your argument, or anyones opinion of your reasoning skills.
  - cliffy 9y ago
    The use of force to detain someone suspected of graffiti is disproportionate to the crime. Especially if the use of force could foresee-ably result in death.
    - balls187 9y ago
      Strawman.
      - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
        You keep using that word, I do not believe it means what you think it means.
albertgoeswoof 9y ago
The police shot someone with a taser for doing graffiti on an abandoned building? That is completely insane. You can literally rub graffiti off a wall, why would you risk killing someone for that.
- Natsu 9y ago
  Usually, use of force guidelines say that this level of escalation is only warranted when the person is actively resisting (e.g. attempting to strike the officer). This would be a good case to have body cam video for.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    The article didn't mention verbal warnings so I looked for the procedures and found this: https://cbsmiami.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/use-of-force.pdf https://cbsmiami.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/use-of-force.pd... It says use of ECD (Taser), as non-lethal force, is warranted to prevent inter alia damage to property, section 4.b.1.b. It also says verbal warnings should be given when they don't betray a tactical advantage. Once a warning is given, if you run you're resisting arrest, which is for good reasons a serious crime.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      Resisting arrest and evading arrest are qualitatively different, though I don't feel like researching legal precedent on the topic right now to find which courts and circuits think what about it. Whatever the law says, the use of potentially deadly-force to prevent the application of graffiti is unconscionable. Graffiti may be aesthetically undesirable and property owners are within their rights to obstruct or remove it from their property, but adding a layer of paint to a wall does not damage the wall.
      - Natsu 9y ago
        It would seem that the use of force guidelines should be updated to solve this in the future and we should pay more attention to the rules and incentives the officers are working under.
Swizec 9y ago
Tased to death for spray painting McDonald’s windows :\ > the 18-year-old graffiti artist. The teen had been spotted spray-painting the blackened windows of an abandoned McDonald’s. > Within seconds, Officer Jorge Mercado caught up with him, drew his Taser and fired a single shot to the chest. The recent high school grad and aspiring art teacher collapsed on the sidewalk in cardiac arrest. The chase lasted six minutes. It was 5:20 a.m. on Aug. 6, 2013. At 6:18 a.m., he was pronounced dead. Whyyyy is using a taser against a teenager who’s running away even nevessary? Dude was doing some vandalism. If you can’t catch him on foot just let him get away. It’s not like he’s selling drugs to little kids or trying to punch you in the face.
- hansthehorse 9y ago
  Because a whole lot of cops go crazy when they feel disrespected and running away is the ultimate disrespect of their authority.
  - 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
    See also: the detective recently in the news for trying to coerce a nurse into illegally providing access to a patient's blood. He's been told by the nurse's supervisor that what he wants is simply not allowed by law and that it's not the nurse's decision, but then decides to forcefully arrest her because, in his own words, “she’s the one that has told me 'no'” [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/09/01/this-is-crazy-sobs-utah-hospital-nurse-as-cop-roughs-her-up-arrests-her-for-doing-her-job/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/09/0...
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  The story as written is a little ambiguous...what happened at the end of the chase is important. Did the cop just tase him as he was standing there with his arms up? Did the guy try to put up a fight? The answer to those questions is important and not covered in the article Edit: from a NYT article: > One of the things they learned, he went on, was that Officer Mercado explained his use of the Taser as having occurred as Mr. Hernandez-Llach was running toward the officer. It appears that is in dispute though. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/us/no-charges-for-officer-in-miami-taser-death.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/us/no-charges-for-offi...
Zanni 9y ago
The title of this post is much more inflammatory than the title of the actual article ("How Taser inserts itself into investigations involving its own weapons") and in no way justified by the link. That said, Tasering someone seems like an extreme over-reaction to this sort of vandalism.
- jMyles 9y ago
  > Four hours later, the Miami Beach Police Department received an email from stun-gun manufacturer Taser International Inc. > The message, marked “confidential” and not previously reported, provided guidance on how investigators should proceed, from collecting hair and nail samples to recording the teen’s body temperature and documenting his behavior before he was stunned. It included a sample press release and an “evidence collection checklist.” It seemed reasonable to me.
- bb88 9y ago
  There is a coverup in the form of providing an alternative means for the actual death. I would argue that if you're changing the narrative of history to provide deniability, then yes, it's a cover-up.
Synaesthesia 9y ago
Now of the most horrifying videos I have ever watched is of a cop who pulls over a teen and tases him, in the chest, which led to that kid falling into a coma and later getting brain damage.
mizzao 9y ago
TL;DR version: Taser claims its guns are safe and do not cause lethal injuries, marketing them as such. Deaths related to Taser usage are typically attributed to "excited delirium" through a complex web of relationships between the company, law enforcement personnel, and medical examiners. Excited delirium seems to be a questionable medical condition where several researchers studying this condition have financial ties to Taser.
- Spivak 9y ago
  I really don't see how 'excited delirium' in any way absolves Taser. It's supposedly a condition related to chronic drug use and mental illness that has no easily identifiable symptoms. If an officer (or really anyone) isn't able to determine with certainty that someone is not currently suffering from it then using a Taser is at best 'probably non-lethal' and that's before we get into people with heart conditions or pacemakers. Assuming that Tasers don't cause any long-term damage I'm actually okay with them as firearm alternatives. Just so long as we communicate that if an officer wouldn't pull out their gun, they shouldn't pull out a Taser.
FireBeyond 9y ago
Yeah, this is horrific. From a medical standpoint: "AED readings are important. Shock versus no shock" - this is basically allowing them to go one of two ways "Shockable", then they weren't 'fatally' injured by the Taser, and external circumstances caused the death. "No Shock Advised", well, they must have had a heart defect. Never mind that there are multiple rhythms beyond VF (Ventricular fibrillation), VT (Ventricular tachycardia) that can be recovered. The next three are basically trying to imply typically drug use interfered with cardiac activity and that, not the Taser, caused the cardiac event. It's basically "here's a laundry list of things that can exonerate Taser. Collect them."
- matthewaveryusa 9y ago
  This is a really interesting question. what are the legal repercussions for killing someone that's about to die? Is imminent death an extenuating circumstance? Could one argue that law enforcement would have used force that on average is much more lethal (gunshot), but instead used a Taser, and unfortunately they died because of the Taser? I'm a lot more comfortable with this defense than some sort of hot-potato "maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the taser" excuse.
  - FireBeyond 9y ago
    Well, that's also a good question, but it's more nuanced than that. There may be cardiac stresses in play that are -exacerbated-, perhaps fatally, by the Taser. Certainly people die from cardiac complications from drugs alone, but the thought here is that Taser is trying to say 'underlying condition' killed the person, not the Taser deployment.
  - AdamJacobMuller 9y ago
    > what are the legal repercussions for killing someone that's about to die? The example I have heard around this is that if you shoot, and kill, someone who is currently falling off a building you are still guilty of murder. The reasoning, I believe, is that anything grayer than "if you killed them, you killed them" very quickly devolves into an argument over what "imminent" is.
- 9y ago
rhcom2 9y ago
America needs oversight of police's use of force. We don't even collect good enough data and that opaqueness only helps abuse.
- jseliger 9y ago
  Until we eliminate police unions, that's unlikely to happen: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/opinion/sunday/when-police-unions-impede-justice.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/opinion/sunday/when-police... . Mancur Olson is also interesting on the topic of interest groups and rent seeking more generally: https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Collective-Action-printing-appendix/dp/0674537513?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Collective-Action-printing-appe...
