The ACLU has posted an interesting study that could have profound implications for criminal and torts cases involving injuries or deaths from tasers. We have been following such cases for years (here and here and here and here and here) now a study published by the American Heart Association refutes the claim that tasers are “nonlethal.” The AHA study shows that a rising number of people are dying after being hit by the 50,000 volt shocks (followed by 100 microsecond pulses of 1,200 volts). Since 2001, more than 500 people in the United States have died after being hit by police tasers.
A study appearing in the AHA’s Circulation Journal confirms the lethal record of tasers. It also details how they have been used against children, pregnant women and the mentally ill. As we have discussed, police are now using tasers with little restraint or judgment in many cases despite the danger of cardiac arrest and death.
Despite the strong evidence of the lethal qualities of tasers, police departments and the industry continue to push their use. My concern is that courts will find it increasingly difficult to reverse this trend. As a result, this high-level of injury will be treated as reasonable force in common confrontations with police.
Here is the original study: AHA Study
The police need to get rid of the thugs in their midst to cut down on inappropriate behavior. The thugs also use pepper spray inappropriately which can be life threatening to asthmatics, small children, the elderly, the pregnant.
A few successful lawsuits might inject some better judgement into police departments who have the thugs who use the tasers inappropriately.
I think the use of Tasers would not be as much of an issue if they were always used appropriately. Such as tasing a pregnant woman or an elderly woman. I have family that are members of the police force and I obviously want them to be as safe as possible.
However, there are many cases demostrated on this blog of police using tasers in clearly inappropriate ways and having little/ no action against the offending officer because it’s a nonlethal weapon anyway. The idea that there are officers that are very willing to discharge a weapon because it is deemed “nonlethal” when the weapon is in fact lethal is troubling.
I am very sorry for what happened to your family, Rick. I just wanted to point out that the larger idea isn’t to prevent police from doing their jobs well, but to say that using a “nonlethal” weapon isn’t that big of a deal because nobody will die from it, and here we have further proof that the weapon is, if fact, killing people.
Hopefully, this publication puts some caution into an officer’s mind when deciding what course of action to take and using a Taser may kill the person you’re trying to merely subdue.
“My family is painfully familiar with someone close to us being harmed … by thugs, not the police.”
I have been held at gunpoint and forced to watch the mugging of an old man. Also I have been mugged, sustained a head injury and called the police only to have no one respond. I also worked closely with police and prosecutors in severe child abuse cases in the 80’s. I definitely am not a knee-jerk hate the police person. In fact I think the police themselves are victimized when they join up and only to find after a few years that their real job is in carrying out the protection of the elite in this country and/or keeping the lid on those citizens that the powers-that-be deem second class citizens. When I write about these issues it come from the standpoint of a life long civil libertarian who decries injustice.
“Mike, when police use any of the tools at their disposal inappropriately, they should be disciplined, prosecuted, whatever, and sunshine (cameras and audio) also help to keep the rogues inline.”
Rick, I agree with you completely, but part of why these issues need to be exposed and opposed, is that all to often prosecution is not forthcoming and that increases the permissibility of LEO’s arbitrarily acting counter to the law and common human sense.
Mike, when police use any of the tools at their disposal inappropriately, they should be disciplined, prosecuted, whatever, and sunshine (cameras and audio) also help to keep the rogues inline.
My family is painfully familiar with someone close to us being harmed … by thugs, not the police.
Rick,
Great attitude, until it’s you or one close to you who gets tased because they were perceived as disrespectful by a LEO. There are numerous stories where this has happened. Because their utility is sold to the police as being “non-lethal”, their used is encouraged and has exponentially multiplied.
“Pile on, pepper spray, night stick or baton. and hand held unit instead of the darts.”
As Oro Lee stated these methods are preferable to tasing. A LEO is much less likely to use them for minor incidents and it is the minor incidents that have multiplied through the years, including six year old’s and eighty-six year
old’s. Approximately 50 people a year being killed by tasers is unacceptable.
Oro, your alternate solutions put police in close proximity to these thugs they are trying to subdue and increases the odds the cop herself will be injured or killed. And pile-on isn’t a good solution when it’s just one or two cops against one thug. Stick with the tazers.
James, it’s not that difficult to spot a thug. Walk like a thug, dress like a thug, act like a thug, commit thug crimes, and one can expect to be tazed like a thug and quite possibly die like a thug. This is not that difficult to understand.
A question: if police don’t have tasers, they are left with bullets, nightsticks, and their ability to ask nicely. Which do you prefer they use?
Rick Roberts feels free to call perfect strangers he sees on YouTube about which he knows nothing “thugs,” but finds it too personal when someone calls him out on his adolescent theory-making.
Josh would therefore seem to have a valid point, and his language was age-appropriate, given his audience.
Rock Roberts — “How else to stop a thug who won’t stop or subdue one who won’t submit.”
Pile on, pepper spray, night stick or baton. and hand held unit instead of the darts.
Tasers are used as submission devices far more often than to prevent an attack. Tasers should be treated as deadly force and only used accordingly.
BTW, a thick hoody and lose sweat pants(both with loose clothes underneath) pretty much defeats tasers.
Protect and Serve…
Josh, when you get personal, I refuse to engage with you. Bye-bye.
@rick, “Go to YouTube and watch some of the numerous videos of” elderly women, pregnant women, and children “brought down buy [sic] these things.” Then watch the videos of people shot in the back with them as they’re running away. Then watch the videos of people who have already been handcuffed, or who have already been beaten into submission, tased in order to “encourage” compliance.
Then come back here and tell us how you still don’t care because you’re a scum pig.
Crime kills …
I don’t care. They are less lethal than bullets. How else to stop a thug who won’t stop or subdue one who won’t submit. Keep the tazers. Go to YouTube and watch some of the numerous videos of dangerous thugs brought down buy these things.
They did not need a study to prove the obvious. They only had to read this blog!
We have been following such cases for years
Since 2001, more than 500 people in the United States have died after being hit by police tasers.
So glad an expensive study was done to show that tasers are not non-lethal. Sure you could have just looked at the fact that 500 people have died and determined that tasers can kill but then that would mean that the AHA wouldn’t had been able to rake in all that dough.
From a legal point of view what percentage of deaths from tasering would disqualify it for “non-lethal” status?
This contradicts the cheney school of logic…..
Your concern that courts will have a difficult time in reversing this trend will be born out if the legal profession does not get off its arse and start filing damage claims. There is money to be made out there young schmucks. File the case as a civil rights violation under Title 42 United States Code, Section 1983 and add a claim for atty fees under section 1988. Go to the law library and dust off the book and look at the annotations. The book is better than Westlaw. You can sue the shooter, his superior, his Chief of Police, and the municipality which hired the shooter, his superior and the Chief. At deposition if they offer that the device is harmless, have one ready to try their patience and subpoena their grandma for a dose.
If the tasers are safe we can tase the grandmothers of the advocates.