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, February 4, 2012

BBC FileOn4: Deaths involving police restraint

BBC audio PodCast webpage [LINK]

In the podcast (starting at about 6m00s into the podcast), Dr. 'Excited Delirium' Mash describes a typical "excited delirium" death as a long sequence of events, eventually leading to the police applying restraint, and "...the next minute they're dead."

That's exactly what she said.

Dr. Mash has repeatedly claimed that deaths following this sequence are "caused" by the underlying symptoms, and that the police restraint is not a cause of death. Her unproven theories regarding "excited delirium" have been used to take the focus off of police restraint techniques and how some are potentially more dangerous than others.

She then explains (at 6m30s), "...proximity is not causality...".

The obvious logical error that she makes here is that close temporal proximity - combined with consistent ordering (restraint -> death) - clearly does imply causality.

If these subjects are about to die "...the next minute...", then the police are too late to save the subject's life. They should, regrettably, stand back for the additional minute and allow the person to die without police putting themselves into legal jeopardy by applying restraint during the death.

(NOTE: The above paragraph is a Reductio Ad Absurdum and is intended to demonstrate that theory being proposed by Dr. Mash is absurd.)

Dr. Mash is not so thick that she doesn't understand cause-and-effect and inductive logic. So why does she ignore basic logic? Why indeed...? Why are there strange links between her and Taser International? [LINK]

To be clear - I have no explanation and I'm not implying anything. I'm just pointing out that her logic is twisted into nonsense, and her conclusions about excited delirium as a purported cause of death are extremely "unhelpful".


Deaths involving police restraint under-reported in UK [LINK]

Why are police restraint-associated deaths in the UK being under-reported?

Why do they propose to delay (for an entire year) providing a correct report?

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