  - adrianratnapala 9y ago
    Police unions are common enough around the world, but internal controls are generally better than we hear about in the US (and I suspect it varies within America as well). I suspect part of the problem is that police forces run by smallish localities, which can't have the same level of training and oversight as larger jurisdictions. But that's only part of the problem: major US cities also seem to have problems.
throw2016 9y ago
There is a common thread of over-zealousness and an unbecoming enthusiasm for using force in most of these cases. This has the undercurrent of authoritarianism and is not compatible with civilized society. The whole idea of law enforcement is they have the training to deal with confrontational situations with some degree of control and maturity. They have the training, weapons, access to backup and near endless resources. Any confrontation with an individual is already heavily biased towards their side, to lose control is more than reckless. For situations beyond basic law enforcement involving more than one person, for instance a riot or a gang, usually there are more specialized teams and strategies.
jMyles 9y ago
> In bold letters, marked “TIMELY AND URGENT,” the dispatch advised Miami’s medical examiner to send the teen’s brain tissue for testing to Deborah Mash, a University of Miami medical researcher. It did not mention Mash had been paid by Taser to testify on its behalf in lawsuits against the company. I mean... this is a truly hideous thing from a company whose history is already mostly hideous.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
21 9y ago
So, how many people die of "excited delirium" without them being tasered at all? IF we were to believe the Taser company, this condition is killing people all the time.
- JshWright 9y ago
  People can (and do) experience "excited delirium" without a cop anywhere near them...
  - lovemenot 9y ago
    Even if you are right, your parent's point still stands. If applying Bayesian reasoning to determine the likely veracity of the Excited Delerium defence of taser-related deaths, then ED deaths in the general non-tasered poulation should be an important prior.
21 9y ago
> In an email, Kroll said his affiliation with Taser did not bias his research: “Due to this well-known relationship, I was motivated to be very careful to be extremely accurate and objective,” he said. Right, I'm sure he was extremely careful and objective in his research. It's funny how scientists who do "double blind testing", where they avoid even themselves knowing if a person received the control or not, because it's proven that it could bias the result, somehow are totally immune from bias because of research grants where the grant giver has obvious interests.
rdtsc 9y ago
> Ho served with Mash and another Taser consultant on a 19-member task force that prepared an influential 2009 white paper on excited delirium for the American College of Emergency Physicians, representing 31,000 doctors. The paper described the condition as “a real syndrome of uncertain etiology,” or cause. This is some special kind of evil. They not only have coroners and police departments in their pockets. But also invented a whole new disease and funded a "white paper" about it. They fully expected for this to end up in court from day one, as they know exactly what their product does to people. So they inoculated themselves by generating "scientific research" to shove in front of juries during a trial. "Oh look science! Victim was suffering from a case of excited delirium when officer Jones pressed the trigger. Here is a paper on it". After serving on a jury, I believe this would totally fly there. Juries are not allowed to research or study the facts about the case on their own. Once "evidence" is shown or an expert is declared "an expert in <blah>" then you are told to base your judgment on what they present.
- 21 9y ago
  Unless, of course, the expert is from the defense: > Taser persuaded a judge to exclude a medical examiner and pathologist with 25 years’ experience whose testimony was central to the family’s case, arguing that it was “unqualified, unsupported and unreliable.” Or even better, sue anyone who says Tasers are dangerous: > Also in 2006, Taser sued electrical engineer James Ruggieri, who wrote a peer-reviewed study that said Taser shocks were more dangerous than the company stated. In its lawsuit, Taser said Ruggieri was mounting an “anti-Taser campaign,” was unqualified to do so, and made money from delivering anti-Taser presentations and appearing as an expert witness. And make everybody afraid to implicate a taser: > Such cases have an impact on medical examiners, according to a 2011 survey of 222 medical examiners nationwide. Its conclusions: 14 percent said they modified diagnostic findings due to the possible threat of litigation from Taser, and 32 percent said that threat could affect future decisions.
  - sova 9y ago
    Any time I read "Taser persuaded" I am reminded of their primary form of persuasion. Scare tactics should not fly in Court
trhway 9y ago
giving the terms Taser uses in its own publishing - "neuromuscular incapacitation" and "electro muscular disruption" - it takes a non-trivial twist of mind (triggered for example by $20K+ expert fee) to attribute stop of heart to something else. While with low probability (1 in 6000), there is specific conditions when Taser will almost for sure cause ventricular fibrillation - it is when dart hits 1cm2 patch right over the ventricle in people with heart located closer to skin (i guess usually it would mean smaller and/or thinner people, and there have been other studies that shown reverse correlation of [probability of] damage [and VF in particular] with body weight) : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17355063 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17355063 Basically each 6000 times Taser is deployed there can be expected a death.
Aaron1011 9y ago
Part one of the three-article series: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-taser-911/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-tase...
program_whiz 9y ago
Any surprise here? First, why would any company not be involved in investigations of their company, are investigators supposed to obtain all the information to investigate them from some unbiased third party that has never heard of taser? Secondly, how can you expect a company to lobby against its own interests? If you have power and money, and your livelihood is on the line, its ethical to use whatever means are available to defend yourself. Is it wrong to hire the best attorney for your defense just because they may be friends with the judge and a celebrity attorney? Also, how can you expect police and others to be unbiased when this device has probably helped them or saved their own life at some point. Are they supposed to ignore the fact that this is a critical tool in their belt?
- parenthephobia 9y ago
  > If you have power and money, and your livelihood is on the line, its ethical to use whatever means are available to defend yourself. Not under any system of ethics I'm familiar with. Indeed, I would imagine that a big part of most ethical systems is about _not_ abusing your power. For example, most people would consider it unethical for a company to manipulate, bribe, intimidate, and discredit people in order to suppress evidence of the harmful nature of that company's products. > Is it wrong to hire the best attorney for your defense just because they may be friends with the judge Are we talking about the godfather to the judge's child, or somebody who has coffee with him a few times a month? If it's the former, any decent judge would recuse himself - and the other attorney would rightly kick up a fuss if he didn't. > Also, how can you expect police and others to be unbiased when this device has probably helped them or saved their own life at some point. Are they supposed to ignore the fact that this is a critical tool in their belt? No. But, an ethical person would weigh the benefits Tazers offer against the risks they introduce: and it's hard to do that when Tazer systematically suppress evidence of those risks.
program_whiz 9y ago
Everyone in this forum seems to think that using a taser is inhumane and officers should instead use batons or their fists. The problem is that the officer has to assume that if an attacker is getting violent, they are attempting to get the gun. They can't read your mind, and they don't know if they can beat you in a fight -- they have to assume that because they have a loaded firearm you might take it and use it. So any use of force needs to be measured against "if this fails they get the gun and we don't know what the state of mind or capabilities of this attacker are".
- 1_2__4 9y ago
  This is completely wrong on so many levels it's breathtaking. You do realize (prettt sure you do) that you're making a case that any amount of physical resistance should be reasonably met with deadly force?
  - program_whiz 9y ago
