Who is paying Zuskin's salary?

"A Taser cannot kill anyone unless they fall and hit their head."
[LINK] (the very first comment, as always...)

I'm very suspicious of this endless pro-taser clown. He is still at it - spreading the same old pro-taser bald-faced lies, and he is still often the very first to comment. Must be a full-time job to (almost) always be first.

He's changed his name from "David E. Zuskin" (Poquoson, VA) to "Robert" (or "Bob"), and it seems that he FINALLY found his 'old fart' button (CAPS LOCK key) and turned it off.

It makes no sense that he would be doing this clumsy PR (sic!) work on behalf of Taser International for free. I wonder if there are some under-the-table payments for 'services rendered' being laundered through some 'arms length' (my ass) front?

I'm just a bit suspicious...

Open e-mail to: Abuse@Cox.com

From: Excited Delirium
To: Abuse@cox.com (Cox Communications, Hampton Roads)
Date: Thu, May 8, 2008 at 6:29 PM
Subject: Abuse by one of your customers

One of your 'Hampton Roads' Internet customers:

David E. and [redacted] Zuskin
[redacted] Wood Haven Dr
Poquoson, VA 23662-1907
tel: (757) [redacted]-7441

...has been signing up my e-mail address to many unsolicited accounts resulting in a small flood of spam e-mails. Included below is an incoming e-mail that happened to include all the information that I needed to track him down. Please advise this customer to not conduct himself in this manner. Thank you. ...

[REDACTED]


Update:

From: Cox Abuse Tracking System
To: Excited Delirium
Date: Thu, May 8, 2008 at 7:11 PM
Subject: Re Abuse by one of your customers

Hello,

This is an automatic reply to confirm that your message has been received by Cox Communications Security (abuse@cox.net) describing an incident of alleged service abuse. Please note, you will only receive one response per day.

Cox Communications is dedicated to ensuring that its service is used in a manner that is consistent with the policies set forth in its Terms of Service Agreement and Acceptable Use Policy. Cox Communications takes all reported abuse complaints seriously, and will handle them in accordance with the above policies in a timely and efficient manner. Should we require further information regarding your complaint, we will contact you.

This may be the last reply that you receive regarding your complaint. Please do not, however, interpret a lack of response as a lack of action taken. Please be assured that if we find that a customer is in violation of the above policies, that we will take the necessary action to stop the activity in question.

Thank you for taking the time to contact Cox Communications.


Dave - your move. I'll remove this post if you ask nicely.


UPDATE: A couple of days ago, I finally got a reply from an actual human at Cox's Abuse Department and they asked for some specific technical details (which I helpfully provided). I guess that they must have had a quiet word with Mr. Zuskin as his silly spam efforts appear to have stopped. All that he has accomplished with his silly noobie-style attack was to waste a few hours of his time, a few minutes of mine (click 'Spam' a few times), and he put his own ISP account in jeopardy.

Thank you to the nice folks at Abuse@Cox.net/.com - a job well done. I appreciate your efforts.

Excellent comment debate at Sign On San Diego

I like San Diego. I've been there many times. The natural beauty and man-made environment of Dan Diego are both very beautiful. And I like the Hispanic aspect of the culture.

The website 'Sign On San Diego' is equally pleasant.

A headline had popped up, "Appellate court rules Taser use was excessive", so I went to investigate.

Nuturally, Taser International's spokespuppet "Wisewon" had been there first and left his signature calling card: a comment that was incorrect and was probably intended to mislead the public. Even though it's my policy to not get tangled-up in endless comment wars (inefficient use of my time), it's also my policy, if and when I do have time, to correct Mr. Zuskin's Wisewon's fat target errors.

Anyway, while I was there, I posted a few additional comments and was generally successful in making some crystal clear points. [Self-congratulatory, but also true. There are some very well-worded posts there.] It wasn't a comment war, more like a series of civilized duels and perfectly-reasonable questions.

It's probably worth a read. [LINK]

News Clipping versus Google News Alerts

Although this blog occasionally quotes from the news, and many of the posts are prompted by the news, I'm intentionally trying to not provide a news clipping service for Taser, tasers, stun guns, etc.

If you're interested in having related news headlines delivered to your e-mail in-box, then you should know about Google's wonderful 'News Alerts' service.

