Repost: ...M26 vice X26 death rate per deployment

Since this blog now has nearly 1500 posts, it's not likely that anyone is going to stumble across the most important findings. For that reason, I will occasionally 'repost' previous posts to highlight important topics.

If 'tasers-R-safe' and they have no lethal impact on the subjects, then there should be zero difference in the raw death rate per deployment between the older 1999-era M26 and the newer 2003-era X26.

Wanna place any bets?

Unanswered question: M26 vice X26 death rate per deployment

(20 August 2009) [LINK]

See a previous post from 7 April 2009: 'Call for Data (M26 vs. X26)' [LINK]

The limited (Canadian RCMP) taser usage data available suggests that there was a period during which the older (1999-era) M26 was actually deployed far more often than the newer (2003-era) X26. Another Canadian data set seems to suggest that during this same period the taser-associated deaths were dominated by the perhaps less-frequently deployed X26. These data sets [LINK] do overlap - but one is just the RCMP taser usage, and the other includes all taser-associated deaths in Canada (all police agencies). But even so, it is still very curious...

For "some reason", the later taser reports that I can find don't seem to mention which taser model was used during taser-associated death incidents. Combined with the previous observations, my suspicions are raised.

If this taser model / taser death imbalance is supported by a proper, complete, statistically-rigorous review of all the taser-associated deaths in Canada, then it may prove to be damning evidence that could be used to cut through the claims made by Taser International.

[Mathematically: T claims M=0 and X=0 (or X=M=0). If it can be shown that X>M (or perhaps even X>>M), this would prove that X and M are not equal and therefore their claim that both are zero simply cannot be true.]

And if it could ever be proven that they ever had access to such information, and then suppressed it, while continuing to market the X26 as "safe", then those involved might be facing more than just civil actions.

It is inexplicable on its face that such simple data is not readily available to the public.

There's nothing more that I can do on this question. Someone in the proper position needs to gain access to the complete records for all the taser-associated deaths in Canada and confirm which model of taser was involved. Then compare this against the deployment rates already gathered (for the RCMP at least) by RCMP Watchdog Kennedy. Then crunch the numbers.

It only takes one small pin to pop even the largest balloon.

This sort of observation, once firmly established, could be that pin.