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, April 24, 2009

New Book from Pro-Taser Insiders & Fan-boy Hangers-On

The pro-taser twits have gotten together and slapped together an amusing book of pro-taser propaganda.

In the very first section they as much as claim that tasers don't cause injuries.

"Zero for 88" is the injury statistic that they mention.

They don't count the, ah, injuries from the darts as 'injuries'. No darts in skulls mentioned. No incidents mentioned with darts in eyeballs. Basically the taser darts don't count. Guns wouldn't cause injuries if you don't count the bullets.

No incidents where people have been injured. Not one. Not this one [LINK]. Obviously they're also skipping over the cases where police trainees have been injured. And sued. And had their cases "DI$MI$$ED with prepayment".

They've also carefully chosen a tiny data set that obviously doesn't include any burns. Some taser incidents reportedly include burn marks and even scarring.

No deaths either. Not one.

They do include a checklist for 'excited delirium'. Especially the sort of excited delirium that lies dormant for ten hours and then suddenly leaps up and kills the subject just as he is being tasered.

Not a word of doubt in the Church of Taser.


One question, maybe two:  Why did Prof Savard find that risk of death was linearly-proportional to the number of taser cycles? And why did even the NIJ panel point out the same strange correlation? Strange fact eh?

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