Safety Of Tasers Called Into Question

[Chris]

I found a rought draft of the list on my work pc I will edit my post with my final version late tonnight or this weekend.

Impressive list. Since police officers are also hit with tasers before they are allowed to carry them, how many police officers were killed with tasers during the training? I'm sure you included this in your research as well, since you would have wanted to show an unbiased report.

[casingpoint]

Is there any statutory or unwritten common law authorizing the use of compliance tools and devices by law enforcement officers? I can see where cops have the right to self defense just like anyone else. But do they have the right to make you comply with a directive before an arrest?

[srothstein]

Penal Code Section 9.51 gives the limits on police using force for an arrest or search.

[KBCraig]

I found a rought draft of the list on my work pc I will edit my post with my final version late tonnight or this weekend.

Impressive list. Since police officers are also hit with tasers before they are allowed to carry them, how many police officers were killed with tasers during the training? I'm sure you included this in your research as well, since you would have wanted to show an unbiased report.

You're right, it is important to compare apples to apples.

Of all the officers who have been tased for certification, how many received the shock after an extremely stressful emotional/physical encounter?

The answer is "zero". Taser qualification takes place in controlled circumstances, on floor mats, where the "target" has time to take deep breaths and relax, with fellow officers waiting to catch him when he falls.

How many officers tased in training were of "average" conditioning when compared to the general public? Extremely obese? Poor health?

Probably none. Police officers have fitness standards, and at the very least engage in some regular exercise, even if only on the job.

And still, police officers are regularly injured, sometimes ending their careers, during Taser qualification. Torn muscles and stress fractures of bones happen frequently enough to be a known risk.

[flintknapper]

I found a rought draft of the list on my work pc I will edit my post with my final version late tonnight or this weekend.

Impressive list. Since police officers are also hit with tasers before they are allowed to carry them, how many police officers were killed with tasers during the training? I'm sure you included this in your research as well, since you would have wanted to show an unbiased report.

You're right, it is important to compare apples to apples.

Of all the officers who have been tased for certification, how many received the shock after an extremely stressful emotional/physical encounter?

The answer is "zero". Taser qualification takes place in controlled circumstances, on floor mats, where the "target" has time to take deep breaths and relax, with fellow officers waiting to catch him when he falls.

How many officers tased in training were of "average" conditioning when compared to the general public? Extremely obese? Poor health?

Probably none. Police officers have fitness standards, and at the very least engage in some regular exercise, even if only on the job.

And still, police officers are regularly injured, sometimes ending their careers, during Taser qualification. Torn muscles and stress fractures of bones happen frequently enough to be a known risk.

You beat me to it.

[Mr.Scott]

I put tasers in the less lethal category like rubber bullets. I think tasers are useful in law enforcement but I don't want one. (I think I should be allowed to own one but don't want one.)

That's the key. "Less Leathal" That's the way they are marketed, that's the way they are treated in the use of force policy of most departments. But being England, it won't surprise me if they outlaw them and tell cops to just let criminals rape and kill with impunity.
I feel sorry for police officers in England. They are tasked with protecting but are not allowed to use the tools required to do the job.

[anygunanywhere]

Yes there are instances of tasers being used for non-compliance and it is a shame when it happens. I would not want to be the one tased in such an incident. The number of such instances are extremely small and should not happen at all.

Compare the number of individuals tased for compliance to the ones tased for appropriate reasons. If they did not want to be tased they should have not have been doing whatever it was they were doing to cause the officer to tase them. Personal responsibility. Don't break the law and you will not be put into the spotlight and fall under the gaze of your local LEO.

I have never been tased. I have experienced a 5 cell flashlight up-side my head by a Baytown cop. I did not do anything to deserve the beating other than be a teenager driving at 1:30 in the morning. Yes, personal responsibility was involved. Yes, I had imbibed earlier but was not intoxicated. The officer was searching my camaro, and caught his pistol on the B-pillar as he backed his lard out of my car. He came around and hammered me with the flashlight and warned me to not ever touch his pistol again. I still have not figured out how he imagined I had touched his pistol. I gues he just wanted to hit me. It hasn't affected me much except for the headaches. Thinking about this whole taser discussion and having been shocked by 8,000 volts from a sonar transmitter I would take the flashlight anyday.

The term "Less Lethal" is probably barely adequate in it's description, but given the option of a taser or a bullet what would the lawbreaker choose?

Anygunanywhere

[WarHawk-AVG]

They ought to market it as "better than taking 4 .40cal slugs to the chest"

[yerasimos]

Here is another incident involving the hardware under discussion. Look closely at the text and you can see how this is more volatile than the average Taser incident. I did not find the name of the deceased in the list posted earlier, and Taser discussions are rare, so I assume this is new to this board.

I have taken the liberty of underlining a few choice sections. Still, consider the sources (an opinionated mousegun basher, and CNN).

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/22/tas ... index.html

From Drew Griffin and David Fitzpatrick
CNN


WINNFIELD, Louisiana (CNN) -- A police officer shocked a handcuffed Baron "Scooter" Pikes nine times with a Taser after arresting him on a cocaine charge.

