Mission Statement - De-Spinning the Pro-Taser Propaganda

Yeah right, 'Excited Delirium' my ass...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

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, January 25, 2009

Taser's claimed safety margin of 15-to-1

Taser, and their leading brain-trust member Dr. Kroll, claim that the X26 taser has a safety margin of 15-to-1 and is therefore very, very, very safe.

Meanwhile people are being tasered and immediately dying.

But (according to Taser) those incidents don't matter - because they know that the taser is safe.


A previously-posted comparison of known and stated incapacitation levels, with a view of bypassing all the crap, indicated that perhaps the actually safety margin was closer to 2-to-1. [LINK]

If true, then this very simple sanity-check type analysis indicates that the bell curves are overlapping far more than they had anticipated (which would explain perfectly the real-world death rate when taser darts land on chests and eliminate all those increasingly-insane explanations they've been going through).

Remember the excuses used by Taser when they escaped from Ruggieri? It turns out that the excuses they used apply only to the older 1999-era M26. The newer 2003-era X26 taser current waveform has characteristics that are the opposite. [LINK]

If you watch Taser's arguments carefully over time, you will notice them wriggling like a little worm under the hot stare of a magnifying glass.

Even if we assume that the older M26 taser did actually have a 15ish-to-1 safety margin for some percentage of the population, then it seems unlikely that the same safety margin would have survived the two significant changes in frequency spectrum and (especially) in duty cycle brought by the newer X26.


I notice that neither Taser, nor any police departments, have yet accepted my challenge to have the police trainees don a face shield, turn-around, and take their training hits in the chest (the same way they're delivered on the street). The fact that all the training hits are universally delivered to the back of trainees is a clear-cut admission of the risk of chest hits.


"...15-to-1 safety margin..."

Bull!

More like 2-to-1, maybe.


Which overlaps the bell curves of 'individual susceptibilities' and the weapon itself...

...and this results in people...

... (people that in many cases did nothing to deserve death) ...

...dying.


It all fits.


A moratorium is obviously required to capture the attention of those that are ignoring these inconvenient facts, to provide time to fix the obviously-defective training, and to address the dismissed-until-now liabilities, etc. etc. etc.


And since recent studies have again indicated the counter-intuitive (to some) truth - that tasers don't necessarily make the world a safer place - there is no reason to hesitate.

Police need to be able to fully justify any gun fire. So they're not likely to start killing innocent citizens if we take away their taser torture toys long enough to educate them to the real-world dangers and risks.

No comments: