10Th Death By Police Taser.

[Gromit]

// Eye-witness Lee Wilkie, 25, who lives nearby on Mount Road, said: "Three Transit vans came storming up to the house then they bashed his door down and you could hear all sorts of shouting and banging.

"I think he's been Tasered inside and then the ambulance came outside his house. A bit later he came into the street but something happened again and they started giving him CPR in the road.

"He was a good lad, a quiet lad, and he was very well-liked. People around here are just in total shock and really angry as well, why did they have to Taser him?" //

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/jordan-begley-named-man-who-5066332

What are your views on Tasers?

Are Tasers safe?
Are they being properly used?
Are they being over used?
Are they being used as first resort instead of last resort?
Is 10 deaths acceptable?

[Sqad]

Gromit........"died of heart disease" after being taserd?"
Not a very medical diagnosis, does one assume that he had no heart disease before being taserd?

What has "drug poisoning " got to do with "tasering?"

This is abracadabra stuff as it stands.

[pixie373]

Thanks, orderlimit. Clearly, in that case, the police made a dangerous decision, but being covered in petrol and holding a naked flame does make it hard to see what else would have happened!

[pixie373]

Sqad, i think that's proving the Taser didn't cause those deaths

[LazyGun]

There have been studies as to the safety of tasers. One of the more authoratitive was carried out at the Wake Forest Baptist Hospital Centre in the US. They looked at 1000 tasering episodes, and concluded there were no ill effects in 99.7% of these cases. Those adverse events were minor - but 3 were sufficiently injured they needed hospitalization and 2 people did die.

The manufacturers themselves acknowledge that there can be potentially fatal consequences if the person on whom it is used has an underlying medical condition, such as cardiac arhythmias etc.

Updated guidance has been offered, advizing that suspects should not be tazered in the chest.

So far, so good. They were brought in as an alternative to lethal force - a good thing. Problem is, as someone here has mentioned, is "mission creep" - using a taser when actually it is just not warranted.

I agree with this chap, Jared Feuer, from Amnesty International where he is reported as saying this;
"The head of the U.S. southern regional office of Amnesty International, Jared Feuer, claimed that 277 people in the United States have died after being shocked by a Taser between June 2001 and October 2007, which has already been documented. He also claimed that about 80% of those on whom a Taser was used by U.S. police were unarmed. "Tasers interfere with a basic equation, which is that force must always be proportional to the threat," Feuer said. "They are being used in a situation where a firearm or even a baton would never be justified."

[ToraToraTora]

Nothing is 100% safe
yes they are being properly used
No they are not being over used
I have no doubt they are being used when necessary to counter threats to police officers.
Looking for numbers of deaths being "acceptable" is missing the point, the purpose of a tazer is to avoid deadly force so if you want to go down that route you could say they save lives.

Police have to deal with criminal lowlives every day, if they had to use guns there'd be a lot more dead. Occasional deaths are regretable but if criminal scum choose the activities they do then they must know they risk death.

[LazyGun]

What, criminal lowlife scum like this, TTT?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2218945/Terror-blind-man-tasered-police-I-thought-theyd-kill-says-stroke-victim-aged-61-white-stick-mistaken-samurai-sword.html

[ToraToraTora]

we can all dig up examples of error on any subject LG.

[pixie373]

Nobody is advocating tasering innocent blind men. We were talking about criminals. The policeman was an idiot and anything can be dangerous in an idiot's hands.

[LazyGun]

The point I am trying to make, the point raised by the original question, is that police do not only deal "with criminal scum", as T3 describes it. They also deal with ordinary members of the public too, often in extreme distress or in extremis, acting irrationally, delusionally even.

The police are not a vigilante group, tasked on behalf of the public to mete out rough justice to criminals - far less to members of the public in bad circumstances. I do not want the police to be employing batons unnecessarily ( as in the G20 incident),or their fists, or over-enthusiastic "restraining practices", or to be overly casual when deploying a taser; And I think there is a danger here that they are becoming over-enthusiastic and over-reliant on the taser.....

[Sqad]

\\\\Sqad, i think that's proving the Taser didn't cause those death\\\

LOL...thanks you are right.....got a bit excited there.....

[chrisgel]

I think the point is, should the police have used tasers 1500 times in a year regardless of whether anyone was killed or not.
Do they have proper guidelines for when to use them and are they following the guidelines?

[pixie373]

The police do have guidelines. The guidelines obviously weren't followed in the case of the man soaked in petrol, as they have been told not to fire them with flammables around.
It is very difficult to say whether 1500 times is "a lot" without knowing how many people were arrested that year in total and why were the Tasers used in those situations. The number is not important only whether it was advisable on each occasion.

[chrisgel]

Pixie - The reason I thought 1500 was a lot was because of my previous statement that Tasers were initially supposed to be used only as a substitute for a firearm i.e. when a firearm would normally be needed.
Therefore 1500 times they would have previously used a gun.

[pixie373]

That does sound a lot to me, chrisgel. Although, as Tasers are so much safer, they are obviously not just being used as a last resort. There are some examples on here that seem to show police being too quick to use them, but , i would say, preferable to being shot

[jomifl]

// A man who had doused himself in petrol turned into a human fireball when police shot him with a Taser. //
Not a good idea to douse yourself in petrol if the policeman with the taser doesn't understand how spark ignition engines work.

[youngmafbog]

Perhaps we should just arm the Police and have done with it.

I'd like to see the reaction of the right-on crowd on here then !

[emmie]

i could understand to some extent the police using a taser or someone who is out of control, armed with a weapon, particularly a gun, but why would the police use tasers on children, is there some link to that

[LazyGun]

@Em - This article was posted recently in the DM. There may be other reports.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2334750/Police-shot-children-young-12-50-000-volt-Taser-linked-causing-fatal-heart-attacks.html

[emmie]

if so i am surprised anyone is using that as a source, seeing as how it's usually derided for being not accurate..
there was a paper called the St Helen reporter or something like it, but it does show that one of the children a 12 year girl was tasered, she was supposedly holding knives and they feared she would harm herself, i honestly don't know why they would taser children i confess.