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Taser International Wins Lawsuit to Change Cause of Death
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Taser International recently started a legal campaign against medical examiners who claimed tasers contributed to the cause of death for several people. On Friday, an Ohio judge ruled in favor of the stun gun manufacturer (free registration may be required). While they do have a number of scientific studies on which they establish their claims, it's interesting that the alternate cause of death they champion — excited delirium — appears only in police reports on the deaths of difficult or drug-addled inmates, not in medical textbooks. Of course, that may change soon — Taser is funding and promoting research on the subject. Coroner reports such as the ones in this case contributed to the UN's opinion that taser use is torture."
Its not the device its how its used in both the case of the tazer and the gun. If have a gun and shoot you in the kneecap while I am asking you questions because you give me an answer I don't like that is torture. If I shoot you in the gut because you're attacking me or my family that is not torture. My intent was to protect myself by incapacitationg, and I had the need to do that; it was not that I specifically meant to case you agony.
If cop uses a tazer once to subdue an unruly suspect long enough to get handcuffs on him/her that is not torture. Once again the intent would to incapacitate you long enough to get control of a dangerous situation. If that Officer continues to use the tazer on you after you are already handcuffed laying face down in the dirt I would say that is torture. There is no more need in that case to be inflicting agony on you. The intent is now just cause you pain and that is well wrong.
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Yes, the theory is that the taser is used instead of a gun, in the situations where otherwise they'd have to shoot. Too bad it doesn't seem to work that way. It seems to work more like: when they would have used a gun, they'll still use a gun, but now have the taser for the rest of the time.
Off the top of my head, I remember such gems as:
- guy with a medical emergency calls 911, cops show up first and tase him in his bed. Apparently they thought he lunged at them. While lying on a bed across the room.
- student doesn't have his library card at the library, and is already leaving (so wtf of a danger did he pose?), campus security guards tase him repeatedly.
- some idiot decides to streak naked, gets tased. I can think of at least two of these.
- schoolkid threatens to cut himself with a piece of broken glass, gets tased.
- 12 year old schoolgirl is found skipping school, gets tased.
- 75 year old grandma insists too much to visit an old friend in another nursing home, a cop gets called and tases her.
- guy gets agitated after being kept IIRC for 12 hours without access to food, water or his medicine in an airport, cops tase him to death. Literally: tased repeatedly, until he dies of heart attack.
Etc, etc, etc.
Here's my question for all the "well, it's better than being shot" gang: exactly which of those would have warranted a bullet instead? No, seriously, I'm curious.
AFAIK not even in Stalin's USSR or Mao's China would they shoot a sick guy for just calling an ambulance. And no country in the world takes school _that_ seriously as to shoot a 12 year old for skipping school.
No, it's already used in _addition_ to the gun, not instead of.
And here's a funnier thought: we already have plenty of evidence that it's used repeatedly. Some even on camera. In some cases it seems to be police stupidity: they see a guy spasming after the jolt, and they think it's some kind of resisting arest, so they do it again. In some cases it seems genuine torture. They've been given free hand to use the taser, so they'll cause you some more pain just because they don't like you.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
BZZT. One of the very first things you learn in gun safety courses is that you don't point the gun at some(one/thing) unless you plan on shooting that person / thing.
Once you point the gun at someone you have immediately escalated into deadly force. If the perp doesn't back down - you have to shoot him. That's the entire idea behind a taser - non lethal force. This isn't like TV where people hold guns at each other and talk rationally, defuse the situation and move on to a commercial.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Your argument is only relevant when talking about punishment, which is given to someone who has already been restrained, and should be decided about by a court of law rather than officer Tenpenny. Tasers, however, are not tools of punishment, they're tools of restrainment. When restraining a suspect, the only acceptable standard is to use the minimum neccessary force; altought, obviously, one must make allowances for the fact that the one doing the restraining doesn't have the benefit of hindsight or, neccessarily, a chance to calmy consider his options, so he might err in his estimation of "minimum force".
What I'm getting at is that it doesn't matter whether the one you're restraining is a retard or a genius. Either way you either use the minimum force neccessary, or you belong behind the bars yourself.
So no, the fact that more can be expected from humans than animals doesn't mean that you can go taser-happy on humans. If anything, it means that people who hold power over others - embodied in devices like tasers, for example - have no excuse whatsoever if they abuse it. And using that power beyond what is neccessary, for example tasering someone unneccessarily, is abuse.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Do you just shoot them? Beat the shit out of them until they stop? Those both are much more lethal than a taser could ever be.
You assume Tasers and similar devices are used instead of guns. They're not. They're used when you could not get away with using a gun (or even with beating the suspect senseless). Which is why we see them used against children, people who are already restrained and annoying questioners at political rallies. In situations where the taser wielder would certainly not have considered shooting or hitting the subject an appropriate action.
I think that just means the police need to be held more accountable for their use
If shooting someone with a taser was regarded as equal to shooting them with a gun, I'd happily see them deployed all over. Then it would actually be a question of using a taser _instead_ of a gun.
Personally, I'd say the taser is not in itself the problem, it's that the taser is regarded as 'nothing' by police (as instructed by Taser International).
If the taser was billed instead as an extreme and possibly fatal means to subdue a subject or a 'less lethal' form of gun we might see more appropriate use.
Furthermore, use of a taser or other electrical stun device in an already restrained individual IS torture pure and simple. It's no more acceptable than handcuffung and then beating the subject.
I recently saw a training program where officers are themselves tazed briefly in a controled situation so they will understand exactly the effects of the force they might use on a subject. That seems like a good idea to me and is very likely to lead to more appropriate uses.
IMHO, Taser International is so anxious to advertise their product as perfect and a panacea that they CAUSE it to be mis-used through disinformation. It does the officers no favors either. They use the device in an honest belief that it is less brutal than throwing the subject to the ground and pinning them with a knee only to find themselves facing a wrongful death proceeding.
As for pointing a gun, absolutely NOT. A good rule to follow is to never point a gun at anything you don't want dead. Another way to put it is if you pull out a gun you BETTER be ready to use it. Pointing a gun you don't intend to use will get you killed as soon as the other person figures out that you don't intend to fire. The death rate from accidental firing would probably exceed the death rate from taser misuse.
Whether or not the policeman was justified in using a taser isn't the issue. The cause of the death is what is in question here.
If the policeman used his gun and killed the suspect then we would say the cause of death was a gunshot wound. We would not change the cause of death to "excited delirium" simply because the action was justified.
In the case of a highway barrier, I imagine we would say that the cause of death was the car's impact with the barrier, regardless of who is at fault.