If you go to Google.com and then navigate to Google News, you can type in keywords such as Taser, TASR (their stock symbol), Stun Gun, Excited Delirium, Instrument of Torture, and so on. Then you can click on 'News Alerts' found in the left hand column. Then you can complete the little form (including your e-mail address) to subscribe to Google News Alerts for each keyword (one by one). For fastest service, be sure to select How often: 'as-it-happens' (*).

(* Then you can sit at your computer in your underwear and try to beat David E. Zuskin to make the very first public comment on news sites that allow comments. Be warned, he's pretty quick and is usually first with his mindless drivel.)

Google's 'News Alerts' service is quite useful and totally free. Each e-mail they send out includes options to unsubscribe and links to make adjusts to the settings. There's no downside that I can detect. I recommend it fully.

2008 - a year in review...

The Year 2008 In Review

(And this is just a sample. It's not even all the major highlights.)


We started the year 2008 with a review of an "article" in IEEE Spectrum written by Taser's leading braintrust member, Dr. Mark Kroll. We more-fully exposed Dr. Kroll's extreme financial ties to Taser. [LINK] & [LINK] Then we dissected his Taser mouthpiece article more fully. [LINK] It was also noted that Dr. Kroll is a serial non-discloser of his close ties to Taser. [LINK]

Also very early this year, we noted that the X26 taser has a electrical waveform with characteristics that are the exact opposite of those characteristics that were claimed to be the reason that the M26 taser was 'safe'. The older 1999-era M26 taser is high frequency and low duty cycle. The 2003-era X26 taser is low frequency and very high continuous 100% duty cycle. I've not seen this critical technical distinction high-lighted in any other source. Taser's own data sheets mention the raw information, but not a word about this critical change to the waveform. [LINK] [LINK] and [LINK]. See also [LINK].

Some of the basics of Canadian law jumped out at me. I'm not a lawyer, and perhaps there is 'case law' that has taken away some of our fundamental rights (I doubt it). But some of the mistakes being made are (quite literally) elementary. Lawful 'force' is a noun. It's not a damn verb. Police officers and officials that think that they're allowed to use painful electric shock as a form of on-the-spot torture to coerce (force - verb) someone to obey are morons. Let me repeat - morons. The language used to forbid such behaviour is crystal clear. If 'failure to obey' is an offense, then add it to the list of charges and bring the subject before the court. You're not allowed to torture. And Tasers-R-Torture. [LINK]

By the 6th day, it had been noted that former Taser Board of Director member Mr. Bernie Kerik was facing charges that might result in him being jailed for up to 142 years. [LINK] [LINK] (Update: now facing just 28 years. [LINK]) In Canada, we have Sgt Darren Laur (Victoria, BC) and his 'apparent and perceived conflict of interest' [LINK], and coroner James Cairns' jaunts [LINK]. There are quite a few more ethical lapses associated with Taser and/or Taser-associated folks - eg. [LINK] - review the whole blog for more.

Shooting holes in Taser propaganda is a continuing theme of this blog. After Smith's appearance before SECU, I blasted away at the pure BS Taser propaganda. [LINK][LINK][LINK] There is so much propaganda from Taser that is so weak that almost anyone with a modicum of skepticism can instantly see the logical and technical flaws.

By early February, I'd tracked down a certain Taser fan-boy, (apparently) named David E. Zuskin, who (it seems) had been spamming the Internet with his nonsense trademark 'TASERS SAVE LIVES EVERYDAY' (in all caps) - which is both factually and grammatically incorrect. He has since installed a brain and now keeps a much lower profile (now he's 'Bob'). But he's still out there spamming the Internet - and nursing his investments [smirk...]. He got his bum smacked by his ISP [LINK] after clumsily entering my blog e-mail address into many investment-related news letters as some sort of punishment. Typical... ...these law and order (sic) folks are the ones that will break the law to maintain their order. LOL.

Another theme of this blog is taser abuse, misuse and overuse. For some reason [LINK], tasers are constantly being used where there is little to zero justification. Honestly, I don't care if the police are equipped with flame-throwers, so long as everyone is being perfectly honest. But if the manufacturer of flame-throwers starts claiming that they're perfectly safe, and that the burnt-to-a-crisp subjects are simply examples of Spontaneous Human Combustion, then those flame-throwers need to be put away until the brains are reinstalled and lawsuits settled.

