Paul Rutherford gets his facts wrong

Read the entire editorial here [LINK]. This post just points out the flaws.


By PAUL RUTHERFORD

It's becoming disgustingly routine for everyone shocked by a taser to claim they didn't deserve it or that it was used improperly by RCMP, provincial or municipal police officers.

Well duh! That's because it has been disgustingly routine for the RCMP, provincial or municipal police offices to misuse, overuse and abuse the taser. Follow the news much? Duh!


...Our [Winnipeg] cops 'shocked' suspects [and victims that were clearly not 'suspects'] using a taser about 150 times during 2007 and 2008 with only [!?!?!] one death. Let's be honest here. The majority of times a taser is deployed it's legitimate. They are used instead of guns because shock is a better option than bullets.

So, ah, putting all your statements [highlighted in BS Brown] together in the manner that you seem to intend. You seem to be claiming that the police in Winnipeg (just one city!) would have had lawful cause to fire off 150 bullets towards various subjects in two years? And therefore 'thank goodness for tasers...' Are you good with numbers?

This gun-fire rate ('replaced' by 150 taser incidents) would have made the Winnipeg police the worst band of murderers in Canadian history.

The very statistics you quote clearly indicate that the taser most often replaces something other than police gun-fire.

The fact that you actually wrote "...used instead of guns..." [PUHLEEZE!] clearly indicates that you haven't paid the slightest attention to the taser news over the past several years.

The fact is that tasers are used, as so clearly indicated by the taser rate in Winnipeg, about 100 times [ball park! we can dicker over the exact number...] as often as police historically have used their guns. And then CBC found that the gun-fire rate didn't change anyway!!

This old lie ("...used instead of guns..." ) is the worst taser lie of them all. It's so old, stale and completely shredded that even the folks at Taser have walked away from its stinking carcass.

So PuhLeeze stop repeating it. It's just making you look like an ill-informed, empty-headed, pro-taser fan-boy. The logical and numerical flaw is bleedingly obvious if you think for about the number "150" for about 5 seconds. There's simply no excuse for repeating the lie.


...If Jane Doe was doing nothing but scratching paint and she was shocked with a taser because cops got a little too anxious or went on an ego trip, that's a serious problem. Any weapon in the hands of a careless law enforcement officer becomes lethal...

No. The taser has some special characteristics that seem to cause it to be misused, overused and abused. I have figured it out and it's explained here [LINK]

Also, the taser training is clearly defective (judging by outcomes).


But frivolous lawsuits against every cop that uses a taser because some parent thinks they had no reason to is just as bad.

No, there is a serious problem with tasers in Canada and other countries. In the USA the ACLU has had to approach the US Supreme Court to ask if taser torture is to be allowed to continue, or not. It's a big deal. People are having their untimely deaths 'contributed to' (that's a coded placeholder phrase until the proof issue is solved) by tasers.


It's only a lethal weapon when protocol isn't followed.

Bull feathers! Example - officially (so far), the RCMP officers in the Dziekanski case were following the approved procedures. That's just one example. There are many cases where the taser has been identified as a 'contributing factor' [wink] and the officers were following their approved taser-anyone-anytime procedures.


There are some little sections of Mr. Rutherford's editorial that I don't disagree with (he seems to share the outrage over the clear cases of abuse), but to have this many major errors in such a short editorial, and to be caught spreading obsolete taser propaganda without even noticing, is actually an embarrassment.