To be honest, I'm having difficulty keeping all these incidents straight. When I see yet another "taser ineffective" headline or news report, at least the third one in about as many days, even I (the world's greatest skeptic) have difficulty believeing that the new headline represents yet another ineffective taser incident. I have to check the details several times to convince myself.
LEOMINSTER — Authorities continue to investigate the shooting Friday of a man who allegedly brandished a knife at police officers. Authorities said a police officer shot the man about noon Friday after an attempt to subdue him with a Taser electroshock weapon didn’t work. ... [LINK]
See also [LINK].
UPDATE - The Worcester district attorney's office has identified the man shot Friday by Leominster police as Joseph Graham, 19, of Fitchburg. ... [LINK]
The public safety issue here is that the police often have a wide choice of options available to them. But having swallowed the hype that the taser is "safe and effective", they often turn to it too quickly. This choice is often an escalation in the level of violence. Then when the taser is ineffective, they're left with fewer options. This is how rates of police gun fire can go up with deployment of tasers.
Tasers that are ineffective can be extremely dangerous.
It is certainly something that should be tracked and considered when calculating the karmic balance of weapons that are proving to be neither reliably safe nor reliably effective.
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