By March, we had had a visit from Grettir, who may or may not be Dr. Mark Kroll himself (it certainly sounded like him). [LINK] The flawed thinking by Grettir was crystal clear - some of the logical errors were shocking in their simplicity - such as double-dipping for the natural protection of everybody's shared anatomical characteristics. The other points were equally easy to shred. It's clear that even self-styled big thinkers sometimes make small mistakes.

I note with interest that as these sorts of pro-taser arguments have been shredded by this blog, they tend to disappear from the Taser PR machine. The only argument that they've been using recently has been the 'reduces injuries to the police officers'. Yeah, so would a 'shoot first and let God figure it out' policy. They've very few arguments left standing.

By April, I had noticed that the higher RMS current values had been expunged from the later data sheets. [LINK] Taser would probably say that it was to reduce confusion. Yeah thanks for thinking of us. Nothing to do with ~160 milliamperes RMS being well above the safety limits, eh?

BC Transit Police revealed their empty-headed policies in April. Tasering fare-cheats for gawd's sake. [LINK] Idiots!

Safety margins were examined here [LINK]. They didn't stand-up very well to even a modest application of scrutiny.

But the most important contribution of this blog might be highlighting the relationship between the M26 waveform, and the X26 waveform, and the potentially huge impact of the seemingly-minor change to the waveform. A little DC offset changes everything - it lowers frequency (more dangerous), and it VASTLY increases duty cycle (to 100% continuous). It really seems that Taser forgot about Fourier. [LINK]

See also the guesstimated spectrograms [LINK].

We started plotting the number of taser-associated deaths per month, by month. The running average jumped up from much less than 1 per month before the introduction of the X26 taser in 2003, to a fairly steady 7 per month after that point. Perhaps it's just a coincidence. Perhaps all these deaths are just coincidences. [LINK] and others... [LINK]

In May, the brave BC Mounties tasered an 82-year old man in his hospital bed. Because he had a knife. It was 'a very dangerous situation'. So the frightened officer walked up really, really close to the elderly man and zapped him at close (zero) range. Yeah, it makes no sense to me either. [LINK]

Taser chairman Tom Smith more-or-less accidentally admitted that tasers takes one life for every 70 'lives saved'. [LINK] Well - ah - that's nice. Except that they claim that almost every time a taser is deployed, it counts as a life saved. Which is nonsense. And that just leaves the lives lost. Not to mention the Karma issue [LINK] of saving some lives at the expense of instituting a street level "death lottery" [LINK] on everyday citizens that do not deserve such risks.

We've reported incidents where diabetics in comas [LINK], people sleeping [LINK], and those having epileptic episodes [LINK] are tasered. These sorts of examples, which are almost endless in number, shred the old stale argument about 'just obey the police and you won't be tasered'. If you see that argument, please be gentle to the weak and ill-informed mind that houses it.

Another theme is the extraordinarily bad Taser-certified training. Given the actual behaviour of some supposedly-trained police officers, the only possible explanation is that the Taser-certified Trainers are brainwashed numskulls, and the Taser-certified training material is so poor as to be considered evil. [LINK] How else can you explain this nonsense? [LINK] !!!

This issue is (far and away) more than sufficient to fully justify a moratorium to allow time to surgically removed all the Taser propaganda from the skulls of those that have been Taser-certifiably brainwashed. It might take a year or two to sort out.

It's probably time to remind the readers that this taser issue is not just in the cross-hairs of a few outrage civilian bloggers. People with PhDs are also pointing out that some of Taser's so-called studies are useless. [LINK] And a more skeptical mind might ask, 'Wouldn't the pro-taser 'researchers' be familiar with the basics of Statistics 101?' Are these uselessly-small sample sizes an innocent mistake? ...or a sign of deeper issues?

Inconvenient facts like this [LINK] must annoy Taser: "...people with heart problems are about 5% of the general population (2% to 8% averages to 5%), but they represent 54% of the (tasered-then-dead) victims. That's about an 11-to-1 ratio that needs to be explained. Well obviously [sic] there's no connection [sic] between the taser and the heart. None at all...[ROLLS EYES]..."

Mid-way through 2008, the NIJ released a report that found no evidence of a high risk from tasers. Well DUH! What about low to moderate risk? And NIJ excluded huge swaths of the population, which add up to most of the population. [LINK]

Then a truth-stretcher named Billo turned the NIJ statement around to claim that this proved that Tasers-R-Safe. [LINK] Which it doesn't. [LINK]

Oh my! Then it was noted by another blogger that Billo the Blogger is a certain William Oliver and he is sitting on the same damn NIJ Taser Study panel!! Oh my gawd. [LINK][LINK] and especially [LINK] !!! Isn't that amazing!! This unabashed taser fan-boy is sitting on the NIJ panel "studying" tasers. And then he systematically twists the NIJ findings to suit Taser. What a bunch of clumsy clots.