    Yes. Imagine you have a loaded gun and you've heard someone is committing a crime, so you go to the scene to investigate with no prior knowledge of the person. If they punch you in the face your options are: A) Assume you can probably take them physically, and they are a reasonable person who's just punching you because they've had a bad day, if you're wrong innocents may die. But wrestle and punch them anyway. B) Hit them with a stick, they will probably go down. If they manage to grab your gun while you're doing this, you and many innocents nearby may die. If they rush you, the stick may become ineffective. C) Assume the person who is punching you may be trying to get the gun, draw your gun so they can't grab it first, then if they don't immediately stop, shoot them. Taser is like C. You have a taser, if you try to "punch them back" or "wrestle them down" or even "grab your baton", the person may just grab the gun and kill you and other innocents. No one should ever resist arrest EVER -- just comply, go to the station, argue your case, and hire an attorney. If the police tell you to get in the cuffs, just do it.
    - someone7x 9y ago
      You are of course entitled to your opinion, but to me it's astonishingly bleak. I can only imagine that whoever wrote the 4th amendment is rolling in their grave now.
User23 9y ago
"Specifically, we were mapping the vulnerable period of the cardiac cycle. This interval, lasting a mere 0.035 of a second in duration, occurs with each heartbeat. It is the only moment in the cardiac cycle when the heart is susceptible to ventricular fibrillation. Once the chaotic rhythm of ventricular fibrillation ensues, the heart stops pumping blood. Spontaneous recovery is impossible. Within a few minutes life is extinguished. Electrical current, irrespective of intensity, will not disrupt the heart’s rhythm if delivered outside the vulnerable period." https://bernardlown.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/thumpversion-for-the-tasered/ https://bernardlown.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/thumpversion-fo...
- Gaelan 9y ago
  Assuming heartbeats occur about once per second, that’s a 3.5% chance of a taser shot being in the vulnerable period. That’s pretty big.
  - dzhiurgis 9y ago
    You can easily double or triple that during the exciting moment of a chase/arrest/crime.
- JshWright 9y ago
  "Thumpversion" is more commonly called a "precordial thump", and there's very little evidence to support its use. You're much better off doing chest compressions until an AED is available. There is practically no evidence supporting his "recommendation" that the police use it routinely (if it doesn't delay CPR, then sure, give 'em a punch in the chest, but the evidence behind it is _very_ shaky).
geggam 9y ago
Running voltage from one side of the heart muscle to the other is bad... very bad. You can die from >100 milliamps this way with no drugs in the system. Not real sure who thinks tazing is non lethal... its less lethal advertised as non lethal
quickConclusion 9y ago
Now you would think we need more body cams and recorded videos... and guess who is advertising free body cams to all US police officers: Axon/Taser. https://www.axon.com/info/offer https://www.axon.com/info/offer Axon is actually the new name of Taser... which makes now money by selling systems archiving, managing, and analyzing police officers body cam videos. https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9724644/police-tech-body-cams-transparency-violence-taser https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9724644/police-tech-body... There is an obvious conflict of interest here: it could be so easy to conveniently delete a video incriminating a Taser device...
- devmunchies 9y ago
  Is it easy though? Its incredibly risky? It could tarnish their reputation with police forces and risk lawsuits. And are you saying they shouldn't be in the business of providing cameras to authorities because of a possible conflict of interest? They are a public company and have a responsibility to maximize profits. They made millions last year from evidence storage services. And I would hope the engineers are building their infrastructure in a way that prevents tampering, otherwise the engineers could be held accountable for any very risky evidence deletion. And I think body cams is a more ethical business than tasers anyway, helping to hold police and citizens accountable for their actions.
  - quickConclusion 9y ago
    I hope it would not be easy to delete content, but the article shows how much we need to worry about it, when we see how much Taser goes to extra lengths to protect their weapon, and how they collude with the police force in the process. I would prefer if the vendor selling the video systems did not also sell weapons. They could be split in 2 companies and dissociate ownership of each. Beyond Tasers guns, it also warns us how important the governance model for video archival/retrieval system is. Because if the police force is the client, there is a business incentive to absolve the police officers in case of issues. How to define that governance model is above my pay grade, but this is something very important, that goes beyond engineers in the trenches.
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
It seems nonsensical to me that Taser is making a distinction between whether or not the electric shock was responsible for someone's death. If they hit their head on the fall, that is still because someone shot them with a Taser. Drug use, health conditions, etc. all are the same: An officer is still applying a weapon to someone, and if the result is death, then the Taser was responsible. I haven't heard anyone realistically call a Taser "non-lethal" in a long time. They're called "less lethal" for a reason: They're less likely to kill someone than a gun. (You can survive gunshots too! Just... less often.) It's hard to imagine a reasonable case for firing ANY weapon at a graffiti artist. Using a Taser is just one of many levels of a use of force, and it's hard to imagine a justification for it with such a minor offense.
- bostik 9y ago
  > It's hard to imagine a reasonable case for firing ANY weapon at a graffiti artist. How about personal inconvenience due to an itchy trigger finger? And if the graffiti was in any way subversive, you could make a case for attempting to commit journalism.
devmunchies 9y ago
To play devils advocate to most in this thread, what is Axon/Taser to do about people potentially holding them accountable for every taser related death? Tasers are a better alternative to guns. Axon can't possibly be liable for every death. The police have to have some accountability with their use of a weapon, just like with hand guns, right? Obviously the more liberal the police are with tasers, then the more accidental deaths there will be. So if the police treated them like firearms, then Axon wouldn't need to get so involved to try and defend itself. Gun manufacturers are never liable for gun related deaths. Is the problem how tasers are marketed as non-lethal? Do people want to see tasers outlawed and have the police go back to using guns? EDIT: if this isn't a relevant contribution to the discussion, I don't know what is.
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  How about police in land of the “free” and home of the “brave” exercise restraint?
  - devmunchies 9y ago
    Isn't that what I was saying? move the responsibility to the police and not the manufacturer. And I don't think your italicized quoting of the national anthem contributes anything to the discussion. It just shows how emotionally invested you are.
    - LeoNatan25 9y ago
      > It just shows how emotionally invested you are. Aren't you? Shouldn't everyone be, in light for such stories?
      - devmunchies 9y ago
        > stories the thing about stories is that there are always 2 sides.
      - __s 9y ago
        Nope, there's a set of people who take in information with a level head, regardless of whether they'll be called out as heartless for approaching any situation as potentially sensationalist, & seeking to maintain a rational discussion
mi100hael 9y ago
> The recent high school grad and aspiring art teacher collapsed on the sidewalk in cardiac arrest. Seriously, Reuters? Were you concerned the results of your investigation wouldn't stand on their own so you had to appeal to emotion just in case?
throwme211345 9y ago
Created a throw away for this. My brother had a run in with police (he is mentally ill) and they tasered him repeatedly. He was in excellent physical (former marine) condition and about 37 years old. When they delivered him to the hospital he was in severe shock and no effort was made by the nursing staff or officers to warm him. He was handcuffed to a sheets bare hospital cot. After begging with officers and nursing staff to provide blankets and water for about 15 minutes I finally appealed to the right cop (former marine) who got him blankets and water. The jail staff showed up closely after this and they were going to cart him off to jail without any further ado...however a physician needed to sign off. I could see he was in extreme physical distress as a result of his experience and the tasering. Thankfully the ER physician was competent and unbiased by police reported events and saw that my brother had the symptoms of cardiac related distress and related abnormalities and insisted that he be kept on site for monitoring and treatment. If it wasn't for a good cop and a diligent physician my brother would be dead now: I have no doubt of this.

