Tasers don't kill people

People with Mphff Mph Mphff's do.



Sailor at SteveAudio notes that a judge has ruled the references to Tasers must be removed in the autopsies of three men who died while Tasers were being used:

A judge ruled today that the Summit County Medical Examiner must change her autopsy findings to remove all references to the Taser stun gun as a contributing cause of death in the cases of three men who died during encounters with law enforcement officers.

The police have been found to use Tasers too quickly and Tasers have actually killed people. And we are supposed to ignore it?

Are we supposed to let the police continue to use Tasers without accountability or acknowledging that it is a dangerous weapon? So more people can die?

Just why would we do that?

Tasers and Turkeys

And flaming dead kittens...



Via Steve Bates, Digby of Hullabaloo cites the most recent incidences involving the misuse of tasers.

Makes your hair stand up on end, doesn't it?

Here are more incidences:

Witnesses alleged police brutality after Eugene officers tasered a protester at a peaceful anti-pesticide rally today downtown and arrested three people.

About 40 citizens and 10 police officers showed up for the noon rally Friday, May 30 at the Broadway and Willamette plaza. Numerous citizen witnesses alleged that police threw UO student Ian Van Ornum, 19, to the ground, pulled his hair, kneed him in the back, ground his face into the pavement and shocked him repeatedly in an act of unjustified brutality.

And here:

A 21 year old black man in Winnfield, Louisiana, named Baron "Scooter" Pikes, was tasered 9 times in 14 minutes by a white police officer in January after he was arrested and handcuffed. He died. Seems a tad excessive to me. However, here's the story of his arrest and subsequent death according to the police report by the arresting officers:

[Police Officer] Nugent spotted Pikes walking along the street and attempted to arrest him on an outstanding warrant for drug possession, according to Police Chief Johnny Ray Carpenter. Pikes took off running, but another officer cornered him outside a nearby grocery store. Pikes resisted arrest and Nugent subdued him with a shock from a Taser.

Then on the way to the police station, Carpenter told the newspaper, Pikes fell ill and told the officers he suffered from asthma and was high on crack cocaine and PCP. The officers called for an ambulance, but Pikes later died at the hospital.

So Mr. Pikes was high on PCP, crack cocaine and had a serious asthma condition? That poor man was seriously messed up if he smoked crack and took PCP with an existing asthma condition. The again, perhaps we should take a look at what the subsequent autopsy report by the Parish Coroner found:

An autopsy determined there were no drugs in Pikes' system and that he did not have asthma, according to Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish coroner.

They've used Tasers on prisoners in the US run Camp Bucca, a pregnant woman, attempted to use one on a deaf man getting out of the bath tub, tried to silence a yoga instructor in Best Buy, a man on a bike.

The UN says the use of Tasers is torture. Judges have been trying to remove references to Tasers in court cases involving deaths. Since 2001, more than 300 people... MORE THAN 300 PEOPLE have died by Tasering.

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team was mysteriously brought back to the US and trained to Taser civilians who might be protesting.

And just a question... does the fact Blackwater has been involved in training local police explain why the rising use of Tasers for unimportant actions and the indifference to human suffering?

Update 11/24:
Youtube of policeman accidentally Tasering himself.

Police shoot a drugged out teenager after Taser doesn't work.

Gee... what else could go wrong?

Update: How about police suing Taser Co. after a demonstration goes awry?

Realizing that tasers kill

Canadians do it right:

Vancouver, British Columbia (AHN) - Former Justice Thomas Braidwood released on Thursday in a press conference his anticipated report on the use of Tasers, ending two years of inquiry on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's use of electronic stun guns, which was highlighted by the death of a Polish immigrant who was tasered at the Vancouver International Airport in 2007.

Braidwood made 19 recommendations which were short of asking the RCMP to stop the use of Tasers. He supported the conditional use of the stun gun if major changes are made by the Mounties The Taser has been blamed for 25 deaths in Canada.

He acknowledged police officers need the best weapons to perform their duties, but warned the Taser has the potential to cause death or serious injury and may go against Canadian values. Braidwood pushed for more stringent measures to regulate the use of the controversial weapon.

So... how many more deaths will there be before the US law enforcement concedes that Tasers are a deadly weapon?