On the subject of clumsy clots - I discovered by accident that Taser's lawyer Micheal Brave was registering domain names that promote "Excited Delirium" and he points these URLs to a seeming-front organization. Read it here [LINK] and [LINK] You're either in on it, or you're being played like a trumpet.

Taser likes to highlight its legal record, but not that fact that they actually settled many cases to make them go away. [LINK] [LINK]

By September, the RCMP had been body-slammed by an independent report [LINK]. But by mid-December, the RCMP thumbed their noses at the Parliamentary committee SECU that directed that the RCMP recategorize tasers as impact weapons (to cut back on the abuse, misuse, and overuse). [LINK][LINK] I guess the RCMP doesn't take them seriously, but they should... [LINK]

Still in September, the Canadian Police Research Center (seemingly acting as a branch of Taser sometimes, sat beside Taser at SECU for gosh sakes!) report failed to note that tasers are already considered to be firearms. [LINK] You'd think that might be worth noting. They had their chain yanked in August [LINK].

Taser's French distributor got himself arrested. [LINK] For some reason, Taser seems to be occasionally associated with people (Di Zazzo, Kerik) that are not as far above the law as they thought.


There is so much more. The above tidbits are just a sample of the issues that we've discussed. I've made some very interesting findings along the way.

It's been a crazy year for Taser. Their stock has tanked "due to oil prices", but I believe that the next year is when the perfect storm of cold hard facts will intersect with the legal system to make the year 2009 even more interesting for them.

Taser mole spokespuppet still drooling lies

A certain pro-taser arsehole that has been previously discussed in this blog [LINK] is continuing to leave his idiotic comments all over the on-line news outlets. His mindless comments typically have the following, grammatically- and factually-incorrect, Zuskin-trademark heading:

"Taser Saves Lives Everyday" (sic, and also very sick)


His latest moronic comment is the following:

Tasers have never killed anyone,

Yes they have. See De-spinning the Spin at the top of the right hand column for a couple of choice examples. $6.2M judgment for failure to warn (of the risk of death). And a case where three coroners that have pointed directly at the taser shocks as THE cause of a fatal cardiac arrest. Even Taser chairman Smith admitted that use of tasers results in lives lost in a ratio that he felt was acceptable (but who the hell gave him the right to make such moral trade-offs?). So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

'...a taser cannot kill a person unless they die due to a fall... '

Utter B.S. See De-spinning the Spin. The obvious-in-hindsight blood pH issue has been established in court. Coroners have found that taser shocks can cause cardiac arrest. And many more.

'Tasers give Police control over the uncontrolable, ...'

First, you don't have to capitalize the word "police" - they're not gods. Secondly, chuck yur spilling...

Back to tasers: tasers are unpredictable. Sometimes they work as they're suppose to. Sometimes they don't (today's example: [LINK]). Sometimes they are associated with the subject's death. Sometimes they are linked causually to that death. But most often they're overused, misused, and abuse. The taser success stories are so rare that Taser often celebrates them with a press release.

'...without getting hurt. Tasers reduce injuries to Police and Perps alike. ...'

Tasers have been called a 'street level death lottery'. I think that most 'perps' (and victims) would prefer to risk a minor injury rather than take a chance of being killed. A due to Taser's endless denominator-washing, the risks are actually higher than you might have been led to believe. Recent reports have warned of the risks of accepting the maufacturer's propaganda at face value - so you should stop quoting it.

Also, search this blog for a lesson on Karma. See [LINK] [LINK] and [LINK].


I hope that someone can figure out the exact relationship between this idiot and Taser. There is obviously a connection that drives him. If it isn't his life's savings tied-up in now less valuable TASR stocks, then perhaps there is a family connection. There must be something...


Where is Michael Moore when we need him?

It's back...

Serial Taser 1st-poster David E. Zuskin is back. [LINK]

Look at the list of studies posted at the above link by 'Dave Z.' and count the number of "J. Ho" - I see SIX of the seven studies listed!! Jeffrey Ho, M.D. is considered to be a Taser insider (he's a pro-taser "consultant").

