Another taser death today. (more than 150 deaths total)

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xdarkyrex

Vault Senior Citizen
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/18/taser.death/index.html

(CNN) -- A 20-year-old man died Sunday after being shot with a Taser device during a scuffle with a sheriff's deputy in Maryland, a spokeswoman for the Frederick County Sheriff's Office said.

Cpl. Jennifer Bailey said deputies responding to a report of a fight in progress arrived at the location in Frederick, Maryland, just before 5 a.m. ET and found four people fighting.

A deputy used a Taser device on one of the men, who fell unconscious, Bailey said.

The man was taken to Frederick Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. His identity was not immediately released, pending the notification of his family.
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Heres the real kicker in the article though, and the main reason I posted it-
Amnesty International has reported that, since June 2001, more than 150 people have died in the United States after being subdued with a stun gun. The organization has called for police departments to suspend use of the devices pending study of their possible risks.
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I had no idea it was so many... :o

thats more than 2 a month!

and that doesnt include deaths before mid 2001, unreported deaths, non-death permanent injury, and deaths in other countries.
 
the taser guns are not the cause of the death, its pre-exsisting circumstances that the taser gun exacerbates which causes the death.

its like the whole AIDs thing. AIDs/HIV does not cause people to die. attributing any deaths to AIDs/HIV is wrong. its the diseases people get while they have AIDs/HIV that kills them, not the aids/hiv itself.
 
so the electricity didnt kill them, it only caused the cause of the death?

well if this many people obviously have negative reactions, maybe we ought to stop using them and avoid unnecessary deaths?
 
The problem are not tasers. The problem are cops using tasers when there is no need to.

Tasers are supposed to replace guns in situation where lethal force would otherwise be necessary. In practice, they are sometimes even used in before a police officer would use a baton -- simply because they leave no obvious injuries and are almost guaranteed to knock the target out, instantly.

All weapons are potentially lethal. Even a punch, kick or thrust can result in severe injuries or death. Thus, tasers should be handled as a less lethal alternative to handguns in short range, but not as a universal knock-out device.

In the case where a guy got pissed off at the airport and was tased to death consequently the use of the taser could have been avoided because he was unarmed and gravely outnumbered.

It's obvious why police officers like tasers (they're easy to handle and you don't risk injury, as opposed to grappling a resisting suspect), but the police officer's safety always has to be secondary to that of civilians (within reason, of course -- if the suspect e.g. holds a hostage at gun/knife-point, he's pretty much dead meat).

Of course that makes the police's job more difficult and more dangerous, but it was never supposed to be easy anyway. The whole separation of state power thing makes governing more difficult, too, but without it we'd still be in the Dark Ages.

Final word: Tasers are useful, but they're an addition to the toolset, not a replacement. Old fashioned talking or grappling will often do the job. Not every problem is a nail.
 
xdarkyrex said:
well if this many people obviously have negative reactions, maybe we ought to stop using them and avoid unnecessary deaths?
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Yeah, let's stop using them and instead use...ehr...ehm...

use...

ehr...

Oh yeah, that's right, there is nothing safer than the taser that is still as effective!

Considering the amount of lives proper use of the taser saves, 150 deaths over more than 5 years is nothing.
 
Whats the death toll of people shot by officers? Give them tasers. Most often they save more lives and more injury than they cause. 150 people isn't a whole hell of a lot.

BUT they should find a way to leave marks on the subject to prevent it being used as a torture device that leaves no marks.
 
Am I the only one who's heard of directed sonic weapons and dazzlers?

:/
wiki and google guys, there are plenty of alternatives to tasers.


and don't forget mase!
 
xdarkyrex said:
Am I the only one who's heard of directed sonic weapons and dazzlers?
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Dazzlers are illegal by UN protocols, sonic weapons are, as far as I know, no less lethal than tasers. Both are not fully developed for police deployment.

Your point is no point.

xdarkyrex said:
and don't forget mase!
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Mace is too short-range.
 
Brother None said:
xdarkyrex said:
Am I the only one who's heard of directed sonic weapons and dazzlers?
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Dazzlers are illegal by UN protocols, sonic weapons are, as far as I know, no less lethal than tasers. Both are not fully developed for police deployment.

