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."

Comments

Glorified Cattle Prod

[Neuropol]

Just fire up the sidearm electrocution device.

It's torture my any means.

It's unlawful restraint.

We don't do this (legally) to animals in public, although some do in private, but they'll be dealt with accordingly. So, given that one simple fact, then why should humans be subjected to it?

Don't tase me, bro.

Re:Glorified Cattle Prod

[Anonymous Coward]

Beat the shit out of them until they stop? Those both are much more lethal than a taser could ever be.

You know, back in the old days.. maybe say a whopping twenty years ago, cops were actually trained and were able to apply techniques like swarming to take somebody down. Nowadays we have stupid, lazy, out of shape (tho round is a shape) cops who would rather push a button and BBQ somebody than to put on a set of graphite loaded leather police gloves and do their fucking jobs via jointlock, strategic hit with a baton, etc. I live in southern Ohio, and it seems like about fifteen percent of our cops are actually willing to do their job and have the ability both mentally and physically to do so. Most of the rest of these people couldn't pass a U.S. Army P.T. test, which is incredible since many patrol officers are making 50-70k in a low cost of living area. Standards, anyone?

And before anybody goes there with "what if they've got a knife?".. then the .40 cal comes out and you blow them away. Full stop. If the perp escalates it to that point then so be it.

Tasers are far too antiseptic and easy to use. Woman doesn't get out of the car at a traffic stop? Tase her. Guy mouths off to you? Tase him too. Twelve year old school kid doesn't want to go to detention? Fry her! It's just so easy.. if they displease you and disrespect your authority, well light em up! Hell, it's just the push of a button away and there are few consequences!

Re:Glorified Cattle Prod

[ColdWetDog]

Well, in most cases, I'd think that pointing a gun at someone is a good way to get them to stop. I don't mean FIRING the gun at them, but I mean simply pointing it.

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.

Re:Glorified Cattle Prod

[ultranova]

I am sick and tired of this stupid argument. People are NOT animals. We have control over our actions, and MOST of us have control over our actions and thoughts. We are less willing to induce control and "restraint" on children because they are not as capable of controlling themselves. As such, its a simple thought proccess. The more control you have over yourself, and the greater the ability to understand your actions and there reactions, the more willing we are to restrain someone. Take for example the argument that we should not execute the mentally challenged. Why? They are incapable of understanding several key things. Same with children, animals, "vegetables", ETC. Those groups of subjects are given special consideration as far as restraint and discpline.

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.

Re:Glorified Cattle Prod

[Znork]

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.

Re:Glorified Cattle Prod

[sjames]

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.

Re:Glorified Cattle Prod

[sjames]

BZZT.

I agree with you, but you probably shouldn't have tazed him.

Re:Still torture

[DarkOx]

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.

It doesn't work that way

[Moraelin]

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.

Re:FUD on both sides

[Reader X]

OK, can I ask you some questions to maybe help de-FUD the debate:

1. It's clear that some individuals, because they were full of illegal drugs or possibly for other reasons, have died after being shot by tasers. It's also been asserted that at least one police officer has died in a training exercise after being shot by a taser; presumably he or she was not full of illegal drugs. So, knowing this and assuming the above is true, would you willingly be shot by a taser again as part of a training exercise?

2. You stated that the taser must be used appropriately, and made reference to drugs and unnamed medical issues. Could you define more specifically what that means? Having read the TFA, do you think there is a possibilty that the taser is being used inappropriately either by accident or on purpose?

3. As a police officer, you and your coworkers are obviously constantly in situations where you're subjected to serious bodily harm, and let me be the first to say that as a citizen I deeply appreciate it and think the police are not supported as well as they should be from a financial and operational perspective. That being said, do you believe that the mitigation of serious injury is worth the death of a suspect? Put another way, would you forego the use of the taser and accept increased risk of bodily harm if you thought there was a heightened risk of the suspect's death?

4. Per 3) above, I also strongly believe that a civilized society needs to rigorously oversee the use of force to enforce the law. Are you comfortable with the level of oversight that a coroner's inquest provides on the use of both lethal and nonlethal force? If not, why not?

5. It seems clear to me that in seeking the decision referenced in TFA, Taser International is motivated by the desire to avoid liability for the use or misuse of their product, and perhaps less so by the desire to protect officers. Do you agree? If not, why not?

All of the above assuming that you have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning than post to Slashdot. Feel free to ignore.

Thanks for the thoughful commentary.

Re:hysterical

[pjhenley]

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.

u.s. police lack basic takedown training

[Maxmin]

is the barrier's intervention "the cause of death"?

Nice.. so peace officers are now equivalent to mindless, monolithic slabs of steel and concrete? Highway dividers do not think, they just obey the laws of physics, and react according to their design and construction.

Police officers, on the other hand, are thinking human beings capable of making a variety of decisions, all of which can change the outcome of encounters with "unruly individuals."

But it seems that North American cops are somehow incapable of basic self-defense, unless it involves hardware with a button or a handle on it. In many other parts of the world, "unruly individuals" are subdued using basic grappling and/or martial art skills. Something American police departments seem to have little interest in.

Check out this cop trying to arrest an unruly individual, drunk or on drugs. This officer obviously has no idea how to take control of a suspect, drunk or sober.

This cop can't even control a 90lb 15-year old girl! Then he pepper-sprays her just to show who the boss is. Unbelievable!

Compare and contrast with some of the many grappling techniques available for police officers to learn.

When properly trained in subduing unruly individuals, police officers can change the nature of the confrontation, into a situation they control. The cops in the two sample vids exhibit all the traits of loss of control of the situation: pleading, bullying, ineffective physical control, fear of becoming a victim, and reacting to that with weapons to regain control of what in other hands would be easily controlled individuals. Both lost the element of surprise when they physically engaged the subjects without an apparent goal or outcome in mind, and they both appear to lack basic takedown skills.

But hey, if they can make their jobs easier at the push of a button, why not? That's the American way!