Wishful thinking by Owen Sound Police Chief Tom Kaye

Chief Kaye makes some claims that fail to stand-up to a trivial degree of skeptical scrutiny:


Owen Sound Police Chief Tom Kaye, who also serves as Vice-President of the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, [and has been loudly all pro-taser fan-boy recently, which is the reason that we're taking on his statements and claims] ...says the report on taser use by the Owen Sound Police Services shows that there is a role for these devices by officers. He says the report is an example that tasers reduce the number of injuries and save lives. [LINK]


Owen Sound police actually used their tasers twice in 2008. They had a field-failure rate of 50% - one taser dart missed - which they amusingly blamed on the World's Fastest Suspect...

...the suspect managed to partially dodge one of the two taser barbs, rendering the strike incomplete. [LINK]

Do the math: taser dart velocity is supposedly 55 meters per second, maximum range is 10.6 meters, this works out to a required reaction time of less than one-fifth of a second (193ms), and that's maximum - assuming maximum range. More realistically (at mid-range) - it implies a reaction time of about 0.1 seconds, including the time for the subject to move his body mass sideways. What next - subjects dodging bullets a la The Matrix?

Beep beep beep beep beep
Excuse me a second - I have to reset my BS Detector...
...Okay.


So tasers save lives in Owen Sound, eh?

Beep beep beep beep beep
Damn, my BS Detector has gone off - again!
...Okay.


Kaye is using the plural version of the claim - which could be interpreted as him claiming that the taser has saved multiple lives in Owen Sound during 2008. I'll be very generous and we'll just say that it's maybe one, or maybe two, okay? Puh!

Okay then - let's do the math.

The population of the 'city' of Owen Sound is something like 25,000 [LINK]. I have nothing against small towns - love 'em. But this small-town population is about 0.08% of the population of Canada. So if police in Canada - hopefully lawfully, reasonably and justifiably - kill about 12 people per year with their guns, then the 'expected share' for Owen Sound, in proportion to their minuscule population, is about one person every 100 years.

Expect about one fatal police shooting every century in Owen Sound. Roughly.


In other words, if the police in Owen Sound were shooting to kill even as few as two people in a single year, or perhaps about three (*) within a period of several years, then Statistics 101 would recommend an investigation into What the hell is going on in Owen Sound?

(* Once is Happenstance, twice is Coincidence, three times is Enemy Action.)


Thankfully, there is no evidence that the police in Owen Sound are on this sort of murderous rampage.

Which means the taser is a "solution" to a "problem" ("saving lives") that exists only in the minds of those that have been brainwashed by Taser International.


Read that again: the taser is a "solution" to a "problem" ("saving lives") that exists only in the minds of those that have been brainwashed by Taser International.


So it's not really a 'solution' after all.


Which leaves only the very real taser problems which we have so carefully documented below.

Such as - after using tasers in Owen Sound several times per year for one hundred years, then you'll almost certainly be looking at some "taser-associated" deaths.

Not to mention the issue of them often being used for torture (a.k.a. excessive 'pain compliance' as described so clearly in CC 269.1, a.k.a. Touch Torture mode, a.k.a. "Drive Stun" mode, a.k.a. 'replacing the glowing end of a lit cigarette' mode).


Is anyone out there paying any attention to our publicly-paid police chiefs spouting off this sort of misleading pro-taser propaganda?

And why are the news outlets soaking it up without even engaging a brain cell to think about it for a few seconds to see if it computes?


So tasers save lives?

Yeah - but only in your dreams sunshine.