"Shortly thereafter I was contacted by [Taser International, Inc.] directly to reconsider my statements to the media," he said. "They even offered to … give me grant money for research."

**and I wonder WHO would be the subject of such research. Pigs perhaps?
That's how the vivisection industry works.

Do a non human study--then have someone else do it again to disapprove the results.
If that doesnt work, you do it again. If it works, then the other side does it again.

"Much of the scientific justification for the safety of tasers is based on formulae that don't examine their use in the "real world," Dr. Tseng said."

Dick (shotgun) Cheney seems to be a "real world" kind of guy; maybe he would volunteer in a study to see if tasers pose a threat to people with pace-makers.

Uh oh! Looks like Canada, or at least British Columbia, may have to be "liberated" very soon if they're going to insist on holding inquiries and bringing forth evidence that conflicts with the official party line.

Interfering with Taser International's inalienable rights to profit as a corporate person is bad enough. But, next thing you know, they'll be bringing up stuff about global climate change that might contradict "scientific facts" as sanctioned by that undoubted scholar and genius, George W Bush.

Tasers do have a place in the use of force guidelines, however there should be strict rules when to use them.
Regardless of my health, I'd sooner be shot with a taser than with pistol.
In a society where people are able to do anything they want, regardless of the legality, Police are the only form of forcible social control. Anything a police officer does to control people carries some degree of risk to that person. In the old days it was a club or blackjack, or they simply shot the person. With the development of alleged non-lethal weapons, the police were given an option to beating a person into submission or killing them.

Many of the problems with non-lethal weapons are from the lack of proper training, and the alternatives methods that most police are not trained in, nor tend to use because of various reasons, or because of the violent nature of many police.

But the problem, Edward, is that those "alleged non-lethal weapons" are not what their promoters lead policing agencies to believe. The real point of an inquiry such as this is that there may be at least some chance of appropriate handling and usage if the actual risks involved are made clear to all concerned.

A small hand net or bolo works without killing. The ever growing mountain of corpses shows that Tasers are deadly.

From The Globe & Mail 10 May 2008:

"Kamloops RCMP tasered an 82-year-old man in his hospital bed last Saturday after he threatened hospital staff with a knife.

Frank Lasser was in Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops for pneumonia last weekend. At about 5:30 a.m. on Saturday he began to threaten the staff and pulled out a pocket knife, hospital spokeswoman Darshan Lindsay said. Although the hospital's on-site security tried to handle the situation, it escalated and staff called RCMP.

RCMP tasered Mr. Lasser shortly after arriving."

The knife in question was a three inch pocket knife; Mr Lasser is a heart patient and weakened because of it and there were three RCMP and two security officers present to subdue him.

It's time to ban or very seriously restrict these damned things.

Long retired NFL great Carl Eller recently got into a tussle with Minneaplolis police. They tasered him with no effect! (Other than he realized he had better calm down before they shoot him.)

The Globe and Mail is a watered down version of what we are hearing generally ...

Inquiries are sometimes televised on cpac.ca. I would look at the videos on the right as well:

Charge from energy weapon alone not deadly, Taser inquiry told

First phase of inquiry scheduled to run until May 23

A Taser gun doesn't routinely kill people, although the conducted energy weapon delivers electric current up to 85 times what's lethal, an American electrical engineer told a public inquiry in Vancouver Monday. ...

The Taser is not a "benign device" but it has a "low, small probability" of causing injury or even death, said Reilly, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in the U.S., who studied the Taser for the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice four years ago. ...

During his testimony, Reilly said studies commissioned by Taser International have pronounced the weapon as safe, but he pointed out that those studies avoided delivering the Taser's probes to the chest.

"If you were concerned about avoiding a heart incident, that would be one reason why you'd put the Taser darts on the back," he told the inquiry.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/05/05/bc-taser-inquiry-monday.html

Taser has low probability of causing death: expert

he risk of dying from the effects of a Taser is very small, but the electric shock could affect the heart, an expert said Monday at a public inquiry into the use of the conducted energy weapon in British Columbia.

J. Patrick Reilly, a researcher and electrical engineer at Johns Hopkins University, carefully explained the device's effect on the body and how someone could die after being shocked.

While he said the probability of death is small, he would never want to be jolted by the device.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080505/taser_inquiry_080505/20080505/

AH! Now I get it. It's not the tasers. It's the just coronary ineptitude of some hearts reacting to the shock. So the tasers themselves are "non-lethal".

Would it be fair to say that bullets are also "non-lethal" and that the real fault lies with those torn up internal organs and blood vessels that fail to repair themselves? And, of course, "if you were concerned about avoiding a heart incident", it's probably best to avoid shooting people there.

RE: Mr Lasser is a heart patient and weakened because of it and there were three RCMP and two security officers present to subdue him.

I wonder why three RCMP officers figured that they needed to taser Frank Lasser (interviewed, see video on right):

RCMP subdue hospitalized man, 82, with Taser

An elderly man in Kamloops, B.C., was zapped three times on the torso by a police stun gun while lying on his hospital bed, CBC News has learned.