He stopped twitching after seven, according to a coroner's report. Soon afterward, Pikes was dead.

Now the officer, since fired, could end up facing criminal charges in Pikes' January death after medical examiners ruled it a homicide.

Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish coroner, told CNN the 21-year-old sawmill worker was jolted so many times by the 50,000-volt Taser that he might have been dead before the last two shocks were delivered.

Williams ruled Pikes' death a homicide in June after extensive study.

Winn Parish District Attorney Christopher Nevils said he will decide on any charges against the ex-officer, Scott Nugent, once a Louisiana State Police report on the case is complete.

"It's taken several months for this case to even be properly addressed, so one has to wonder, why did it take so long?" said Carol Powell Lexing, a lawyer for the Pikes family. "Obviously, a wrongful death occurred."

Nugent's lawyer, Phillip Terrell, said his client followed proper procedure to subdue a man who outweighed him by 100 pounds. But Williams said Pikes was already handcuffed and on the ground when first hit with the Taser, after the 247-pound suspect was slow to follow police orders to get up.

Winnfield, a sleepy lumber town about 100 miles southeast of Shreveport, Louisiana, is best known as the birthplace of legendary Louisiana governors Huey and Earl Long. It's also about 45 miles northwest of Jena, Louisiana, where a racially charged assault case sparked a September 2007 demonstration by an estimated 15,000 people.

One of the teenage defendants in that case, Mychal Bell, is Pikes' first cousin -- and his lawyer was Powell Lexing.

Nugent is white; Pikes was black. His death led to demonstrations that drew several dozen people in Winnfield, where the population of about 15,000 is roughly half African-American.

"The family wants justice," Lexing said. "This is just another example of why it's very important to stay vigilant with these types of cases, on the injustice that's been perpetrated on the disadvantaged."

But Winnfield police Lt. Chuck Curry said race "isn't an issue at all" in the matter.

"This has come down to a police officer that was trying to apprehend a suspect that they had warrants for," he said. "He done what he thought he was trained to do to bring that subject into custody. At some point, something happened with his body that caused him to go into cardiac arrest or whatever."

According to police, Pikes was wanted on a charge of possession of cocaine when police tried to arrest him outside a shopping center January 12.

"He would not stop for the officer," Curry said. "At some point in there, he was Tased to bring him under control, and several hours later, died at the emergency room."

Terrell said Pikes was fighting Nugent "on uneven ground" amid obstructions such as concrete blocks and barbed wire.

"He's fighting, wrestling with an individual who weighs 100 pounds more than him," he said. "His partner had just come back to the police department from triple bypass surgery and could not assist Officer Nugent."

Terrell said his client "used every means possible" to take Pikes into custody before pulling out his Taser, a weapon Winnfield police purchased in 2007.

"The only thing he could have done other than to say, 'OK, we're going to let you go' is to beat him or Tase him. He did the right thing," Terrell said.

Williams, who ruled Pikes' death a homicide in June after extensive study, said Nugent fired his Taser at Pikes six times in less than three minutes -- shots recorded by a computer chip in the weapon's handle. Then officers put Pikes in the back of a cruiser and drove him to their police station -- where Nugent fired a seventh shot, directly against Pikes' chest.

"After he was given that drive stun to the chest, he was pulled out of the car onto the concrete, " Williams told CNN. "He was electroshocked two more times, which two officers noted that he had no neuromuscular response to those last two 50,000-volt electroshocks."

Williams said he had two nationally known forensic pathologists, including former New York city medical examiner Michael Baden, review the case before issuing his conclusions. He said it's possible Nugent was shocking a dead man the last two times he pulled the trigger.

"This fellow was talking in the back seat of the car prior to shot number seven," he said. "From that point on, it becomes questionable [if Pikes was still alive]."

Curry said Pikes told officers he suffered from asthma and had been using PCP and crack cocaine. But Williams said he found no sign of drug use in the autopsy, and no record of asthma in Pikes' medical history.

In the year since Winnfield police received Tasers, officers have used them 14 times, according to police records -- with 12 of the instances involving black suspects. Ten of the 14 incidents involved Nugent, who has no public disciplinary record.

Nugent was suspended after Pikes' death, and Winnfield's City Council voted 3-2 to fire him in May. He is appealing his dismissal, and his lawyer says he followed proper procedures in Pikes' case. He was trained in the use of the Taser by a senior police officer who was present during the incident that led to Pikes' death, Terrell said.

Curry said Taser International, the device's manufacturer, indicates that "multiple Tasings do not affect a person." But he said he could not explain why Pikes was shocked so many times, and said whether Nugent followed proper procedure was "yet to be determined."

But a copy of the Winnfield Police Department's Taser training manual, obtained by CNN, says the device "shall only be deployed in circumstances where it is deemed reasonably necessary to control a dangerous or violent subject." And Williams said regulations regarding the use of Tasers were not followed.

"It violated every aspect -- every single aspect -- of the department's policy about its use," the coroner said.

