Bottom line, when the police say STOP, then stop. I think it would be better to be Tased and live than receive a bullet, for not listening to the police or other authorities.

If the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, then all your problems look like nails.

So, the officers pass physical exams, undergo rigorous physical training, and agility tests, yet they have some “undisclosed” condition that suddenly decides to rear its deadly head when they get tasered?

Has anybody studied the number of officers who die during taser training vs the number with “undisclosed” conditions who just drop dead after a chase of physical confrontation with a suspect?

Interestingly, the guy chasing his girlfriend got to plead no contest rather than guilty in his plea bargain, because the judge accepted that a combination of drunkeness and being tased made his memory rather hazy as to what had happened.

I’m already seeing police discussion groups wishing for a youtube video of Al Sharpton on a TASER.

Cut stun-gun references from autopsies, judge says

AKRON (AP) — A medical examiner must change her autopsy findings to delete any reference that stun guns contributed to the deaths of three people, a judge ruled.

Friday’s decision was a victory for Taser International, which had challenged rulings by Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler, including a case in which five deputy sheriffs are charged in the death of a jail inmate who was restrained by the wrists and ankles and hit with pepper spray and a stun gun.

Kohler ruled that the 2006 death of Mark McCullaugh Jr., 28, was a homicide and that he died from asphyxiation because of the “combined effects of chemical, mechanical and electrical restraint.”

Visiting Judge Ted Schneiderman said in his ruling that there was no expert evidence to indicate that Taser devices impaired McCullaugh’s respiration. “More likely, the death was due to a fatal cardiac arrhythmia brought on by severe heart disease,” the judge wrote.

Schneiderman ordered Kohler to rule McCullaugh’s death undetermined and to delete any references to homicide.

So here we have a competent medical examiner, and the judge goes against it (as opposed to the Mississippi situation).

That has already happened. Every time, it is because the officer failed to disclose a preexisting condition. Or, at least the reports say.

From Taser’s website:

When the output is connected to a 4,000 Ohm load, each individual pulse of 3.5 uS (.0000035 second) in duration and measures 23,600 volts DC peak with a peak current of 5.9 Amps. The DC waveform is ½ sinusoidal. The time-averaged current is .00022 Amps. The maximum average power output of the AIR TASER is 6 Watts.

What matters is not the time average current, but the maximum. The heartbeat is regulated by a series of small electrical timing signals. If sufficient current passes through one of the nodes that controls the contraction and relaxation of the heart, it can fool that node into sending signals out of cycle. The nodes don’t care about the time average of the current passing through them. Rather they receive some electrical signal, they delay for a time, then they fire sending orders to the heart muscle cells they control, and timing signals to adjacent nodes which are used to initiate those nodes’ action.

Because taser is presented as non-lethal, deaths can be passed off as not being a result of the tasering, and so they know that there’s no chance the death will go on their statistics or cause uncomfortable headlines. That inevitably makes them more stun-happy.

It would be nice to have a “fire and forget” weapon, but this doesn’t seem to be it. It does still seem better than a bullet.

Cleveland Clinic Study Reveaaled that Cocaine increased the margin of safety for ventricular fibrillation.

Effects of Cocaine Intoxication on the Threshold for Stun Gun Induction of Ventricular Fibrillation

OBJECTIVES: This study sought to assess cocaine’s effects on Taser-induced ventricular fibrillation (VF) threshold in a pig model.

BACKGROUND: Stun guns are increasingly used by law enforcement officials to restrain violent subjects, who are frequently intoxicated with cocaine and other drugs of abuse. The interaction of cocaine and the stun gun on VF induction is unknown.

METHODS: We tested five adult pigs using a custom device built to deliver multiples of standard neuromuscular incapacitating (NMI) discharge that matched the waveform of a commercially available electrical stun gun (Taser X-26, Taser International, Scottsdale, Arizona). The NMI discharges were applied in a step-up and step-down fashion at 5 body locations. End points included determination of maximum safe multiple, minimum VF-inducing multiple, and ventricular fibrillation threshold (VFT) before and after cocaine infusion.

RESULTS: Standard NMI discharges (x1) did not cause VF at any of the 5 locations before or after cocaine infusion. The maximum safe multiple, minimum VF-inducing multiple, and VFT of NMI application increased with increasing electrode distance from the heart. There was a 1.5- to 2-fold increase in these values at each position after cocaine infusion, suggesting decreased cardiac vulnerability for VF. Cocaine increased the required strength of NMI discharge that caused 2:1 or 3:1 ventricular capture ratios at all of the positions. No significant changes in creatine kinase-MB and troponin-I were seen.

CONCLUSIONS: Cocaine increased the VFT of NMI discharges at all dart locations tested and reduced cardiac vulnerability to VF. The application of cocaine increased the safety margin by 50% to 100% above the baseline safety margin.

http://content.onlinejacc.org/cgi/content/abstract/j.jacc.2006.03.055v1

“The taser produces a short pulse of 6 Amps. A current of .6 Amps can cause the heart to fibrilate or otherwise disturb the electrical function of the heart”

Tasers use only 0.0021 amperes of current. Your estimate is 2857 higher than the actual figure. So much for your credibility.

Tarran further writes

“I am stunned that the officers of Taser would make such a unreasonable claim. The science contradicts them, and all they will accomplish is to gain a reputation for dishonesty.”

Fiction is often thousand times more stunning than fact.

Peace.

I think it’s the bully-values of corruption, entitlement, and tribalism endemic to police culture that makes them willing to use it, not the fact that it is pushed as a ‘non-lethal’ weapon.

I mean, to think that was the case, you’d almost have to think that they have something against killing people.