307 points by jMyles 9y ago

Tasers need to go, it's bad enough to treat animals like that. At least before they shoot someone they think twice, and getting into a baton fight means risking getting hurt; this is not a bad thing in itself; the goal should be to de-escalate any situation and avoid violence.

artorias 9y ago
And how many criminals resisting arrest have you dealt with, this year?
Taek 9y ago
Tasers are a really effective way to neutralize someone violent. If a 200 pound man on drugs is charging at you screaming with rage, a taser gives you a good chance to survive without getting hurt and without shooting anyone. I'm certain that tasers have saved many more lives than they have cost simply because they have as much stopping power as a gun, and sometimes you really need that much stopping power. We need to treat them as dangerous, because they are dangerous. But they have a place in the law enforcement toolkit and it's a very important one.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  If you have that level of certainty that you should have no problem providing proof.
- andreasgonewild 9y ago
  I don't doubt that they are effective, I've seen them being used. What I'm questioning is the states right to treat its citizens like that, no matter how convenient. And they're obviously not as safe as claimed. What it seems to lead to is tasing anyone who doesn't agree with them without missing a beat, is that really the kind of world you want to live in?
- sp332 9y ago
  200 pounds is the average weight of an adult male in the USA.
  - damnfine 9y ago
    That is depressing as hell. I got up that heavy once and life was signifigantly worse.
- Spivak 9y ago
  Sure, but how about we put Tasers in the category of firearm alternative where the victim has better odds of living. Treat Tasers as lethal force and tell officers that if they wouldn't use their firearm then they shouldn't use a Taser either.
  - tomschlick 9y ago
    A taser wont (solely) be used in a lethal force scenario. If someone is threatening an officer with a knife, they counter with their own lethal force. Officers are always +1 on the force level. If you are combative, they use mace/taser, if you have a knife they use a gun, etc. The only exception to this is when an officer has backup on scene and they can coordinate enough to allow one or more to provide lethal cover (guns) while the others try to employ less lethal tactics (taser, mace, beanbag shotgun, etc). This way, if those less lethal items dont work (and they dont 30% of the time) they are not scrambling for their gun while a pissed off suspect is charging with a knife.
    - plopz 9y ago
      Is mace lethal? Putting it at the same force level as tasers seems weird.
      - tomschlick 9y ago
        No, its classified as "less lethal" which is the same as tasers, batons, bean bag rounds, etc. What people don't realize is that before tasers the method of making someone comply (when fighting handcuffs being put on) was batons or actual punches. Yes tasers may cause health issues in 0.001% of uses but batons and punches would cause many more. Also, a lot of officers don't even carry mace anymore as it generally sucks for everyone when its employed. They are going to get it on them via wind or handling the suspect and it impacts their ability to function.
        megous 9y ago
        > Yes tasers may cause health issues in 0.001% of uses... This is simply not true and weakens your argument quite a bit.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  I'd agree with all those points if use of tasers was limited to situations where guns would've previously been used, but their "less lethal" nature has meant they're used in a lot of situations where shooting would never have been acceptable.
- jandrese 9y ago
  Most people don't have a problem with using them in a situation like that, but zapping a tagger in the back is asshole behavior and should not be tolerated. There was no self defense here. The suspect is unlikely to be a danger to the community. It's a disproportionate response that ignores the inherent danger in the technology. I think Police should carry stun guns, but they need to be treated like the potentially deadly weapons that they are.
- athenot 9y ago
  Or... teach the police how to use their elbows, knees and fists. Then again, many members of the police have a hard time chasing a suspect by foot and are nowhere near in condition for even basic martial arts. Fun story: my massage therapist witnessed someone running away from a morbidely obese policeman and asked him if he needed help. Policeman agreed so he chased him accross a small parking lot. The policeman took his car to meet them a few hundred feet away and was still winded from his earlier attempt at running.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    That's not a fun story. That's a terrifying story. Cops can deputize a random passerby with no training to intervene in a chase?
  - burkaman 9y ago
    That's an and, not an or. Fists are dangerous too if you use them incorrectly. Police should know how to subdue someone with no weapons, a taser, or a gun, and know when each one is appropriate.
  - cc439 9y ago
    >Or... teach the police how to use their elbows, knees and fists. Well say goodbye to women serving as patrol officers. Also, elbows, knees, and fists are lethal weapons, just ask Eric Garner.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  If a 200 pound man on drugs is charging at you screaming with rage, a taser gives you a good chance to survive without getting hurt and without shooting anyone. So do a lot of other methods.
losteric 9y ago
That's a good point, but I think that > At least before they shoot someone they think twice doesn't hold in practice. Fight or flight translates to shoot or run, few police have the discipline to think twice and exercise caution despite personal risk. Tasers were adopted because they are a safer option for both the public and police - situations like this play out with both weapons, but the taser is less likely to be fatal. I think a more effective change is adjustable tasers, with a lower default power level. For most situations, the sheer shock of being electrocuted is enough of an immobilizer - the police don't need to start with enough power to paralyze a PCP fiend...
- iak8god 9y ago
  > few police have the discipline to think twice and exercise caution despite personal risk. Then shouldn't police departments improve their hiring and training practices until this is the case? These are people who are sanctioned to use violence in defense of society. They are widely considered heroes for putting their own lives on the line. It's not too much to ask that they are held to the highest standards of discipline.
  - losteric 9y ago
    Obviously. However, training alone is insufficient - training is the way to trust cops with real guns, but tasers and guns still fill different roles. Tasers are non-lethal ranged weapons, complementing non-lethal close-range (batons/pepper spray) and lethal ranged weapons (guns). To me, this incident highlights a design flaw in tasers - too strong and too inflexible. Years of evidence already highlighted the training failures in some regions.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Tasers are non-lethal ranged weapons, complementing non-lethal close-range (batons/pepper spray) and lethal ranged weapons (guns). All the examples in that sentence of “non-lethal” weapons are, really, merely less-lethal (than firearms); non-lethal is a factually-inaccurate label used for misleading propaganda purposes.

