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.



Tuesday, August 18, 2009

So who this Dorin Panescu and the others?

Taser International's appeal to quash some aspects of the Braidwood Inquiry specifically mentioned several individuals by name.

Dr. Charles Swerdlow has already been quoted as saying that he felt that he already had a good hearing, and he has distanced himself from the claims of 'unfairness' made by Taser International.

If you need a visual image, Taser International has just been shot in the knee cap by someone they thought would help their appeal.


Dr. (apparently not an MD) Dorin Panescu has been the subject of several previous posts.

His presentation [LINK] came close to setting a new Guinness World Record for oversimplification. And it also appeared to demonstrate that tasers do not actually have any effect except on the muscles between the darts. [LINK]

Even with this utterly crude computer model, he still concluded that the margin for cardiac "capture" (an 'effect' if there ever was one) was only 1.7 to one. Another knee cap shot to hell.

And he mentioned in passing that the older M26 provided HIGHER (safer) margins. This a monsterous 'I Told You So' for this feisty blogger since this conclusion is counter-intuative given the lower peak current of the X26.

Another interesting incident is described here [LINK]. No firm conclusions can be drawn, but it sure was a weird series of blog hits and some peculiar coincidences with where (geographically) they were apparently coming from.

Dr. Bozeman has been quoted pointing out that tasers leave little postmortem evidence. [LINK] That message was explicitly noted by Judge Braidwood.

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