Mission Statement - De-Spinning the Pro-Taser Propaganda

Yeah right, 'Excited Delirium' my ass...

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The primary purpose of this blog is to provide an outlet for my observations and analysis about tasers, taser "associated" deaths, and the behaviour exhibited by the management, employees and minions of Taser International. In general, everything is linked back to external sources, often via previous posts on the same topic, so that readers can fact-check to their heart's content. This blog was started in late-2007 when Canadians were enraged by the taser death of Robert Dziekanski and four others in a short three month period. The cocky attitude exhibited by the Taser International spokespuppet, and his preposterous proposal that Mr. Dziekanski coincidentally died of "excited delirium" at the time of his taser-death, led me to choose the blog name I did and provides my motivation. I have zero financial ties to this issue.



Thursday, January 31, 2008

Mr. Smith goes to Ottawa (on 15:1 safety margin)

Well, I heard him say it. It was in relation to the Member's question about minimum weight of the victims (60 lbs, i.e. tasering children is fine).

Smith said the taser has a "fifteen to one safety margin" (15:1).

And as is his little propaganda trick, he did not specify which taser model he is referring to. But I'm fairly certain that the study in question (being rather fundamental to their whole operation) was from the early days before the X26 was introduced in 2003. And thus was for the M26 or earlier models, but probably not covering the X26.

So, given that Taser has defended itself against Ruggieri by claiming a 100:1 safety advantage for the older M26 due to the 50 kHz high frequency, and the newer more powerful X26 is only 19 Hz low frequency (and thus must walk away from the claimed 100:1 advantage of high frequency), they appear to be left with little (if any) safety margin for the X26. The only safety margin in practice would be the placement of the barbs, the victim's condition, and pure luck.

And that may explain why newer studies (on the newer X26) are seeing more problems than that huge stack of old, probably obsolete, studies that almost certainly predate the X26.

Smith also stated, in response to a direct question from a Member, that Taser had no information that the X26 model is more dangerous than the M26 model.

I'd recommend checking into that claim.

More later.

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