Think before you fire

That Taser! They are not harmless. (my bold)

A new proposal to increase the number of stun guns in police hands is hitting a series of public relations hurdles, with a Brooklyn man dying this week after being shocked by a Taser and Amnesty International warning the police department to reconsider.

Since 2001, more than 300 people — including the Brooklyn man who was shocked by Suffolk County police officers Monday — have died after the guns were used on them, a statement Amnesty International sent yesterday to New York reporters said.

"Given their questionable safety record, TASERs should be used with extreme caution and not become a weapon of first resort for the NYPD," the group's director, Larry Cox, said.

According to Amnesty's records, the number of fatal Taser shocks has gradually increased as more police departments seeking less lethal alternatives to firearms have bought up the stun guns. Nationwide, 69 people died last year, compared with 13 in 2002, according to the group.

Amnesty said 90% of the 300 victims were unarmed.

Police sergeants on patrol are carrying stun guns in their holsters starting yesterday. Officers in specialty units already carry Tasers with them.

Lovely. Who on earth is encouraging police to regard Tasers as a quick and easy solution for dealing with irritating people? Don't answer that...

I read the news today, oh boy....

Dubai circles the drain? Really? Dubai?:

With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield.

The government says the real number is much lower. But the stories contain at least a grain of truth: jobless people here lose their work visas and then must leave the country within a month. That in turn reduces spending, creates housing vacancies and lowers real estate prices, in a downward spiral that has left parts of Dubai — once hailed as the economic superpower of the Middle East — looking like a ghost town.

No one knows how bad things have become, though it is clear that tens of thousands have left, real estate prices have crashed and scores of Dubai’s major construction projects have been suspended or canceled. But with the government unwilling to provide data, rumors are bound to flourish, damaging confidence and further undermining the economy.

We've killed people in our concentration camps:

The American Civil Liberties Union has released previously classified excerpts of a government report on harsh interrogation techniques used in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. These previously unreported pages detail repeated use of "abusive" behavior, even to the point of prisoner deaths.

The documents, obtained by the ACLU under a Freedom of Information Act request, contain a report by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church, who was tapped to conduct a comprehensive review of Defense Department interrogation operations. Church specifically calls out interrogations at Bagram Air base in Afghanistan as "clearly abusive, and clearly not in keeping with any approved interrogation policy or guidance."

The two unredacted pages from the Church report may be found here.

The ACLU's release comes on the same day as a major FOIA document dump by three other leading human rights groups: Documents which reveal the Pentagon ran secret prisons in Bagram and Iraq, that it cooperated with the CIA's "ghost detention" program and that Defense personnel delayed a prisoner's release to avoid bad press.

And just what ELSE are the thieves walking out with?:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico is missing 67 computers, including 13 that were lost or stolen in the past year. Officials say no classified information has been lost.

The watchdog group Project on Government Oversight on Wednesday released a memo dated Feb. 3 from the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration outlining the loss of the computers.

Kevin Roark, a spokesman for Los Alamos, on Wednesday confirmed the computers were missing and said the lab was initiating a monthlong inventory to account for every computer. He said the computers were a cybersecurity issue because they may contain personal information like names and addresses, but they did not contain any classified information.

We're still unaware Tasers can kill?

A man in the northern California city of San Jose died after being jolted with a Taser, police said Thursday, apparently the sixth such death since the department began using the stun guns in 2004.

The man, who police said appeared to be in his 20s, got into a struggle with two officers when they tried to arrest him in the backyard of a home late Wednesday.

I think I'll go dig that bunker in my backyard....

Update: Canada is rewriting its rules about Tasers because the Canadians get it:

OTTAWA — Given the "high risk of death" in some cases, RCMP officers are now limited in their use of tasers to individuals who pose a clear threat to the public or police, RCMP Commissioner William Elliott„© said yesterday.

Mr. Elliott used two public appearances to provide new details on the RCMP's taser policy, which has come under fire after the death of Polish traveller Robert Dziekanski„© at Vancouver's airport in 2007.

The new restrictions have been in place since last June, but were laid out in full only yesterday, two months after the announcement that four Mounties who used a taser to subdue Mr. Dziekanski would not face criminal charges.

