Once upon a time...

Once upon a time, in a lovely province on the left coast of Canada, tasers were considered to be safe. In this land of myth, if someone was tasered_and_died, then the death must have been caused by "excited delirium", or perhaps an unfortunate micrometeorite strike to the skull. Attributing a death to the immediately-previous taser shock was unthinkable because, after all, Taser International said that tasers are safe. And those guys simply had to be competent and honest, right?

Then a man named Robert Dziekanski was tasered_and_died, and the tragic event just happened to be captured on video. It was obvious to everyone that the most significant thing that happened to Mr. Dziekanski in the final minute of his life was that he was tasered for 31 seconds.

A pair of massive public inquiries were called - Braidwood Inquiry phases 1 & 2. Millions of dollars were spent. Taser International sent their best and brightest. Justice Braidwood concluded that tasers are perfectly capable of causing death.

Note, tasers were perfectly safe.

But now they're not.

'The System' had it wrong.

Coroners were operating under false propaganda. Given the false assumption of the day, that tasers could not possibly cause or contribute to death, they were forced to reach for the meaningless ("unhelpful") phrase of "excited delirium" as a placeholder for ignorance.

Obviously, and this follows directly, all those existing autopsy reports for taser associated deaths where the taser was given a free pass based on the false assumption of its inherent safety, all those reports are suspect.

If it weren't for the video, Robert Dziekanski would have died from "excited delirium" too.

Open your minds, and reopen some of those cases.

(Obviously this doesn't just apply in BC.)