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.



Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Dziekanski taser-death, charges to be revisited. And...?

CTV BC - A B.C. special prosecutor says that the decision not to charge the Mounties involved in Robert Dziekanski's death should be revisited. [LINK]

The original police-investigating-police review (inexplicably, not really...) concluded that the four RCMP members did nothing wrong. The Braidwood Inquiry came to a very different conclusion.

One might wonder how the original review was conducted. Perhaps that question should also be investigated and followed to the conclusion.

For those keeping score, the original Dziekanski autopsy findings were also turned on their head, from taser not mentioned to the taser being "the more prominent" direct cause of death. [LINK]

It's not really a fair system when it costs millions of dollars and takes years to get past all the... - how can I word this? - ...all the layers of "inaccuracies". And without a mobilephone video, the starting gate is glued shut.

The impact of Braidwood is double-barreled. In addition to all the obvious direct conclusions about the death of Robert Dziekanski, there's also an obvious indirect implication on all previous decisions made and conclusions drawn (in relation to other incidents) by a fundamentally-flawed system.

Fixing the system going forward is nice.

But what about the past? Is it reasonable to assume that the Dziekanski incident was the first and only time that the system 'failed' (*).

(* The word 'failed' is a very gentle word choice. I have suspicions that a much stronger word would be more appropriate...)

When a police-investigating-police investigation "fails", there should be consequences on those leading and supervising the whitewash investigation.

Plain logic and fundamental justice indicates that certain other incidents should also be revisited. Especially in those cases where someone was tasered_and_died, and the taser was given a free pass "because", after all, "tasers-R-safe", right? (sic)


PS: Also worth noting explicitly is that the conclusions of Braidwood also support my assumption that the existing one-third ratio (proportional to 50 of 150) of taser "associated" deaths being linked to the taser deployment as a cause or contributing factor - that one-third ratio can only be a low-ball value.

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