OliverJones 9y ago

"We serve and protect." "We serve ourselves and protect our own." Some police forces have procedures where they do things like --keep their distance from agitated people. --warn them several times and try to talk them down. --then say "taser taser taser" before discharging the weapon. These seem like good procedures to follow. If I were to assault a person suffering from a condition such as "excited delerium syndrome", and that person died as a result of my assault, I would be guilty of a crime known as "felony murder." I'm pretty sure the legal priniciple is stated as "you take your victim as you find him." It's not a valid excuse to say, "I didn't know the guy had a heart problem" if he has a heart attack right after I assault him." And, if I say, "I knew he had a heart problem," then that makes my crime worse.

revelation 9y ago
Eggshell skull: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull

balls187 9y ago

Probably a good thing TASER changed their name to Axon.

balls187 9y ago
> The recent high school grad and aspiring art teacher collapsed on the sidewalk in cardiac arrest. Also forgot "vandal suspect"
- Spivak 9y ago
  Sure, because killing someone is a totally acceptable response to vandalism.
  - balls187 9y ago
    Strawman.
    - damnfine 9y ago
      It is literally the facts ot the story. Repeating strawman does not further your argument, or anyones opinion of your reasoning skills.
- cliffy 9y ago
  The use of force to detain someone suspected of graffiti is disproportionate to the crime. Especially if the use of force could foresee-ably result in death.
  - balls187 9y ago
    Strawman.
    - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
      You keep using that word, I do not believe it means what you think it means.

albertgoeswoof 9y ago

The police shot someone with a taser for doing graffiti on an abandoned building? That is completely insane. You can literally rub graffiti off a wall, why would you risk killing someone for that.

Natsu 9y ago
Usually, use of force guidelines say that this level of escalation is only warranted when the person is actively resisting (e.g. attempting to strike the officer). This would be a good case to have body cam video for.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  The article didn't mention verbal warnings so I looked for the procedures and found this: https://cbsmiami.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/use-of-force.pdf https://cbsmiami.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/use-of-force.pd... It says use of ECD (Taser), as non-lethal force, is warranted to prevent inter alia damage to property, section 4.b.1.b. It also says verbal warnings should be given when they don't betray a tactical advantage. Once a warning is given, if you run you're resisting arrest, which is for good reasons a serious crime.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Resisting arrest and evading arrest are qualitatively different, though I don't feel like researching legal precedent on the topic right now to find which courts and circuits think what about it. Whatever the law says, the use of potentially deadly-force to prevent the application of graffiti is unconscionable. Graffiti may be aesthetically undesirable and property owners are within their rights to obstruct or remove it from their property, but adding a layer of paint to a wall does not damage the wall.
    - Natsu 9y ago
      It would seem that the use of force guidelines should be updated to solve this in the future and we should pay more attention to the rules and incentives the officers are working under.

Swizec 9y ago

Tased to death for spray painting McDonald’s windows :\ > the 18-year-old graffiti artist. The teen had been spotted spray-painting the blackened windows of an abandoned McDonald’s. > Within seconds, Officer Jorge Mercado caught up with him, drew his Taser and fired a single shot to the chest. The recent high school grad and aspiring art teacher collapsed on the sidewalk in cardiac arrest. The chase lasted six minutes. It was 5:20 a.m. on Aug. 6, 2013. At 6:18 a.m., he was pronounced dead. Whyyyy is using a taser against a teenager who’s running away even nevessary? Dude was doing some vandalism. If you can’t catch him on foot just let him get away. It’s not like he’s selling drugs to little kids or trying to punch you in the face.

hansthehorse 9y ago
Because a whole lot of cops go crazy when they feel disrespected and running away is the ultimate disrespect of their authority.
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  See also: the detective recently in the news for trying to coerce a nurse into illegally providing access to a patient's blood. He's been told by the nurse's supervisor that what he wants is simply not allowed by law and that it's not the nurse's decision, but then decides to forcefully arrest her because, in his own words, “she’s the one that has told me 'no'” [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/09/01/this-is-crazy-sobs-utah-hospital-nurse-as-cop-roughs-her-up-arrests-her-for-doing-her-job/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/09/0...
oh_sigh 9y ago
The story as written is a little ambiguous...what happened at the end of the chase is important. Did the cop just tase him as he was standing there with his arms up? Did the guy try to put up a fight? The answer to those questions is important and not covered in the article Edit: from a NYT article: > One of the things they learned, he went on, was that Officer Mercado explained his use of the Taser as having occurred as Mr. Hernandez-Llach was running toward the officer. It appears that is in dispute though. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/us/no-charges-for-officer-in-miami-taser-death.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/us/no-charges-for-offi...