Frank Lasser, 82, appeared fragile Thursday when he showed the Taser marks on his body and talked about the ordeal he went through Saturday.

"They [police] should have known I had bypass surgery," Lasser told CBC News.

Lasser has had heart surgery and needs to carry an apparatus to supply oxygen at all times. He was in the Royal Inland Hospital Saturday due to pneumonia ...

"I was laying on the bed by then and the corporal came in, or the sergeant, I forget which it was, and said to the guys, 'OK, get him because we got more important work to do on the street tonight,'" Lasser said.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/05/08/bc-kamloops-man-taser.html

There were a few WPG Free Press articles of interest (might as well skim through the whole week's paper because there are quite a few Taser related articles so won't give you dates)

Ohio judge orders stun gun references removed from autopsies

AKRON, Ohio - An Ohio medical examiner must change her autopsy findings to delete any reference that stun guns contributed to the deaths of three people involved in confrontations with law enforcement officers, a judge has ruled.

The decision was a victory for Taser International Inc., which had challenged rulings by Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler, including a case in which five sheriff's deputies are charged in the death of a jail inmate who was restrained by the wrists and ankles and hit with pepper spray and a stun gun.

Kohler ruled that the 2006 death of Mark McCullaugh Jr., 28, was a homicide and that he died from asphyxiation due to the "combined effects of chemical, mechanical and electrical restraint."

Visiting Judge Ted Schneiderman said in his ruling last week that there was no expert evidence to indicate that Taser devices impaired McCullaugh's respiration. "More likely, the death was due to a fatal cardiac arrhythmia brought on by severe heart disease," the judge wrote.

Taser competitor says the device was rushed to market without proper care

VANCOUVER - The company that sells more conducted energy weapons to law enforcement than any other rushed to market with faulty safety and medical research, claims the head of a company that plans to market a device to compete with the Taser.

Ken Stethem, founder and chairman of Ageis Industries, told the public inquiry into Taser use that Taser International's methodology was flawed in designing, developing and deploying the conducted energy weapons.

Normally a company would develop medical and safety data, then test the product on animals and humans, Stethem told the inquiry.

"In my humble opinion that's not how the current CEWs were developed and deployed. And that's why we're having problems today.

Stethem disputed several claims made by Taser on medical evidence and safety connected to the device.

He pointed to Taser's patent information that says the device puts out between 100 and 500 milliamps of electricity.

Medical experts say it only takes about 100 milliamps to cause the heart to go into a fatal rhythm, Strethem told the inquiry. ...

Tseng said any normal, healthy person could die from a jolt of the conducted energy weapon if the shock was given in the right area of the chest and during the vulnerable point in the beating of the heart.

He stressed the risk of death is far greater if there is adrenaline or illicit drugs coursing through the body or if the person has a history of heart or other medical issues. ...

Tseng said there needs to be much more real-world studies on the use of the weapon, instead of using police officers - often large, healthy males - to test the device.

He also said medical examiners should be given more freedom to investigate such deaths, even seizing the weapon for investigation if necessary.

"If there's a person that dropped dead suddenly after Taser application and you can find nothing else on the autopsy, I would venture to say that's due to arrhythmic death."

The risk to suspects being shocked could almost be zero to the heart if police avoided using the weapon in the chest area, and Tsang suggested that be one of Braidwood's recommendations.

Tsang also said police should avoid repeated shocks to lessen the chance they'll set the heart into an abnormal rhythm.

If you read some of the reports, you get the idea that tasing someone is fun, for the cops. A guy gives you lip, or doesn't move on when told, you tase him. If he falls down and keeps twitching or thrashing after you have told him to lie still, you tase him again, and again. That will teach him to follow orders.

Tasers are used at the drop of a hat, for the most trivial offenses, often in multiple shots. They are used on already restrained prisoners who are protesting, or trying to resist.

It used to be that three or four cops would beat the crap out of a person with their nightsticks, if they felt he was giving them lip, or resisting arrest. Now they can all just keep shooting him with tasers and crack jokes as he writhes on the ground.

Same sick society, just a new toy to use.

great video out there called 'the miami model' -- several years old -- regards use of tasers at globalization protest -- very scary indeed

Before tasers were even a gleam in the eye of a corporate CEO, in an electrical safety lecture over twenty years ago in biomedical engineering, I was taught that an applied voltage across the chest, entering the body by any means, can potentially cause a ventricular fibrillation by disrupting a random number of heart cells that have just left the "refractory period", after the normal coordinated contraction. The result is a large number of heart cells are out of sync with other groups of heart cells, and a circus movement of conduction excitations occurs that do not die out, characterizing the fibrillation electrical conduction pattern. The condition is more likely to occur in those with physiological abnormalities, and disease conditions with enlarged hearts, but it is a potential scenario with anyone. The lecture was in the context of the importance of earth leakage detection trigger circuit breakers , designed to reduce the possibility of this sort of thing.

