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.



Friday, October 22, 2010

Julian Fantino to run for political office

Former shopping mall security guard turned OPP Commish Julian Fantino has been acclaimed by the Green Party NDP Liberal (sorry) Conservative Party as their candidate in the riding of Vaughan.

Mr. Fantino has repeatedly proven himself to be an uncritical fan of tasers. I have tried to track all of his comments on the subject, and they were all perfectly aligned with what Taser International would want him to say.

In one example [LINK], he read out a very-carefully-worded claim about taser safety that can almost certainly be traced directly back to Scottsdale, AZ.

Back in August 2008, Fantino said that the debate about the overuse, misuse and abuse of tasers, and the false claims that tasers were safe, ...he said [LINK] that the debate was "off the rails". Few statements are so absolutely, perfectly and obviously wrong.

By his statement protesting against the taser debate in Canada, as compared to the magnitude of Canadian outrage at the problem, Fantino revealed that he was out-of-touch with some very basic values shared by most Canadians.

We don't like it when the police overuse and misuse electro-torture devices to 'encourage' obedience. We don't like it when people are taser-tortured to death. And we don't like it when the cause of death in a taser-death incident is falsified by a corrupted system. These are real issues and to deny them is evil.

It's not actually a Right-vs-Left political question. It's normal everyday Canadians complaining about a weapon that is accompanied by deceptive marketing spin that too often leads directly to (even encourages) overuse, misuse and abuse of a potentially deadly weapon. If a person cannot see any reason to complain about how tasers are actually being used, then they're either ill-informed, or they're pretty far along the axis of inhumanity.

See also [LINK] and [LINK].

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