Mission Statement - De-Spinning the Pro-Taser Propaganda

Yeah right, 'Excited Delirium' my ass...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.



Monday, June 30, 2008

Unabashed taser fan-boy on NIJ panel

This connection was first noted on the It all goes here blog. [LINK]


William Oliver is sitting on the NIJ's panel studying taser safety. The final report is not expected until sometime in 2009.


William Oliver is the owner [LINK] of a blog called Billoblog.com. On that blog, dated August 2005 (three years ago!), is a post praising the virtues of tasers. [LINK] Upon reading that post, it is clear that the author has made his mind up regarding taser safety. And the subsequent comments firmly link the viewpoints to the blog owner, William Oliver.

In 2007, he posted some pro-taser propaganda here [LINK]. His cutting-and-pasting of the pro-taser material directly from Taser's website was noticed, and he was accused of being a "...shill for the Taser company...". He did not deny the accusation.

In 2008 he visited this blog to, first defend the phrase excited delirium, and then to defend the safety of tasers.


And now he sits on the NIJ panel "studying" the safety of tasers.


I say leave him on the panel. If the panel finds any taser safety issues in spite of the fan-boy(s), then there will be less room for argument from Taser. And if the final report is obviously slanted, then we taser critics can go back and pick at this loose thread to see if the whole report unravels. The risk of a discredited report is entirely theirs. They'd be smart to toss him off the panel, but they're not that smart.


Why are these people so clumsy?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's nice to see that this very post is #2 on a Google search of the search terms: William Oliver NIJ