Libertas, a commercial for Taser to the tune of the old "slinky" song:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9ymMODRu_sI

I bet I can kill any test subject with a Taser. Any volunteers?

I have an idea. Try tasering a cop and arguing in court that it wasn't assault with a deadly weapon. I wonder what their "experts" would have to say then.

Tasers are NFG...

someone shsould develop a tazer proof coat.

Less critters to feed and consume the worlds resources. Thats their thinking. You are just animals to them. The fewer animals the better.

Do you ever notice or at least any video I have seen that the person being tasered IS IN HAND CUFFS and laying on the ground!!!!
Now I can say I have been in handcuffs and your level of resistance is reduced about 95%. On top of that you are out numbered 4 or 5 to one and they even have guns. I feel anyone sick fuck who uses a taser in those situations sound like the current president and should see a shrink

In regard to the man in hospital 82 years old. If he is ill what danger does he pose? Is it just that he is argumentative? If so, wouldn't talking to him be as effective?

I also read about a man who did not speak english so he became very upset that he was being questioned as he could not understand what they were asking and did not have the tools to answer. They tasered him.

When did our country turn into a police state?

Something y'all haven't mentioned here is the pain...

That the pain needs to be addressed is obvious and makes it crucial to determine if tasers cause deaths because it has a direct bearing on the question of torture!

If the tasers cause both pain and death, then it is torture! If it only causes pain, then it is not torture!

You mean tasers will either kill you, or hurt your health permanently? Duh! What fool couldn't figure that out? Tasers nedd to be outlawed. Period.

Poor Robert Dziekanski wasn't just tasered. Three cops knocked him down and one knelt on his neck while they zapped him repeatedly. Robert was freaking out because he didn't speak English and had been trapped in the no smoking area for eight hours trying to get someone to help him get oriented. He needed a smile and a handshake and a smoke. Used to be that's what Canada gave everybody! Now it's death by police enthusiasm.

I want one like that pictured above. I'd like to have an automatic or pump action reload. I want the dart to be effective at 100 feet. I want it for use in my high school classroom. I promise not to over-use it.

I want an authorization to carry a .357 mag. revolver as a backup for students who come packing after their Taser incident.

I want cops who pull me over on the highway or terrorists who enter my classroom to be just as afraid of me as I am of them. They shouldn't get to carry all the weapons. Carrying the means of self-defense should be a constitutionally-guaranteed right of every American.

Don't tread on me.

RE: When did our country turn into a police state?

When did Harper's Tories assume power? Though Martin and Cretien were not all they were cracked up to be either.

The 82 year old man had a pocket knife in his hand at the time he had trouble breathing and doesn't seem to have much memory of what he did just before he had trouble breathing. It is deductible from what he usually used a pocket knife for - and I would say probably cleaning his fingernails.

Taser company's legal clout hangs over inquiry

VANCOUVER -- An Ohio court decision ordering a state coroner to remove all reference to Tasers from autopsy results is an "appalling interference,'' says British Columbia's chief medical officer.

The top medical examiner in the U.S. called the court ruling last week "dangerously close to intimidation.'' ...

The maker of Taser shock weapons sued the medical examiner of one Ohio county after she named the use of their stun guns as a contributing factor in three deaths in her jurisdiction.

Taser, which has an impressive line-up of lawyers on staff and a stunning legal winning streak of 68 and 0, asked the court to force the chief medical examiner to remove any reference to the use of a stun gun as a contributing factor in the deaths.

While the chief coroner of B.C. declined comment, the province's chief medical officer was blunt.

"I think this is appalling interference in transparency, in trying to find out what actually is going on,'' said Dr. Perry Kendall.

He could not recall similar legal cases involving Taser in Canada, but Kendall said he hoped the Ohio ruling is appealed.

"I doubt that it will stand. At least I hope it wouldn't stand.''

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080511/taser_ruling_080511/20080511/

RCMP release heavily censored incident report about Dziekanski

The RCMP released an incident report about Robert Dziekanski who died at Vancouver International Airport last October, but much of the information routinely released in other cases was censored.

The name and rank of the officer who fired the Taser weapon, his supervisor's name, details about the duration of the firing and the number of times the weapon was used in stun mode were omitted from the report obtained under the Access to Information Act by CBC News and the Canadian Press.

Though Dziekanski's name has been struck from the four-page report, it is readily identifiable as his case, listing basic details familiar to those who watched an amateur video of the RCMP arriving on the scene and shortly thereafter firing a stun gun at him.

A written summary of the incident was blanked out along with assessments as to whether use of the Taser helped the RCMP either "avoid use of lethal force" or "avoid injuries to subject or police." ...

In a letter accompanying the report, the RCMP said it invoked exemptions under the Access to Information Act to protect the privacy of the person stunned and to guard confidences about the force's investigations and weapons.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/05/11/taser-dziekanski.html

thefifthman wrote: Oh God, when will the RCMP ever learn that the cover-up attempt always just makes things worse?!

The head of Taser is supposed to be testifying today - now that should be interesting ...