Sure, Tasers are Non-Lethal. Riiight...

Since MV has accused me of being a "cop" I will contribute my thoughts and experience.

I think that TAZERS should be made LETHAL.

Think of it, officers could have 2 settings.... "Stun" AND "Kill"

Here is why I think it is a good idea.

1. Officers would only have to carry ONE weapon.
With setting for level of intensity like, "Low", "Medium" or "High"
(like my new microwave)

Oh, "Low" isn't working let me crank that up for you..." 

2. Public Safety - Tazers don't ricochet (less chance of killing or injuring innocent bystanders)

3. Gives officers more options when "Deadly Force" may be necessary

4. Public Security - Less mess (no bloody scenes that can psychologically traumatize witnesses)

5. Economical - No medical bills for the victims of shooting and no emergency crews to clean up bloody messes and fewer coroners and reduced internal investigation costs

6. Reinforces fear of consequences (who wants to be electrocuted to death)

7. Reinforces sworn officers authority (who wants to be electrocuted to death)

8. Increase the chance an offender will survive a deadly force encounter and  live to be punished in the judicial system

9. Legal defense for Peace Officer (I didn't know it was on the "Kill" setting)

10. Reduced officer PTS - trauma, less administrative leave, better PTSD recovery chances when officer must use "Deadly Force"

11. Handguns are archaic, uncivilized weapons that are loud, messy and have the Tim Allen the Tool Guy, V-8, Neanderthal appeal. Why are we still using technology from the 1600's to fight crime?

This isn't anything like Heidi Gill's case, and it's entirely inappropriate to try and draw a comparison between the two.  First, I'd point out that Heidi Gill was largely injuried as a result of physical trauma she suffered as she involuntarily fell while being tased.  That's not the injuries suffered in this case.  Second, she was tased while highly intoxicated, but was not violent.  In this case, Piskura was reportedly violent and was physically resisting the officers' lawful arrest of Smith.

Third, the video in the Gill case showed the officer repeatedly tasing Gill even after she was on the ground and appeared to be offering no further resistence.  In fact, the officer repeatedly tased her before giving her any opportunity to show that the initial tasing brought her into compliance with the officer's orders.  In this case, it appears Piskura was tased only once after repeated warnings to desist from fighting.

Fourth, the officer clearly was using the repeated tasering of Gill in a purely punitive fashion.  The officer in Piskura's case used it to end present hostilities.

Again, Dr. Truth, I ask you, what should this officer had done with the officer's use of verbal authority failed to terminate hostilities.  Pepper spray?  Tactical batton?  Unholstering of his firearm?

Are officers expected to risk significant physical injuries to themselves before they use any of the weapons they are provided by law to protect themselves?

When can an officer use a taser if not in this instance? 

What I want, Modern, is for any police officer that carries a taser to recognize that Tasers are potentially lethal weapons and treat them as such...just like firearms. 

Furthermore, I want police officers to be punished if they use them inappropriately. The officer in the Heidi Gill incident was dismissed from the department as the result of his actions...why wasn't he charged with felonious assault as well?

Finally, in answer to your question, I think the use of a tactical batton would have been more appropriate, given the recent questions regarding the safety of taser use.  

Tasers are potentially lethal weapons only when the person has some preexisting medical condition like a fatal dose of illegal drugs in their system, some unknown heart defect, etc. But by any objective scientific standard, tasers are unquestionably and substantially less likely to lead to death than the use of a firearm.  To equate them as the same is not just psuedo-science, it's fraud disguished as science.  To call Tasers as equally fatal as firearms is just nonsense.

Want to compare the fatality rates between tasers and firearms sometimes?  How about with tactical batons (people have been killed by errant blows before)?  Batons are potentially lethal weapons, and in fact, more so than tasers.  That's why most departments have baton use just below handgun use and above taser use in their continum of force policies.  But, hell, people have even died from exposure to pepper spray.

You know the problem with tactical baton use is that they almost guarantee significantly more serious bodily injury to the suspect than a taser does and also carries an increased risk to bodily injury to the officer as it requires close contact combat.  The potentially risk of accidential improper striking leading to serious bodily injury and even death is far greated in baton use than with a taser.  Period.

I don't know why the officer in the Heidi Gill incident wasn't charged.  You'd have to ask the county prosecutor.  Politicially, it's probably because prosecutors almost never charge cops because they rely on them for their cases so often.

But by any objective scientific standard, tasers are unquestionably and substantially less likely to lead to death than the use of a firearm.

Bullshit modern. Those stories that reached that conclusion were funded by Taser, Inc. and therefore are worthless. Taser, Inc. is a publicly -traded company and therefore are doing what's in the best interests of their shareholders, not the general public.

