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.



Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Another nice summary...

Although the X26 and older M26 tasers are each rated at about 2 milliamperes "average", they are also 151 mA and 162 mA RMS respectively. This information appears on early revisions of their specification sheets (and has been confirmed by outside investigators), but has been curiously expunged from later versions of those Taser specification sheets. Given that 2mA is way down in the "causes discomfort" range and is considered to be below the value needed to lock-up muscle, it seems quite suspicious to claim that the "average" current is the value to focus on. The RMS values (industry standard method to quantify AC) are highly interesting, as is the fact that they been expunged from their later data sheets.

Not everyone believes Taser's (Kroll's?) overly-complicated and almost-unbelieveable explanations about how they can lock-up a victim's muscles without having even the slightest possibility of affecting the heart. Considering the IEC479-1 safety limits are intended to protect 95% of the population (leaving 5% at risk in the worst case), and considering the very long tail of the Bell Curve out to 0.01% (for example), it makes one think that perhaps things are overlapping more than they've ever considered.

Also, all the parameters that Taser claimed were safe on the 1999-era M26 "Advanced" taser are the opposite on the 2003-era X26. The X26 taser is low frequency (more dangerous than high frequency) 19 Hz and continuous duty cycle for each 5 second cycle. Everything they used to explain away previous criticisms of the M26 are the opposite on the X26. If the M26 waveform was so precisely crafted, then why is the X26 waveform the complete opposite?

The Chairman of their in-house Medical Advisory Board was sitting on stock options worth roughly a mega-buck (depending on how the stock price went) while chairing this in-house committee. Smells like a conflict of interest.

Bernie Kerik was on Taser Board during some critical periods. Look him up to see if he's been accused of being a model citizen or not.

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But to be clear, if the taser was employed as it was supposed to be employed (as a replacement for the gun), then who would care about the exact level of safety? But because Taser claims it is PERFECTLY safe (cardiac-wise, as exemplified by this trial [LINK]), it is being used about 100x more often than the gun ever was.

THAT'S the issue.

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