This is exactly why the supposed "150 studies" should be treated with contempt. Many of these studies have been essentially manufactured by groups that include Taser insiders.

And Dr. Ho's been caught being less than forthcoming about his so-called science at a public hearing about taser safety. It's documented on YouTube [LINK]. Reportedly there was an attempt to have this video taken down, but the attempt to muzzle it failed.

There's certainly a pattern...

Taser idiot spokespuppet 'Dave' is still going...

Regarding the very clear (ultra-clear) case where the Brattleboro officers used a taser to literally torture the two protesters that had chained themselves to a barrel, semi-professional Taser spokespuppet 'Dave' posted the following gem:

"The Officers should have placed the Taser where the sun don't shine and lit the hippies up for an extended period." Dave (David E. Zuskin), Poquoson, VA

Keep in mind that this case of taser abuse couldn't be more clear. Two peaceful protesters chained themselves to a barrel of sand. Officers decided to use the taser to literally torture the protesters until they released themselves.

Correct procedures, i.e. the procedures that wouldn't get the officers in SERIOUS trouble, are as follows:

1) Call for chain cutters.
2) Monitor the protesters to make sure they don't, ah never mind, they've chained themselves down to a barrel of sand...
3) When the chain cutters arrive, cut the chains and take the protesters into custody.

If at any time the protesters switch from passive resistance to any form of aggression, then the police may of course use self-defense and reasonable force. That seems very unlikely to happen if the protesters keep their wits about them.

Those that don't understand these basics of law should keep their trap shut. Everyone has more to fear in the long run from the jackboot of police abuse than from a couple of peaceful protesters chained to a barrel.

Seriously folks - read history.

These protesters WILL eventually be given a check. No question. They might have to go to a higher court, but they will win in the end. Oh, not to say that they won't be convicted of trespassing, but the act of torture by the police is a much more serious offense.

But they will get a settlement. Exactly like the $40,000 given to the Utah speeder. Seriously. this case is MUCH more clear. You can't claim that these two protesters represented a threat, after all they were chained to a barrel.

Tasers cause MORE PROBLEMS than they supposedly solve.

Dave - you're an idiot.

"TASERS SAVE LIVES EVERYDAY" (sic)

A Taser fan-boy sockpuppet is spamming the comment sections of many on-line news outlets. Any news story appearing on-line that mentions the keyword 'taser' is immediately commented upon by someone using various names (most often 'Dave' or variations).

1) He almost always includes the Company slogan in ALL CAPS
2) He is most often the very first to comment (or close)
3) His position is taser fan-boy, even in clear cases of abuse
4) The number and quickness of the response are very telling
David E. Zuskin
I've tracked him down. Dave is a semi-retired older gentleman with almost unlimited free time. I assume that his motivation is that perhaps he's invested a great deal of money in TASR stock (probably near the peak) and is now scared he's going to lose part of his retirement funds. I feel sorry for him, but that won't stop the fight.

The other possibility is that some team of professional spam-monkeys have been hired to do this job and they've slyly assumed Dave's identity to throw off the investigators that might be trying to track them down. On-line news organizations may wish to check their comment sections for comments by Dave and then get their webmaster to check the records for the IP addressed used by 'Dave'. If it leads back to Hampton, VA (the location of Dave's ISP), then that's the real Dave. If it leads anywhere else, then it's professionals.


Alternative Company slogans would be the following:

TASERS ARE ABUSED EVERY DAY

Or

TASERS (X26) MIGHT BE RISKIER THAN WE SAID


Backup:

Link= Google Search for 'Dave' and Company slogan

163 Hits!!
Updates:
227 Hits as of 24 Feb 2008
289 Hits as of 24 March 2008


First 10 hits (as of now, these may change over time)
1) National Post, 1st comment, 'Dave Z', slogan
2) Croydon, 1st comment, 'Dave', slogan
3) The News Pictou, 1st comment, 'Dave from NS', slogan
4) NOW Magazine, 1st comment, 'Dave', slogan
5) MiamiHurricane, 2nd & 3rd comments (slow that time), 'Dave', response & slogan
6) TimesUK, 3rd comment (slow again), 'Dave', response & slogan
7) FortBendNow, 1st comment, 'Dave', slogan
8) ABC.au, 2nd comment, 'Dave' (is that you?), rant - no slogan
9) WashingtonPost, 8th comment (nap time?), 'Dave', slogan
10) The Lantern, 3rd comment, 'Dave', slogan

Whack-a-spokesmole

Taser spokesmole sticks his head up, gets it severely whacked. [LINK]


Commenter "Bob" ... is David E. Zuskin, a well-known semi-professional Taser International spokespuppet. Based on the available evidence, he is paid to be the first commenter on any taser story. Look for Bob, Wiseone, and Dave as the first commenter on any taser story. Same guy.