If you don't like the use of a baton, perhaps the officer should simply have drawn his weapon. That would have shown the suspect that the officer meant business. Also, I have to question why they were considering using the taser at all, since WCPO Channel 9's report states the young man was ON HIS BACK ON THE GROUND at the time they deployed the taser. Why can't police officers try de-escalating a situation, instead of escalating by using force? Especially when the subject is already on the ground on his back?

Instead of simply dismissing every scientific study that disproves your thesis is utter B.S. as corporate propaganda, why not link a single objective study that finds the use of tasers is as lethal as using firearms? You know why you didn't do that? Because no such studies exist!

As for the WCPO story, did you see that on the TV or on the Internet, because their most recent story on this matter (updated within the past hour) makes no mention of him being on his back when he was tased.

Modern, read it and weep: this Seattle Post-Intelligencer story says there has been "very little research" on the safety of Tasers.

Why are you defending cops who should know better? It's not like Taser deaths haven't been in the news:

Taser Death in Florida

Taser Deaths in Canada 

Taser Death in Charlotte, NC

The WCPO story was pulled from their website here.

I should weep at the fact that you come back and concede that you have no objective evidence to support your ridiculous claim that Taser use is as lethal as handgun use?  In fact, this article suggests that other factors likely lead to death instead of Taser use, and at worst, Taser use was an unquantified factor among others which lead to death.

In fact, the article points out that the number of deaths where Taser use was involved compared to the number of times it has been used suggests it is a relatively safe use of force weapon.

The Amensty International report referenced in the story said that only 7 cases out of 74 could not rule out Taser use as a factor leading to the cause of death.  That means, by implication, that the forensic pathologists retained by A.I. ruled out Taser use as a factor leading to the suspect's death in 67 of the cases.  In other words, most of the time when death follows use of a Taser, the taser is almost always not a factor leading to the actual cause of death.

An apoligist is someone who makes excuses.  I'm saying the officers tried to avoid using the taser as much as they can reasonably be expected to.  By all accounts, they repeatedly warned both men that if they didn't desist they would be tased.  One was tased because he allegedly did not desist.  That shows that the officers' appreciated the risk of using a taser, but that risk is not so great as to demand that they don't use it.

The WCPO story is based upon one eyewitness' account.  All other accounts of the story depict him falling to the ground after being tased.  Therefore, there's a factual discrepency as to whether he was on the ground or not when he was tased.

Your different approach, clubbing, statistically carries a significant and appreciable risk of serious and potentially fatal injury to the suspect as well as serious injury to the officer than tasing.  That's why tactical baton use is often right under handgun use in most continium of force policies.  And you generally cannot use a baton for mere disobediance of a lawful order by a police officer.  There has to been active physical resistence.

You're making a horrible case for your cause while strutting like you're proving your point in the absence of any evidence, and in fact, substantial evidence to the contrary.

Modern, surely a lawyer such as yourself is familiar with the term "proximate cause." When you taser someone who has a heart condition and that person dies, the taser was the proximate cause of the death. Because "but for" being tasered, he would still be alive. 

Tell you what. I'm going to start a section of BSB and post every single taser death reported in the media. Maybe the sheer numbers will start to trouble the conscience of you and all the other taser cheerleaders out there. IMO, there's not a shred of evidence supporting your assertion that: "That shows that the officers' appreciated the risk of using a taser, but that risk is not so great as to demand that they don't use it."

There is in fact great enough risk to demand they don't use it. Have you read the papers lately?  

But something cannot be the proximate cause if in the vast majority of cases, it is determined by medical experts not to be a factor at all. Something that the Amnesty International study found. Now, you want to take a hypothetical, declare proximate cause, and says that this is proof that tasers are as deadly as handguns.

I have neither the time nor inclination to use up precious bandwidth on this blog to counter-post every time handgun use lead to death, and I guaranttee if I were it would absolutely smoke you in the number of taser deaths.  As the article you cited as proof stated, most cases of Taser use resulting in death there is no corrolation.  By the way, even in the rare incidents in which taser use was found to be a factor in death, NONE of them found that taser use was the proximate cause of the death.  There is a material difference in something being the proximate cause and being a factor.  The terms are not interchangeable.

According to your evidence, there has been only 69 deaths after taser use between 2000-2004 out of an estimate thousands of usage.  Amnesty International said in 2004 that of the 74 cases it had reviewed, the use of the taser was ruled out as a factor in all but seven of them.

That puts the fatality rate of taser use actually below that of pepper spray.

Sorry for using objective science in this argument about whether tasers are as fatal as handguns and therefore should be used as sparingly as them, but sometimes you have to cut through the public interest nonsense and look at the available objective data.  And every objective piece of evidence you have cited disproves your thesis.  In fact, tasers are safer to use than most other use of force weapons, especially handguns.

Hey Modern, maybe this is why the medical examiners don't list Tasering as the cause of death...