Zanni 9y ago

The title of this post is much more inflammatory than the title of the actual article ("How Taser inserts itself into investigations involving its own weapons") and in no way justified by the link. That said, Tasering someone seems like an extreme over-reaction to this sort of vandalism.

jMyles 9y ago
> Four hours later, the Miami Beach Police Department received an email from stun-gun manufacturer Taser International Inc. > The message, marked “confidential” and not previously reported, provided guidance on how investigators should proceed, from collecting hair and nail samples to recording the teen’s body temperature and documenting his behavior before he was stunned. It included a sample press release and an “evidence collection checklist.” It seemed reasonable to me.
bb88 9y ago
There is a coverup in the form of providing an alternative means for the actual death. I would argue that if you're changing the narrative of history to provide deniability, then yes, it's a cover-up.

Synaesthesia 9y ago

Now of the most horrifying videos I have ever watched is of a cop who pulls over a teen and tases him, in the chest, which led to that kid falling into a coma and later getting brain damage.

mizzao 9y ago

TL;DR version: Taser claims its guns are safe and do not cause lethal injuries, marketing them as such. Deaths related to Taser usage are typically attributed to "excited delirium" through a complex web of relationships between the company, law enforcement personnel, and medical examiners. Excited delirium seems to be a questionable medical condition where several researchers studying this condition have financial ties to Taser.

Spivak 9y ago
I really don't see how 'excited delirium' in any way absolves Taser. It's supposedly a condition related to chronic drug use and mental illness that has no easily identifiable symptoms. If an officer (or really anyone) isn't able to determine with certainty that someone is not currently suffering from it then using a Taser is at best 'probably non-lethal' and that's before we get into people with heart conditions or pacemakers. Assuming that Tasers don't cause any long-term damage I'm actually okay with them as firearm alternatives. Just so long as we communicate that if an officer wouldn't pull out their gun, they shouldn't pull out a Taser.

FireBeyond 9y ago

Yeah, this is horrific. From a medical standpoint: "AED readings are important. Shock versus no shock" - this is basically allowing them to go one of two ways "Shockable", then they weren't 'fatally' injured by the Taser, and external circumstances caused the death. "No Shock Advised", well, they must have had a heart defect. Never mind that there are multiple rhythms beyond VF (Ventricular fibrillation), VT (Ventricular tachycardia) that can be recovered. The next three are basically trying to imply typically drug use interfered with cardiac activity and that, not the Taser, caused the cardiac event. It's basically "here's a laundry list of things that can exonerate Taser. Collect them."

matthewaveryusa 9y ago
This is a really interesting question. what are the legal repercussions for killing someone that's about to die? Is imminent death an extenuating circumstance? Could one argue that law enforcement would have used force that on average is much more lethal (gunshot), but instead used a Taser, and unfortunately they died because of the Taser? I'm a lot more comfortable with this defense than some sort of hot-potato "maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the taser" excuse.
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  Well, that's also a good question, but it's more nuanced than that. There may be cardiac stresses in play that are -exacerbated-, perhaps fatally, by the Taser. Certainly people die from cardiac complications from drugs alone, but the thought here is that Taser is trying to say 'underlying condition' killed the person, not the Taser deployment.
- AdamJacobMuller 9y ago
  > what are the legal repercussions for killing someone that's about to die? The example I have heard around this is that if you shoot, and kill, someone who is currently falling off a building you are still guilty of murder. The reasoning, I believe, is that anything grayer than "if you killed them, you killed them" very quickly devolves into an argument over what "imminent" is.
9y ago

rhcom2 9y ago

America needs oversight of police's use of force. We don't even collect good enough data and that opaqueness only helps abuse.

jseliger 9y ago
Until we eliminate police unions, that's unlikely to happen: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/opinion/sunday/when-police-unions-impede-justice.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/opinion/sunday/when-police... . Mancur Olson is also interesting on the topic of interest groups and rent seeking more generally: https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Collective-Action-printing-appendix/dp/0674537513?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Collective-Action-printing-appe...
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  Police unions are common enough around the world, but internal controls are generally better than we hear about in the US (and I suspect it varies within America as well). I suspect part of the problem is that police forces run by smallish localities, which can't have the same level of training and oversight as larger jurisdictions. But that's only part of the problem: major US cities also seem to have problems.

throw2016 9y ago

There is a common thread of over-zealousness and an unbecoming enthusiasm for using force in most of these cases. This has the undercurrent of authoritarianism and is not compatible with civilized society. The whole idea of law enforcement is they have the training to deal with confrontational situations with some degree of control and maturity. They have the training, weapons, access to backup and near endless resources. Any confrontation with an individual is already heavily biased towards their side, to lose control is more than reckless. For situations beyond basic law enforcement involving more than one person, for instance a riot or a gang, usually there are more specialized teams and strategies.

jMyles 9y ago

> In bold letters, marked “TIMELY AND URGENT,” the dispatch advised Miami’s medical examiner to send the teen’s brain tissue for testing to Deborah Mash, a University of Miami medical researcher. It did not mention Mash had been paid by Taser to testify on its behalf in lawsuits against the company. I mean... this is a truly hideous thing from a company whose history is already mostly hideous.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

21 9y ago

So, how many people die of "excited delirium" without them being tasered at all? IF we were to believe the Taser company, this condition is killing people all the time.

JshWright 9y ago
People can (and do) experience "excited delirium" without a cop anywhere near them...
- lovemenot 9y ago
  Even if you are right, your parent's point still stands. If applying Bayesian reasoning to determine the likely veracity of the Excited Delerium defence of taser-related deaths, then ED deaths in the general non-tasered poulation should be an important prior.

