Cause and (sometimes delayed) effect

The officer that tasered 17-year-old Darryl Turner has been suspended for five days. The issue (according to police officials) was that the officer did not follow standing orders and held the trigger down for 37 seconds for the first tasering. Thus, the suspension.

Charlotte Observer [LINK] [Video available at a link from that site]


Now - this is predictable - pro-taser minions will point to the fact that Turner did not fall down stone cold dead during or after this first excessively long tasering. They will hold this up as evidence that there is no causal relationship between the taser and the death.

They're truth-denying idiots.


Let's look at the relationship between cause and (sometimes delayed) effect.

Example 1 - [General example] No denying that thunder often follows lightning. But at 5 seconds per mile there is sometimes a long delay between the flash and the rumble.

Example 2 - [Recent tragic news] While putting up backyard antennas on the afternoon of Sunday, 13 July 2008, Edward Thomas, of Kansas City, Kansas, and his son were electrocuted. The elder Thomas, 65, was pronounced dead at the scene. His son, 27, was rushed to the hospital but died later that day.

Example 3 - [Officialdom] On March 30, 2008, an officer held down the trigger on his taser for 37 seconds in violation of standing orders. A 17-year old later died. The officer is suspended for five days THREE AND A HALF MONTH later. There's no denying the cause-and-effect relationship here, but the delay is over three months (in spite of the data being available that same day).


Question - Why not include simple timer chip? First asked in December 2007 [LINK]


And now that everyone is slowly coming to the realization that long duration and/or multiple taser shocks might be dangerous (possibly even lethal), what does that do to all the assurances from Taser and Kroll that tasers are essentially perfectly safe "under all circumstances"?


So Charlotte is sitting back waiting for the legal papers. [LINK]

Taser should be shivering in their boots too. This one (being such a cut-and-dry example) might result in a judgment in the 8-figure range.