Taser maker goes to court to clear name

They're trying to force the Summit County (Ohio) Medical Examiner not to list tasering as the cause of death in three men.

Just thought I'd say that I appreciate you taking on Modern for his views, it's just that what he does is tie a person up in endless rambling tortured jumps and swerves of "logic" in an attempt to bury the argument in so much bullshit that you almost forget what you were talking about.

He's not someone who would ever question authority and obviously would comply fully with any order any authority figure would direct him, and cannot understand why other people have such problems with fully complying like a robot living in a manfactured world of perfect order where all police are perfectly trained and citizens of this nation had better not be too bothersome while asking former Presidential candidates touchy questions for instance.

He cannot understand that giving a taser to someone and telling them they can't really hurt anyone with it by simply using it to force compliance with an order, lawful or not, is a license for abuse.  The problem with tasers is that they are supposed to be used AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO LETHAL FORCE, not to be used willy-nilly to force the compliance of citizens.  Poorly trained officers won't get the distinction, and if you're going to tell me that well-trained officers are deploying the taser in any way other than as an alternative to lethal force, then thier conduct is willful and one can connote what you will from that assumption...

I acknowledge that taser's aren't full proof - and that they CAN kill you... But that's the price we pay to have police officers protect society.

I have yet to see, what anyone who is against taser's would like to see as the alternative? 

The fact is there are over 850,000 Police Officers in this country, and an arrest is made every 14 seconds in this country, and we are talking about under 100 deaths of people who have knowingly put themselves in a situation where police force is being used.

Batons are a very physical weapon, that not only forces a police officer to physically engage a suspect, but puts them and the suspect in considerably more danger.  Can lead to death for the suspect thru cracked skulls, blood clots, and heart attacks, and leaves the officer open to knife attack, being jumped from behind, hand to hand attack, and the dangers of a close encounter that a one on one confrontation brings (and that's only a few of the dangers.)

Pepper sprays has a lot of the same problems that the baton has because it is a close encounter weapon, plus it's the least effective of the major options for police, and has been known to lead to a few deaths as well.

Brandishing a fire arm leaves no room to negotiate.  If you pull out the gun and the suspect doesn't cooperate or follow directions you are forced to use the gun because you have exhausted all lesser alternatives (and seeing that this is a Democratic Blog i'm just gonna naturally assume none of us want to see that).  The fact is most cops will never have to brandish their firearm in the line of duty in their career, and even less have to actually discharge their weapon (That in my opinion is a good thing).

The Taser is a way for a police officer to engage in a situation with the most safety and least exposure to themselves, and in almost all cases leaves no lasting damage to the arrestee.

I guess I would just ask - if you are really that against the taser what would you rather see done?

Yes, as an alternative to lethal force but they're not being used that way~ the people being tasered are often simply non-compliant~

I'd be interested in seeing statistics about how often a taser was deployed on an armed suspect, a situation requiring either a lethal response by the police where the taser was used to save the suspects life. 

I'd be interested to compare that to how often a taser is discharged against unarmed people, suspected criminals, or unruly or disorderly people resisting lawful arrest, and how many others were tased before they had a chance to submit to arrest without resistence, like that woman in Warren Ohio who was tased and tased because she stood up when directed to lay down.

Jean,

Your right tasers are being used on people who are non-compliant, but I would just point out - being non-compliant with a police officer is really really really really stupid risk... and a woman who continues to stand up when being directed to lie down by a cop is doing so at her own risk.

As far as I'm aware they don't have statistics on what you were asking, but as I said before every 14 seconds someone is arrested.  If even 1/10 of those arrests involve the use of a taser then we aren't hearing of too many problems in relation to how much a taser is being used.  (As I said it's not full proof - it's just the best we have now)

I think what this discussion highlights as much as anything is the risk that every officer of the law faces daily, and the need to make sure we are funding not only equipment used by a law enforcement agency - but also funding the proper training our officers receive. 

What has happened is the taser has been introduced into situations that do not and never did require a lethal response.  The taser is promoted, even on the manufacturerers website, as an alternative to LETHAL force. 

If an armed or otherwise dangerous suspect can be tasered instead of being shot, that's where we're supposed to be reading about the merits of tasering. 

But what we're seeing everyday is people, unarmed people, are being shocked with 50,000 volts for non-compliance, a situation where before police officers, well trained officers, have many other means to compel or subdue a non-compliant person. 

People have been lead to perceive these weapons, tasers, as somehow "soft", and so thier more and more indiscriminate use, like on fare jumpers in Canada (google it), is growing and the use of these is can lead to the death of a simple misdemeanant or even a plain old innocent person. 

The requirements demanded of an officer to prevent a tasing may be arbitrary and unknowable to the suspect, like that woman in Warren, she didn't know what to do to stop the officer from torturing her with that device.

