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, May 8, 2010

X26 Taser specifications (2003, 2007) and Kroll's IEEE article



X26 Specification sheet from 2003 clearly shows that the body current is 0.151 amps (or 151 mA) RMS.




The RMS value has been expunged from the 2007 version of the same specification sheet. Taser International and their in-house minion are making the preposterous claim that the EFFECTIVE current is the AVERAGE. They hold-forth the insane position that the 2.1 mA average is the only current measurement worth mentioning. This claim is completely unjustifiable.



It can be seen that Kroll's original Figure 3 [from his infamous IEEE Spectrum article, edited in red] places the "Taser shock" (see original black dot) as being low frequency and about 2 mA.

We are left to conclude that the taser shock isn't capable of even locking-up muscles (but that's what it does), let alone interfering with breathing (ditto), and well away from causing the heart to behave erratically (ditto).

Kroll et al claim that the taser waveform has magical properties that make it more likely to affect the muscle and less likely to affect the heart. Chief of these claims is that the pulses are very very very short (~100 microseconds).

THINK!

100 microseconds of 19 Hz?

That's like saying that you can squeeze an elephant into a matchbox. Actually the nonsensical ratio is even larger than that.

I believe that this whole thing stems from Taser International and their in-house "experts" not understanding that when they added the DC pulse after the arc phase on the X26 taser, they didn't realize that they were (probably unintentionally) walking away from the safety features of high frequency and very very low duty cycle.



Above graph (Reilly) shows 1999-model M26 waveform versus 2003-model X26 waveform. Note that the M26 waveform is basically a short pulse of AC (more or less centered around the zero axis). The X26 waveform is basically an offset DC pulse, that makes it primarily low frequency and thus 100% continuous duty cycle for as long as the trigger is held down.



The X26 was introduced to the market in 2003. Find 2003 on the graph below...



The 19 Hz spectral components are continuous 100% duty cycle for the entire 5-seconds, or as long as the trigger is held down... The claims about "short pulses" are utter nonsense. Any EE should know this by instinct. Any Professor of Electrical Engineering would probably be so incensed by this stupid error that they'd testify for free.

Taser International's very own Mark Kroll is on the record referring to the very short pulses (100us). Even while simultaneously acknowledging that the X26 waveform is low frequency (19Hz).

The billion dollar error. Right there.

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