TasersTaser-related fatalities raise safety concerns
As police across the United States increasingly turn to Taser guns as a non-lethal weapon, the device’s safety has come under scrutiny following several recent deaths involving Tasers; last week the Fayetteville police department in North Carolina recalled all of its Taser M26 units following the death of a fifty-six year old political activist who died after being stunned by police
Video capture of police applying taser // Source: lawanddisorder.org
As police across the United States increasingly turn to Taser guns as a non-lethal weapon, the device’s safety has come under scrutiny following several recent deaths involving Tasers.
Last week the Fayetteville police department in North Carolina recalled all of its Taser M26 units following the death of a fifty-six year old political activist who died after being stunned by police on 24 August. Police say he was behaving oddly and jumping on vehicles, and his cause of death is currently under investigation. The latest incident makes for the third Taser-related death in Cumberland County, North Carolina. In 2008 a thirty-six year old man died after Fayetteville police used a Taser to subdue him. An autopsy later revealed that a lethal amount of cocaine was in his system.
Meanwhile in 2005, a fifty-two year old man died after crashing his car while trying to escape from police. He was soaked in gasoline and when police hit him with a Taser, he burst into flames. More recently a twenty-four year old schizophrenic inmate at Harnett County Jail, died after being stunned multiple times earlier this year. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner concluded that his death was caused by “complications of conducted energy device application.”
Eddie Caldwell Jr., the executive vice president and general counsel of the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association, maintains that many of the deaths involving Tasers are not caused by the electric shock but by other factors including drug overdoses.
Caldwell added that he believes Tasers are safe to use on healthy people and that many law enforcement agencies require officers who carry the devices to be shocked as part of the training process so they fully understand the consequences of using them.
“If you’ve got a suspect with a butcher knife coming at you, as an officer, you have the legal right to kill him. But if you’ve got a Taser, you can tase him and that’s more humane and a much better outcome for the suspect,” Caldwell said. “The Taser is a device that, as much as anything, helps the citizen who is at that point belligerent and uncooperative.”
Steve Tuttle, a spokesman for Taser International, which manufacturers the devices, said Tasers have been medically proven to be safe and are an effective non-lethal means to subdue a non-compliant individual.
“Although no use-of-force device is risk free - including Taser technology - when used properly, medical and law enforcement experts have concluded that