Because tasers do not carry the fatality risk that firearms do, almost all law enforcement departments have use of force policies that put taser use between pepper spray and tactical batons in their use of force continiums. I've never heard of any such policies being ruled by any court as excessive force. Tasers were never, ever, intended to only be used in lethal situations in lieu of a firearm. And the law has never required them to only be used in those situation.

As discussed above, the lady in Warren was a victim of excessive use of force as the taser use was wholly inappropriate, but not because she was not a lethal threat. 

Again, pepper spray has killed.  In fact, in documented cases far more than tasers have. 

"Proximate cause" and "but-for cause" are two separate entities.

• "But-for" cause is also known as "factual cause" or "cause-in-fact." It means that, in the absence of X, Y would not have occurred.
  
• "Proximate cause" is also known as the "legal cause." It means that X is a (if not the most) significant factor in causing Y, and that their link is not attenuated by an interposing chain-of-events.
• The difference between the two is best highlighted by the classic "butterfly effect." Just because the butterfly flapping its wings is the "but-for cause" of a typhoon does not mean that it is the "proximate cause" of the typhoon.

JMatthew, I'm in the computer business, my exposure to the law is limited to one business law class from the business program at Fisher. I went back and found out you're absolutely right, I mixed up factual causation and proximate causation. 

I stand corrected. 

People with medical conditions SHOULDN'T be putting themselves into questionable situations where they are faced with compliance or tazer.

Tazers should be made LETHAL......then jack asses wouldn't defy an officer and risk being shocked. If people were told Tazers are LETHAL they would be less inclined to fart around and risk the "shock"
(That doesn't even sound scary) 
Ooo what are you gonna do..."Shock me?"

The other problem is the seriousness of ANY WEAPON. People don't understand that TAZERS fucking hurt and if used on them and they could DIE!

A buddy of mine hit me with a stun gun of like 60k volts ...ha ha NOT FUNNY! I hear Tazers are a lot worse! You can be killed with a Bic pall point pen, 12 inches of nylon cord, 3 inches of water or a 2 inch square of plastic wrap.
Life is fragile. And some people think they can survive 120k volts of electricity? 

The other option is to follow Magi1 advice and return to handguns and eliminate the non-lethal option. 

The other problem ISN'T the Tazer, it is THE DEFIANCE OF AUTHORITY.

An officer tells me to get down. I'm getting down!

Don't Taze me Bro!

If you don't comply with an officers request, Fuck you! Die!
*sarcasm* (or I mean...don't have a reasonable expectation of living)
Those are your options. The officers safety over yours, I think we should BOTH go home to our families, JUST COMPLY.

(Sorry for the profanity on that one)
I am in no way referring to Heidi Gill..I don't even know about that one...

It is completely untrue that police are trained to "never, never do you tase in the chest" and that's only to be in the fat tissue.  That essentially only leave the stomach and the arse as the only places you could tase.  Regardless, no law enforcement agency I know of has that as a policy in the use of the taser, and I know of no training agency that advises as you claim.  The torso is the most logical target for a flailing suspect as it's the largest and most easily hit target.

Fact is that it appears that from all involved, the police repeatedly warned both men that if they didn't stop fighting, they would be tased.  Piskura reportedly ignored the officers' warnings.  He was tased and was injured as a result.

We don't have to demonize cops or Piskura to prove our points here.  Fact is that when a police officer is threatening to use force against you (rightfully or wrongfully), you have expect they aren't bluffing.

I'm sorry for your friend's injury, but just as Brody was wrong for demonizing your friend, you are wrong to demonize these officers.  I'd note that Smith was arrested without injury because he complied with the officers' order to stop fighting or else be tased.

What would you have these officers do?  Pepper spray outside runs a high risk of causing injury to innocent bystanders and the police themselves.  A tactical batton could have caused even more significant injury.   The threat of the use of a firearm probably wasn't justified in this instance.  And we don't expect officers to risk bodily injury by fighting on equal terms as their suspects.

So where does that leave the officer who has to make a quick decision about what to do about a brawling suspect who refuses to obey orders and desist from his violent and threatening behavior.  And you have to decide in no more than one second on what to do.

And reported what you witnessed to the police, correct?

You'd be surprised how much context you could lose being across the street. Especially, with traffic going through High Street (the main street through Oxford) at the time during the early morning weekend hours as the bars are closing. What exactly drew your attention to the situation at the time anyways? How much had you had to drink?  How long did you observe what transpired?  Were you ever distracted by other people talking or jostling to view the events?  I think these are all fair questions to ask.

There's no thing as doing little to warrant arrest.  That's like being a little pregnant.  He either warranted a disorderly conduct (minor to fourth degree misdemeanor) arrest or he didn't.  There's no middle ground there.