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.



Saturday, November 14, 2009

DEFECTIVE TRAINING

It's been perfectly clear that a large part of the problem with tasers is that they're accompanied by training that is clearly defective. This training is almost entirely based on one-sided corporate propaganda from Taser International.

For example:

Training officer says using taser on handcuffed prisoners not always wrong [LINK]

Officer Peters is a taser training officer. "You are using the taser to gain and maintain control," says Officer Peters.

This statement might seem to be reasonable, but it actually subtly wrong on multiple levels.

  1. With the incident in Lansing [LINK], it is not likely that the officer would have been handed a two week suspension if tasering the handcuffed subject could be justified.
  2. Even if the subject is still struggling in handcuffs, is the taser then still the best option? Any consideration given to the subject making a face-plant into the concrete?
  3. Officer Peters shouldn't make these sorts of statements that might, perhaps, be applicable to the 0.1% of incidents without including very strong disclaimers noting that tasering subjects that are already handcuffed, for purposes of perverse street level 'justice', is not only wrong, it's also illegal.

Officer Peter's statement is "correct", but only perhaps 0.1% of the time (a generous guesstimate). That makes his sound-bite statement nothing more than a toss-away red herring that adds nothing to our understanding of the incident in Lansing. It contributes nothing except distraction.

Mark it down as "defending his Faith", in the Church of Taser.

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