Winnfield has seen a spate of high-profile corruption cases in recent years. One of Nevils' predecessors as district attorney, Terry Reeves, killed himself amid allegations of embezzlement and extortion. The town's current police chief, Johnny Ray Carpenter, is a convicted drug offender who received a pardon from former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards who himself is now serving a federal prison term for racketeering.

And Carpenter's predecessor, Gleason Nugent -- the father of Pikes' arresting officer -- committed suicide in 2005, after allegations of fraud and vote buying in the race for police chief, an elected position in Winnfield.

Now Nevils is awaiting the state police report on Pikes' death, which will be presented to a grand jury for possible charges against Nugent -- a possibility Curry said would be a blow to the department.

"It's one of these no-win situations," he said. "No matter the outcome, nobody's going to win in this case."

[Chris]

I found a rought draft of the list on my work pc I will edit my post with my final version late tonnight or this weekend.

Impressive list. Since police officers are also hit with tasers before they are allowed to carry them, how many police officers were killed with tasers during the training? I'm sure you included this in your research as well, since you would have wanted to show an unbiased report.

You're right, it is important to compare apples to apples.

Of all the officers who have been tased for certification, how many received the shock after an extremely stressful emotional/physical encounter?

The answer is "zero". Taser qualification takes place in controlled circumstances, on floor mats, where the "target" has time to take deep breaths and relax, with fellow officers waiting to catch him when he falls.

How many officers tased in training were of "average" conditioning when compared to the general public? Extremely obese? Poor health?

Probably none. Police officers have fitness standards, and at the very least engage in some regular exercise, even if only on the job.

And still, police officers are regularly injured, sometimes ending their careers, during Taser qualification. Torn muscles and stress fractures of bones happen frequently enough to be a known risk.

That list included people who were allegedly not under physical exertion, and that was part of his argument; that tasers were being used on people who could have been detained using some other method. He said so himself.

Take a look at the utah case where the cop KILLED the motorist with the taser because she was being rude and would not get out of her car during a traffic stop. Would that situation have warrented SHOOTING her? nope.... but none the less shes dead because the officer decided to use it as a pain compliance device.

So how many officers have been killed using a taser? If a taser can kill someone all by itself, then surely it has killed a police officer during a training exercise.

I know the answers to my questions. I'd just like to know what side of the fence he's arguing here. His "report" is way too biased to be of any relevance to a good taser discussion. I can't believe he wouldn't include the lawsuits filed by police officers, particularly since some of them have been settled, or resolved, as recently as this year.

[SkipB]

This is very good reading and brings up points for both sides of the argument. My Police career ended in '89 at a time when Tazers where just coming out. I was never really a fan of them. I could see to many problems coming down the pike from them. I might add that at that time they wern't issued in the department I work for.

[DoubleJ]

sounds to me like you got a 150# cop who has "little man" syndrome.
that is far and away the exception to the rule. I personally don't see many "little" cops runnin' around. ones I see are usually the hulking 6'5" 250" guys, and I think it speaks to that old adage about the guys with the ability to really put a hurt on ya don't have to.
jmo, ymmv, et al...

[Chris]

sounds to me like you got a 150# cop who has "little man" syndrome.
that is far and away the exception to the rule. I personally don't see many "little" cops runnin' around. ones I see are usually the hulking 6'5" 250" guys, and I think it speaks to that old adage about the guys with the ability to really put a hurt on ya don't have to.
jmo, ymmv, et al...

That couldn't be further from the truth. Average height is about 5'9", 5'10", so the average police officer is going to be 5'9"-5'10", which is about right.

I've worked with those "little man syndrome" types. That's trouble waiting to happen. One guy I worked with we called "skunk" because he went through a can of pepper spray a week. He could talk just about anyone into a fight.

LASD did a study on their tasers. Their officer AND suspect injuries dropped dramatically immediately after they started using tasers. I know several suspects in Fort Worth would be dead right now had their supervisors not been able to shoot them with tasers; the same can be said for Arlington. I talked with one of the guys that was there when APD hit that guy on the bridge when Arlington first used their tasers. They weren't exactly pleased with their first highly publicized use of the taser. But so far, it has paid for itself in other instances.

My point in this argument is that no matter what the weapon is, there may be a tiny percentage of deaths, and those will be highly publicized. So out of all the times these weapons are used, these tiny percentages resulted in deaths, and these deaths are even trivial.

There have probably been pepper spray deaths, but it's not a hot topic anymore. There was a cadet in the academy class before mine several years ago. She was sprayed with OC, and immediately had to be rushed to the ER. She was severely allergic to the pepper spray. Her physician gave her a letter saying that she had this severe allergy, and if it was used against her, it would could result in her imminent death.

I think the taser has a place in police work, but it shouldn't be such a readily 'go to' weapon for hot heads. I went to one of Brian Polansky's seminars. http://www.brianpolansky.com/com%20ex%2 ... cement.htm I think police agencies should strongly consider investing in more types of these courses, rather than the latest and greatest toys.

[DoubleJ]

That couldn't be further from the truth.

that's a bit broad, doncha think? from MY observations of MY area, that's the way it IS.
and 150# is small. maybe it's small average, but it ain't big, and that was my point.

everything else you said, I agree with.