At Least 50 Deaths Following Taser Shocks
Last December, City Council voted to spend more than $1 million to buy 1100 stun guns (at a cost of $799 a piece) from Taser International, but not before listening to Taser president Tom Smith tell the City that no one had died after being shocked by one of their tasers and only four serious injuries had resulted after more than 3,500 taser shocks. And not before hearing a doctor on Taser's payroll tell Council that tasers pose no threat to people with pacemakers. (As usual, the lazy local media failed to investigate any of the claims made by Taser representatives. And since the purchase there has still been no investigation of Taser. The media has also failed to ask what policy, if any, has been put in place for deployment of tasers. The media printed everything Luken and Taser International said as truth.)
Now the New York Times reports that since 2001 at least 50 people have died after being shocked by a taser. Six of those deaths happened in June! As if that weren't enough, the Times further reports:
Stop right there. Before the City bought the tasers, Amnesty International, Cincinnati Cardiologist Joe Hackworth, Alicia Reece, Christopher Smitherman, Laketa Cole, and a whole host of concerned citizens begged the City to get more research before making the purchase. As usual, the hot-headed bullies at City Hall (with Luken out in front) won the battle and spent the money. Maybe the City will listen to the voices of reason next time. Probably not.Taser International ... says its weapons are not lethal, even for people with heart conditions or pacemakers. The deaths resulted from drug overdoses or other factors and would have occurred anyway, the company says.
But Taser has scant evidence for that claim. The company's primary safety studies on the M26, which is far more powerful than other stun guns, consist of tests on a single pig in 1996 and on five dogs in 1999. Company-paid researchers, not independent scientists, conducted the studies, which were never published in a peer-reviewed journal. Taser has no full-time medical director and has never created computer models to simulate the effect of its shocks, which are difficult to test in human clinical trials for ethical reasons.
What is more, aside from a continuing Defense Department study, the results of which have not been released, no federal or state agencies have studied the safety, or effectiveness, of Tasers, which fall between two federal agencies and are essentially unregulated. Nor has any federal agency studied the deaths to determine what caused them. In at least two cases, local medical examiners have said Tasers were partly responsible. In many cases, autopsies are continuing or reports are unavailable.The few independent studies that have examined the Taser have found that the weapon's safety is unproven at best. The most comprehensive report, by the British government in 2002, concluded "the high-power Tasers cannot be classed, in the vernacular, as `safe.' " ... A 1989 Canadian study found that stun guns induced heart attacks in pigs with pacemakers. A 1999 study by the Department of Justice on an electrical weapon much weaker than the Taser found that it might cause cardiac arrest in people with heart conditions. In reviewing other electrical devices, the Food and Drug Administration has found that a charge half as large as that of the M26 can be dangerous to the heart.
Apparently sensing that Cincinnati is led (if you can call it leadership) by a bunch of fools, the Taser representative came to town and simply lied about injuries resulting from the use of their product. They guessed that the City wouldn't bother investigating their company or their product, and they knew the City wouldn't insist (as suggested by Reece) on a "hold-harmless" agreement. The City could probably prevail in a fraud lawsuit, but that would require Luken and the six goofballs who voted in favor of the purchase to admit that they were deceived.
How long before Reece's concern that someone is going to sue the City for arming the cops with these dangerous weapons, for failing to investigate tasers before purchasing and placing them on the street, and for failing to give cops appropriate guidelines for when to use tasers? The City probably can't prevent lawsuits but they can insist Chief Stricher immediately prepare a deployment policy for taser usage.