The primary "taser" issue is that Taser International claims that the taser (X26) is inherently incapable of directly causing a death via any of several well-defined internal risk factors and death mechanisms.

It is obvious to almost all that this claim of inherent safety is specious, false, a damn lie, and extremely dangerous.

What follows from this is a culture, as so clearly demonstrated by the clearly-defective training, that the taser is a harmless toy to be used about one hundred times more often than the police have historically used their guns. It's become a tool of convenience and (far too often) police brutality.

The approach taken by Taser International in the "debate" about taser safety has been reprehensible, disgusting, and should be treated as criminal.

For those that are still uncertain of the real story, consider these observations:

1) Why are taser training hits and taser demonstrations almost always fired into the the trainees' or volunteers' backs, and almost never the chest? They could clip the wires onto the chest, or wear a face mask. The real reason is that Taser International is scared to DEATH of a cardiac death under training conditions. Thus the back. If I'm wrong, then change the policy to have such hits fired into the chest across the heart.

2) Why are there essentially ZERO deaths in the time after the taser is drawn and before it is fired? This period of time provides an experimental control that reveals the truth. This curious temporal asymmetry is crystal clear evidence of what is really going on with the 400+ taser "associated" deaths. Show me the many hundreds of people that died at the mere sight of a drawn taser.

...

Propaganda is apparently working in some cases...

On the recent CBC News item, people have been leaving comments [LINK]. Most are good comments, but the paid Taser spokespuppet David E. Zuskin made a predictable appearance under the name 'Proud American' with his trademark ALL CAPS idiot company slogan. A few comments are laughably ill-informed or simply insane:

Yorkke wrote: Let's remember that every cop who uses a taser has been tased themselves. How many died? Zero. How many injured? Zero.

Rebuttal: First, police are almost never tasered across the chest. Usually just on the back in Drive Mode (closely spaced contacts). This provides an extremely low cardiac risk to due to the very short current path between the gun-mounted probes (nowhere near the heart). Sometimes they're tasered just down one leg (harmless). Second, many police HAVE been injured (many back injuries). Some claim thousands have been injured and the records shredded (Pamela Schreiner) - this allegation has not been proven. Taser admits quite a few injuries in their annual report. Many agencies have stopped the stupid practice of tasering students due to too many injuries.

Zambo0518 wrote: I have a problem with the citizens who suppose to be respect the officers. I would say, whoever running away from the officer, or disrespect the officer should be tasered. It is so simple.

Rebuttal: Oh-my-God.


[ATTENTION: Don't miss the comment war: -------\/]

We spank 'OfficialTASER'

OfficialTASER (Hi Steve!) shows up and gets a good spanking. [LINK]

I pity them (not really, they're scum). They've put themselves into a position on the subject of taser safety that, quite literally, cannot be legally defended without causing hilarity in any court.


excited.delirium at 3:31 PM May 6, 2011

It's also worth noting that tasers are used about one-hundred times as often as police have historically and generally-acceptably used their guns. This overuse ratio varies with jurisdiction and varies over time, but 100X is a good round number.

Keep this in mind in case anyone drags out the old argument that "tasers are better than guns".

Such claims, while very attractive, are about 99% beside the point.

Taser most often replace lower and EVEN-LESS-LETHAL forms of force.

excited.delirium at 3:27 PM May 6, 2011

DaveDavid, assuming it's the same David E. Z____n as last time, is a retired USN corrosion expert. He is apparently (based on his interest in stocks, specifically Taser International) heavily invested in Taser International stock. He vigorously defends Taser International in many on-line forums, and then he sends a message to "Official Taser" to join in with a follow up.

As has happened here...

excited.delirium at 3:23 PM May 6, 2011

Amnesty International dug up 150 autopsy reports (not easy) for taser associated deaths and they found that 50 (or about one-third) listed the taser as a cause or contributing factor.

One third. That fraction can only be a low ball value. Taser International has gone to extreme lengths to install "excited delirium" as the place holder cause of death in cases where no other postmorten evidence is found. I personally suspect the honest ratio is much higher; not 100% obviously, but probably well over half.

