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.



Friday, May 23, 2008

Victoria's taser use 3.8x Toronto's

Toronto: "Last year [2007], according to Toronto Police, local cops deployed Tasers 404 times and fired the weapon 187 times." [LINK]

Victoria: "An analysis of 183 Victoria police incident reports from 2005 to 2007 [assume three years] revealed the device was used in push-stun in 57 per cent of all cases where police activated their Tasers." [LINK] I will assume that Victoria 'deployed' (but may not have fired) their tasers 183 times in three years, or 61 times per year.

Population:
Toronto: 2,500,000 (at least) [LINK]
City of Victoria and Esquimalt: 100,000 (tops) [LINK]

Note - I'm being very generous towards Victoria with the above input data. I went with the lowest population number I could find for Toronto, and the highest stretch for Victoria.

Taser incident rates (includes non-firing incidents):
Toronto, ON: 404/2,500,000 = 16 per 100K population, per year
Victoria, BC: 61/100,000 = 61 per 100K population, per year

Victoria is 3.8 times higher than Toronto.


Let's try it again by police officer count.

Toronto: 5,710 uniformed officers [LINK]
Victoria:
222 police officers [LINK]

Taser incident rates:
Toronto, ON: 404/5710 = 7 per 100 officers, per year
Victoria, BC: (183/3)/222 = 27 per 100 officers, per year

Victoria is 3.8 times higher than Toronto (again).


I guess Victoria really is a very dangerous city, what with all those elderly folks lawn bowling all morning and having tea every afternoon. Those retired folks sure are a rambunctious lot.

"HEY YOU! Drop that bocce ball now."

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