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.



Sunday, August 17, 2008

The RCMP very concerned about the RCMP

Canadian Press - ...Email documents, released to The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, showed great concern from Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day's office down to the RCMP's British Columbia media relations office over the public's perception about the death of Robert Dziekanski. ... [LINK]

Great concern for themselves. Apparently no mention of concern about the surprisingly low actual level of safety of the taser (supposedly incapable of causing death from internal risk factors such as cardiac effects). Although several percent (after denominator washing excluded) sounds low, it is many many orders of magnitude above Webster's '1-in-10 million'.

One idiot wrote to the RCMP expressing their support (not that there's anything wrong with that) and expressing their inexplicable hope that drugs might have caused Dziekanski's death. Drugs in his system? After spending the better part of two days in airports and crossing borders, customs inspections, baggage x-rays, airport security? Wishful thinking that. Of course it is just barely possible, but the odds are extremely long.

Of course, ...No drugs or alcohol were found in Dziekanski's body, but the cause of death still hasn't been released.


Although I've not seen any reports with this level of detail, I'm willing to bet that at least one of the taser darts landed on his chest somewhere close to his heart. If anyone has any contrary information, then please pass it along.

Coroners and/or Medical Examiners involved in the Dziekanski case might wish to review this recent case: Three coroners agreed that "Pikes died of cardiac arrest caused by the taser shocks..." [LINK]

In other words, the taser isn't quite as safe as Taser thinks (correction: says) it is.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You are going to have to wait for a while for the inquest to convene, as the provincial inquiry has to be completed first and the second part of the inquiry is going to produce the same witnesses as the inquest, so chances are you will have a bunch more expert witnesses coming to the inquest prepared to do battle of the first round of experts from the inquiry on both sides.