The list of taser associated deaths now reaches 600+ (most up-to-date list is on Truth Not Tasers). If the one-third ratio is holding firm, then tasers have caused or contributed to at least 200 deaths.

excited.delirium at 3:16 PM May 6, 2011

The government of the Canadian province of British Columbia held a multi-million dollar public inquiry into the taser death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancover airport.

Google the Braidwood Inquiry.

The arguments of Taser International's bought-and-paid-for experts was rejected as being an "insult to the intelligence." Justice Braidwood concluded that the most significant event in the last minutes of Mr. Dziekanski's life was the repeated and long duration tasering. That was the "most prominent" cause of death.

excited.delirium at 3:13 PM May 6, 2011

Taser International settled with Steve Butler for $3 million. Mr. Butler's heart was stopped by the application of a taser. His life was saved, but the after-effects included permanent brain damage. Taser International tried to keep this settlement secret, but the court would have none of it.

excited.delirium at 3:11 PM May 6, 2011

The condition sometimes called "Excited Delirium" has a long history. It was originally called Bell's mania, where mental patients stopped eating and slowly died over a period of many weeks. This condition had no obvious root cause and left no postmorten clues. So it was adopted by Taser International as a handy-dandy excuse for taser associated deaths since tasers also leave few postmortem clues. They even promoted excited delirium via their funded front - the IPICD. Plenty of funny-business going on between Taser International and IPICD.

As far as testing goes... Those studies have never proven that tasers are completely safe. The studies have been misleadingly characterized as such, but they do not prove that tasers cannot kill. One so-called study demonstrated that tasers are safe, but accidentally also indicated that they don't work at all. There's plenty of dirt in this area as well.

excited.delirium at 3:11 PM May 6, 2011

With respect to taser use and its causal relationship to those that die after its use, what is striking is how nobody has ever died at the sound of the "Taser! Taser! Taser!" warning. Individuals that die in incidents involving tasers die vastly more often after being tasered, than in the often long-winded shouting match that precedes many taser deployments. It's a 'Curious Temporal Asymmetry' (Googe the phrase) that clearly indicates a cause-and-effect relationship between actual contact with the taser and the fatal reaction that occassionally follows.

excited.delirium at 3:10 PM May 6, 2011

One year ago, Taser International modified their "official" position on taser safety. Up until that point they had repeatedly claimed that tasers could never affect the heart, and could never cause or contribute to any death. But on 1 May 2010, Taser International released a new training package that contained newly-updated legal warnings that finally acknowledge what so many people have already concluded: tasers can affect the heart, especially if the darts land on the chest; tasers can cause effects that may endfanger life; use of tasers carries risks including risk of death.

For more information, hit the websites Truth ... Not Tasers and Excited-Delirium.com (with the dash).

OfficialTASER at 3:44 PM May 5, 2011

What "experts" said police should be held responsible besides one plaintiff's attorney? I only saw that medical examiners cleared the TASER ECD for causality.

Check your accuracy regarding Amnesty. They do not state 300 deaths as a "result" of TASER ECDs. In fact their report clearly states, “Amnesty International does not suggest that TASERs necessarily caused or contributed to each of these deaths.”

I also enjoyed the statement that "excited delirium is not recognized by top medical authorities. I wonder if the reporter would like to present that statement to the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) who formally recognize excited delirium as a unique syndrome or the National Association of Medical Examiners. You might want to also check the status of what the ACEP Physicians Task Force that Excited Delirium Syndrome recently stated. Hint: “Syndrome is a real syndrome with uncertain, likely multiple, etiologies.” I guess those aren't top medical authorities? Not exactly.

Have we spent money on sponsoring testing? I would hope people would hope so. But here’s a nugget that often gets missed about TASER studies: TASER ECD are the most studied less-lethal option on an officer's belt today with more than 70% of these studies INDEPENDENT of TASER. People don't like seeing that statistic for some reason, yet it is a fact.

I agree with DaveDavid.

DaveDavid at 11:02 PM May 4, 2011

I have never read a story so full of outright fiction and incomplete facts. Easy to tell that the "personal injury trial lawyers" representing the drugies that died are the ones willing to fill this reporters head with crud. Nine died and yet the Medical Examiner has never blamed a Taser. It is clear that this reporter will not let facts get in the way of a good story, a real fairy tale.

Zuskin, you're an arse.