Your point is no point.

xdarkyrex said:
and don't forget mase!
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Mace is too short-range.
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no, dazzlers are only illegal if they permanently blind.
The US military is using temp-blind dazzlers in Iraq right now.
 
xdarkyrex said:
no, dazzlers are only illegal if they permanently blind.
The US military is using temp-blind dazzlers in Iraq right now.
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What the US military does always has little to do with the UN, and is no indication of the legal (or moral) implications of using this as a law-enforcement tool. There is no such thing as a guarantee that something blinds temporarily, note.

For several reasons, including that in a crowd you can't exactly use a dazzler to blind the guy holding the gun without expecting massive casualties, dazzlers are not that interesting anyway.

Regardless, you're ignoring the point that neither dazzlers nor sonic weapons are ready for use now or in the near future for law enforcement, and tasers are. Also, the chances of doing permanent damage aren't significantly lower for sonic weapons or even dazzlers to shout "here's a ready-made solution!"

The biggest problem with tasers are the potential for abuse, not the chance of doing permanent damage.
 
Of course. That's where the tax money goes. Somehow police officers seem to forget their physical training when they can use a taser to do the job for them.

The problem with tasers isn't the death rate. It's the frequency with which they are used, which is way off.

I won't go anywhere near the sonic/microwave/whatever future-tech developments, though. Somehow split-second boiling of your skin doesn't sound particularly harmless, especially if you consider that the exposure (intensity AND duration) is highly variable in practice.

As a rule of thumb, anything that has a lethal potential if misused WILL be misused eventually. Personally, I prefer weapons where that misuse can't be a tool for traceless torture and violation of human rights.
 
janjetina said:
A police officer should be able to subdue an unarmed person using physical force only.
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No, a police officer should be able to subdue an unarmed man in a manner appropriate to minimize the risk to all involved, and in accordance with the escalation doctrine of his department. Batons, stun guns, and tasers are all appropriate tools when called upon by the situation. Generally speaking, most escalation doctrines in the US place the use of the Taser just below the use of lethal force.

As Ashmo stated, however, the unfortunate tendency is to use the Taser before it is called for by the escalation doctrine, because it minimizes the risk, both physically and in a liability context, to the officer.

The Taser is very effective in what it does. I have had the (dis)pleasure of being shot with one, twice, under semi-voluntary conditions. Even prepared for it, it was still quite painful. Though it left no lasting marks, it certainly left an impression on me.
 
Ashmo said:
Questionable sex practices.
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Exactly.

I have a weakness for well-endowed brunettes, which lead to two minutes of writhing on a mat in agony.

Many years ago, when I was considerably younger and dumber and the taser was relatively new, one of the conditions for being issued the taser in my department was that you had to get shot with it.

The older models had a variable shock pulse delivery; you got the initial shock, and then by the press of the button, you could receive additional shock pulses until the device was discharged. Hilarity ensued. Wisely, the newest model of taser pulses at pre-defined intervals and set charge times. I know this because I was fairly recently tased with the newest model.

Second time I was tased was at a law enforcement trade show, by, I kid you not, a Playboy bunny. By this time, Taser International had grown quite a bit larger, and were sponsoring both a Nascar vehicle and a trio of very attractive women who had posed for Playboy. They were demonstrating the newest civilian Taser, which resembles a computer mouse and comes in several different colors, yet packs the same unpleasant Taser goodness.

For those of you who are really paranoid, Taser's newest product is a remote unit for protecting secured areas unmanned.
 
SHOCKBOTS!?

Ugh... I thought robots were supposed to be friendly and effeminate, not patrolling deathborgs with tasers and the will to use them!
 
Did the SWORDS in Iraq completely bypass your awareness? They're still somewhat remote controlled, but I'd suspect that's only temporary.

What would you get charged with if you tased a copper?
 
Ashmo said:
Did the SWORDS in Iraq completely bypass your awareness? They're still somewhat remote controlled, but I'd suspect that's only temporary.

What would you get charged with if you tased a copper?
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Yes, yes they did... (I'm not a real-world military buff, so sue me)

You'd probably get charged with assault on an officer, if I recall correctly that's pretty much a guaranteed stay in the stony lonesome.
 
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