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, November 20, 2010

Tasers fall into the tricky grey area = problems

It really sometimes seems that tasers (inherently) make some police officers act stupidly. But it's not fair to simplify this observation. There's something deeper going on...

One possible explanation is that taser occupy a grey (gray) area. Tasers are colorful and look like cheaply-made toys. It's obvious that tasers can cause extreme pain, but the police are misled that a taser cannot possibly cause a death, ever. They're often called "non-lethal" (a lie). It's all a muddle and can be very confusing.

It's not even perfectly clear what is the actual purpose of a taser. If you actually think about it, the purported justifications fall like dominoes.

Operating within a grey area requires reasonably high intelligence, subtle education, well-developed ethics, and some luck. Frankly, many police do not always have all of these characteristics. Therefore it's inevitable that mistakes are made, people get tasered for no good reason. And some of them even die as a result.

It would be better all around if things were made very simple. Simple black-and-white and avoid the grey area.

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