21 9y ago

> In an email, Kroll said his affiliation with Taser did not bias his research: “Due to this well-known relationship, I was motivated to be very careful to be extremely accurate and objective,” he said. Right, I'm sure he was extremely careful and objective in his research. It's funny how scientists who do "double blind testing", where they avoid even themselves knowing if a person received the control or not, because it's proven that it could bias the result, somehow are totally immune from bias because of research grants where the grant giver has obvious interests.

rdtsc 9y ago

> Ho served with Mash and another Taser consultant on a 19-member task force that prepared an influential 2009 white paper on excited delirium for the American College of Emergency Physicians, representing 31,000 doctors. The paper described the condition as “a real syndrome of uncertain etiology,” or cause. This is some special kind of evil. They not only have coroners and police departments in their pockets. But also invented a whole new disease and funded a "white paper" about it. They fully expected for this to end up in court from day one, as they know exactly what their product does to people. So they inoculated themselves by generating "scientific research" to shove in front of juries during a trial. "Oh look science! Victim was suffering from a case of excited delirium when officer Jones pressed the trigger. Here is a paper on it". After serving on a jury, I believe this would totally fly there. Juries are not allowed to research or study the facts about the case on their own. Once "evidence" is shown or an expert is declared "an expert in <blah>" then you are told to base your judgment on what they present.

21 9y ago
Unless, of course, the expert is from the defense: > Taser persuaded a judge to exclude a medical examiner and pathologist with 25 years’ experience whose testimony was central to the family’s case, arguing that it was “unqualified, unsupported and unreliable.” Or even better, sue anyone who says Tasers are dangerous: > Also in 2006, Taser sued electrical engineer James Ruggieri, who wrote a peer-reviewed study that said Taser shocks were more dangerous than the company stated. In its lawsuit, Taser said Ruggieri was mounting an “anti-Taser campaign,” was unqualified to do so, and made money from delivering anti-Taser presentations and appearing as an expert witness. And make everybody afraid to implicate a taser: > Such cases have an impact on medical examiners, according to a 2011 survey of 222 medical examiners nationwide. Its conclusions: 14 percent said they modified diagnostic findings due to the possible threat of litigation from Taser, and 32 percent said that threat could affect future decisions.
- sova 9y ago
  Any time I read "Taser persuaded" I am reminded of their primary form of persuasion. Scare tactics should not fly in Court

trhway 9y ago

giving the terms Taser uses in its own publishing - "neuromuscular incapacitation" and "electro muscular disruption" - it takes a non-trivial twist of mind (triggered for example by $20K+ expert fee) to attribute stop of heart to something else. While with low probability (1 in 6000), there is specific conditions when Taser will almost for sure cause ventricular fibrillation - it is when dart hits 1cm2 patch right over the ventricle in people with heart located closer to skin (i guess usually it would mean smaller and/or thinner people, and there have been other studies that shown reverse correlation of [probability of] damage [and VF in particular] with body weight) : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17355063 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17355063 Basically each 6000 times Taser is deployed there can be expected a death.

Aaron1011 9y ago

Part one of the three-article series: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-taser-911/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-tase...

program_whiz 9y ago

Any surprise here? First, why would any company not be involved in investigations of their company, are investigators supposed to obtain all the information to investigate them from some unbiased third party that has never heard of taser? Secondly, how can you expect a company to lobby against its own interests? If you have power and money, and your livelihood is on the line, its ethical to use whatever means are available to defend yourself. Is it wrong to hire the best attorney for your defense just because they may be friends with the judge and a celebrity attorney? Also, how can you expect police and others to be unbiased when this device has probably helped them or saved their own life at some point. Are they supposed to ignore the fact that this is a critical tool in their belt?

parenthephobia 9y ago
> If you have power and money, and your livelihood is on the line, its ethical to use whatever means are available to defend yourself. Not under any system of ethics I'm familiar with. Indeed, I would imagine that a big part of most ethical systems is about _not_ abusing your power. For example, most people would consider it unethical for a company to manipulate, bribe, intimidate, and discredit people in order to suppress evidence of the harmful nature of that company's products. > Is it wrong to hire the best attorney for your defense just because they may be friends with the judge Are we talking about the godfather to the judge's child, or somebody who has coffee with him a few times a month? If it's the former, any decent judge would recuse himself - and the other attorney would rightly kick up a fuss if he didn't. > Also, how can you expect police and others to be unbiased when this device has probably helped them or saved their own life at some point. Are they supposed to ignore the fact that this is a critical tool in their belt? No. But, an ethical person would weigh the benefits Tazers offer against the risks they introduce: and it's hard to do that when Tazer systematically suppress evidence of those risks.

program_whiz 9y ago

Everyone in this forum seems to think that using a taser is inhumane and officers should instead use batons or their fists. The problem is that the officer has to assume that if an attacker is getting violent, they are attempting to get the gun. They can't read your mind, and they don't know if they can beat you in a fight -- they have to assume that because they have a loaded firearm you might take it and use it. So any use of force needs to be measured against "if this fails they get the gun and we don't know what the state of mind or capabilities of this attacker are".

1_2__4 9y ago
This is completely wrong on so many levels it's breathtaking. You do realize (prettt sure you do) that you're making a case that any amount of physical resistance should be reasonably met with deadly force?
- program_whiz 9y ago
  Yes. Imagine you have a loaded gun and you've heard someone is committing a crime, so you go to the scene to investigate with no prior knowledge of the person. If they punch you in the face your options are: A) Assume you can probably take them physically, and they are a reasonable person who's just punching you because they've had a bad day, if you're wrong innocents may die. But wrestle and punch them anyway. B) Hit them with a stick, they will probably go down. If they manage to grab your gun while you're doing this, you and many innocents nearby may die. If they rush you, the stick may become ineffective. C) Assume the person who is punching you may be trying to get the gun, draw your gun so they can't grab it first, then if they don't immediately stop, shoot them. Taser is like C. You have a taser, if you try to "punch them back" or "wrestle them down" or even "grab your baton", the person may just grab the gun and kill you and other innocents. No one should ever resist arrest EVER -- just comply, go to the station, argue your case, and hire an attorney. If the police tell you to get in the cuffs, just do it.
  - someone7x 9y ago
    You are of course entitled to your opinion, but to me it's astonishingly bleak. I can only imagine that whoever wrote the 4th amendment is rolling in their grave now.

