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.



Monday, June 23, 2008

An interesting question...

In a previous post [LINK] I had mentioned an interesting question. Allow me to repeat the question very clearly here. It relates to the data for Canada only.

(Data source: TNT [LINK], right hand column: Deaths in Canada)

2007 Sept. - 1 taser-associated death in Canada
2007 Oct. - 2 taser-associated deaths in Canada - public outcry begins
2007 Nov. - 2 taser-associated deaths in Canada - public outcry extreme
2007 Dec. - none - public outcry continues
2008 Jan. - none
2008 Feb. - none
2008 Mar. - none
2008 Apr. - none
2008 May - none
2008 Jun. - none so far (to 22 June)

The Question:

Why does a massive public outcry in late-2007 affect the lethality of arrest techniques involving (or not) the taser?


(I think that the answer is exceedingly obvious. ...)

And the next logical step is direct civilian oversight bodies - with teeth - for every single police force in Canada. After all (for example), there's no evidence that the government-of-the-day is exercising any control over the RCMP. Has anyone seen anything from Mr. Day yet? Anything at all?

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