Taser QotW: "Clearly, police officers should not consider Tasers to be wholly nonlethal"

Star-Telegram (17 May 2010) - Fort Worth's $2 million Taser settlement says a lot

Police officer Stephanie Phillips held the trigger for 49 seconds, later saying she was unaware that the Taser would continue to discharge its electric current if she did not release the trigger... As Michael Patrick Jacobs Jr. lay face-down on the ground during those 49 seconds, the officers yelled at him to put his hands behind his back. But people can't move while they're being shocked with a Taser; the device is designed to induce muscular incapacitation. Because Jacobs didn't comply, Phillips ... released the trigger for one second and then pulled it again. The second shock lasted five seconds. Jacobs stopped breathing and was pronounced dead a short time later at John Peter Smith Hospital. ...

Clearly, police officers should not consider Tasers to be wholly nonlethal. ...

The medical examiner ruled Jacobs' death a homicide... [LINK]

The claims made by Taser International and their minion-in-chief, "Dr." Mark Kroll, that tasers are safe and that tasers cannot possibly affect the heart lie shattered on the ground.

BTW - Is their insane Cardiac Safety webpage still up? That's the web page where "Dr." (apparently not a medical doctor) Mark Kroll compares the safety of repeated taser hits to being hit with a ping pong ball.

Will somebody puhleeze put Mr. Kroll on the stand and slap him about the head with a printed copy of that drivel that he wrote. That web page would make an ideal weapon during any taser-death lawsuit.

While he's sitting there, ask him about 100us pulses of 19 Hz, ...and Fourier.

Four months after Jacobs' death, Taser International issued a bulletin advising its customers to avoid shooting darts from the device into a subject's chest "when possible." ... Taser strongly stands by the safety of its product. The bulletin, the company said, "has less to do with safety [understatement of the decade] and more to do with effective risk management for law enforcement agencies." ...

Translation: If you use a Taser and things go wrong, the person you use it on could die. You could be sued, and you could lose a lot of money. In Fort Worth's case, that amount appears to be $2 million. [ibid]