User23 9y ago

"Specifically, we were mapping the vulnerable period of the cardiac cycle. This interval, lasting a mere 0.035 of a second in duration, occurs with each heartbeat. It is the only moment in the cardiac cycle when the heart is susceptible to ventricular fibrillation. Once the chaotic rhythm of ventricular fibrillation ensues, the heart stops pumping blood. Spontaneous recovery is impossible. Within a few minutes life is extinguished. Electrical current, irrespective of intensity, will not disrupt the heart’s rhythm if delivered outside the vulnerable period." https://bernardlown.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/thumpversion-for-the-tasered/ https://bernardlown.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/thumpversion-fo...

Gaelan 9y ago
Assuming heartbeats occur about once per second, that’s a 3.5% chance of a taser shot being in the vulnerable period. That’s pretty big.
- dzhiurgis 9y ago
  You can easily double or triple that during the exciting moment of a chase/arrest/crime.
JshWright 9y ago
"Thumpversion" is more commonly called a "precordial thump", and there's very little evidence to support its use. You're much better off doing chest compressions until an AED is available. There is practically no evidence supporting his "recommendation" that the police use it routinely (if it doesn't delay CPR, then sure, give 'em a punch in the chest, but the evidence behind it is _very_ shaky).

geggam 9y ago

Running voltage from one side of the heart muscle to the other is bad... very bad. You can die from >100 milliamps this way with no drugs in the system. Not real sure who thinks tazing is non lethal... its less lethal advertised as non lethal

quickConclusion 9y ago

Now you would think we need more body cams and recorded videos... and guess who is advertising free body cams to all US police officers: Axon/Taser. https://www.axon.com/info/offer https://www.axon.com/info/offer Axon is actually the new name of Taser... which makes now money by selling systems archiving, managing, and analyzing police officers body cam videos. https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9724644/police-tech-body-cams-transparency-violence-taser https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9724644/police-tech-body... There is an obvious conflict of interest here: it could be so easy to conveniently delete a video incriminating a Taser device...

devmunchies 9y ago
Is it easy though? Its incredibly risky? It could tarnish their reputation with police forces and risk lawsuits. And are you saying they shouldn't be in the business of providing cameras to authorities because of a possible conflict of interest? They are a public company and have a responsibility to maximize profits. They made millions last year from evidence storage services. And I would hope the engineers are building their infrastructure in a way that prevents tampering, otherwise the engineers could be held accountable for any very risky evidence deletion. And I think body cams is a more ethical business than tasers anyway, helping to hold police and citizens accountable for their actions.
- quickConclusion 9y ago
  I hope it would not be easy to delete content, but the article shows how much we need to worry about it, when we see how much Taser goes to extra lengths to protect their weapon, and how they collude with the police force in the process. I would prefer if the vendor selling the video systems did not also sell weapons. They could be split in 2 companies and dissociate ownership of each. Beyond Tasers guns, it also warns us how important the governance model for video archival/retrieval system is. Because if the police force is the client, there is a business incentive to absolve the police officers in case of issues. How to define that governance model is above my pay grade, but this is something very important, that goes beyond engineers in the trenches.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

It seems nonsensical to me that Taser is making a distinction between whether or not the electric shock was responsible for someone's death. If they hit their head on the fall, that is still because someone shot them with a Taser. Drug use, health conditions, etc. all are the same: An officer is still applying a weapon to someone, and if the result is death, then the Taser was responsible. I haven't heard anyone realistically call a Taser "non-lethal" in a long time. They're called "less lethal" for a reason: They're less likely to kill someone than a gun. (You can survive gunshots too! Just... less often.) It's hard to imagine a reasonable case for firing ANY weapon at a graffiti artist. Using a Taser is just one of many levels of a use of force, and it's hard to imagine a justification for it with such a minor offense.

bostik 9y ago
> It's hard to imagine a reasonable case for firing ANY weapon at a graffiti artist. How about personal inconvenience due to an itchy trigger finger? And if the graffiti was in any way subversive, you could make a case for attempting to commit journalism.

devmunchies 9y ago

To play devils advocate to most in this thread, what is Axon/Taser to do about people potentially holding them accountable for every taser related death? Tasers are a better alternative to guns. Axon can't possibly be liable for every death. The police have to have some accountability with their use of a weapon, just like with hand guns, right? Obviously the more liberal the police are with tasers, then the more accidental deaths there will be. So if the police treated them like firearms, then Axon wouldn't need to get so involved to try and defend itself. Gun manufacturers are never liable for gun related deaths. Is the problem how tasers are marketed as non-lethal? Do people want to see tasers outlawed and have the police go back to using guns? EDIT: if this isn't a relevant contribution to the discussion, I don't know what is.

LeoNatan25 9y ago
How about police in land of the “free” and home of the “brave” exercise restraint?
- devmunchies 9y ago
  Isn't that what I was saying? move the responsibility to the police and not the manufacturer. And I don't think your italicized quoting of the national anthem contributes anything to the discussion. It just shows how emotionally invested you are.
  - LeoNatan25 9y ago
    > It just shows how emotionally invested you are. Aren't you? Shouldn't everyone be, in light for such stories?
    - devmunchies 9y ago
      > stories the thing about stories is that there are always 2 sides.
    - __s 9y ago
      Nope, there's a set of people who take in information with a level head, regardless of whether they'll be called out as heartless for approaching any situation as potentially sensationalist, & seeking to maintain a rational discussion

mi100hael 9y ago

> The recent high school grad and aspiring art teacher collapsed on the sidewalk in cardiac arrest. Seriously, Reuters? Were you concerned the results of your investigation wouldn't stand on their own so you had to appeal to emotion just in case?

throwme211345 9y ago

Created a throw away for this. My brother had a run in with police (he is mentally ill) and they tasered him repeatedly. He was in excellent physical (former marine) condition and about 37 years old. When they delivered him to the hospital he was in severe shock and no effort was made by the nursing staff or officers to warm him. He was handcuffed to a sheets bare hospital cot. After begging with officers and nursing staff to provide blankets and water for about 15 minutes I finally appealed to the right cop (former marine) who got him blankets and water. The jail staff showed up closely after this and they were going to cart him off to jail without any further ado...however a physician needed to sign off. I could see he was in extreme physical distress as a result of his experience and the tasering. Thankfully the ER physician was competent and unbiased by police reported events and saw that my brother had the symptoms of cardiac related distress and related abnormalities and insisted that he be kept on site for monitoring and treatment. If it wasn't for a good cop and a diligent physician my brother would be dead now: I have no doubt of this.