'A tool unlike any other' (repost 26 Aug. 2008)

With nearly 1200 posts, and new visitors arriving every day, it might be useful to simply pull-up some previous posts that already nail down a particular line of thought.


Ontario's provincial police commissioner Julian Fantino [LINK] says "the taser is a tool like any other." [LINK]

Wrong. Dead wrong.

The difference between the taser and other policing tools is that the taser is surrounded by claims of essentially perfect safety with respect to internal risk factors (cardiac effects or similar). And the field results do not support these claims (too many mysterious deaths, some backed-up with legal findings).

I can think of no other police tool where the claims are so at odds with the reality (when viewed from the point of view of claimed perfection - see this [LINK] or you may not understand).

Guns, batons, fists, pepper-spray - all of these have a very obvious and predictable worst-case outcome. The risks are well understood. The taser is thought to be safe, but has proven to be what some have termed a street level death lottery.

The training and policies, both under Taser International's influence, reflect this level of claimed safety (except that the trainees are never shot in the chest, because Taser International wants them in the denominator rather than the numerator of the gross, washed-out, risk ratio).

This propaganda-based training leaves police officers with an incorrect view of the risk.

And this leads directly to abuse, misuse and overuse.

And that's the problem.

And that's the difference.