Speaking to reporters in Ottawa, Mr. Elliott said the weapons can no longer be used against people who are simply refusing to co-operate with Mounties.

Tasers can kill

They are not a toy for police to play with on the defenseless citizenry. They are not to be used for crowd control, punishment, domination, or whim. Police training needs to expose this misunderstanding that tasers are an easy tool for controlling a person. THEY HAVE KILLED PEOPLE and will do so again.

We need to get this message out there for when the police kill the next person. Then it will be intentional murder rather than an oops. And there will be lawsuits.

Tasers kill, have killed, and will kill again.

Update 12/20: Digby has more.

12/25: And another one. Digby has even more.

Tasers kill

500 Deaths From Tasers in USA

Finally addressing the taser problem

And the twitchy trigger fingers of the police:

A federal appeals court on Monday issued one of the most comprehensive rulings yet limiting police use of Tasers against low-level offenders who seem to pose little threat and may be mentally ill.

In a case out of San Diego County, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals criticized an officer who, without warning, shot an emotionally troubled man with a Taser when he was unarmed, yards away, and neither fleeing nor advancing on the officer.

Sold as a nonlethal alternative to guns, Tasers deliver an electrical jolt meant to subdue a subject. The stun guns have become a common and increasingly controversial tool used by law enforcement.

There have been at least nine Taser-related fatalities in the Sacramento region, including the death earlier this month of Paul Martinez Jr., an inmate shot with a stun gun while allegedly resisting officers at the Roseville jail.

As lawsuits have proliferated against police and Taser International, which manufactures the weaons, the nation's appellate courts have been trying to define what constitutes appropriate Taser use.

Now we are up to tasering pregnant women

I'm so proud of our country.:

TROTWOOD, Ohio — A policeman forced a pregnant woman to the ground and used a stun gun on her when she refused to answer the officer’s questions and resisted being handcuffed, authorities said Thursday.

The woman went to the police department on Nov. 18 to ask officers to take custody of her one-year-old son, said Michael Etter, Trotwood’s public safety director.

The woman told the officer she was “tired of playing games” with the baby’s father, Etter said.

The woman refused to answer questions, became frustrated and tried to leave with the child, Etter said. The officer feared allowing her to leave could jeopardize the child and he decided to detain her to get more information.

He said the officer grabbed the woman, got the child away from her and forced her to the ground. When she resisted being handcuffed and tried to get away, the officer used the stun gun on her, Etter said.

Chet Scoville of Vanity Press:

Clearly, a gunshot or a beating with a billy club were the only other options available.

How about we acknowledge that tasers can KILL people, it is not a quick crowd control fix, it is not safe. Police need to use tasers in the same way they use guns... as a last resort and with full knowledge that their pants will be sued off if something goes wrong.

W. T. F.?

The pile of bodies is getting hard to ignore

JJ of Unrepentant Old Hippie keeps track of the horrible misuse of Tasers by police, and the people they have murdered.



Update 11/25:
The UN says that Tasers are torture:

TASER electronic stun guns are a form of torture that can kill, a UN committee has declared after several recent deaths in North America.

"The use of these weapons causes acute pain, constituting a form of torture,'' the UN's Committee against Torture said.

"In certain cases, they can even cause death, as has been shown by reliable studies and recent real-life events,'' the committee of 10 experts said.

Three men, all in their early 20s, were reported to have died in the United States this week, days after a Polish man died at Vancouver airport after being Tasered by Canadian police.

When will there be a lawsuit

That stops police from using Tasers as if they were harmless?



Maybe we can get Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright to sue to show that the misuse of Tasers by authority figures has gotten out of hand. The eager willingness to torture by the police must be addressed by the courts.

This reflects the Bush administration just a bit too closely ....

If you are reading this, you're probably on the list

To be rounded up. Pack a toothbrush:

Govt. May Have Massive Surveillance Program For Use In ‘National Emergency,’ 8 Million ‘Potential Suspects’

Last year, former deputy attorney general James Comey revealed that in 2004, he refused to “certify” the legality of certain aspects of the National Security Agency (NSA) spy program. Comey witnessed Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card try to force a bed-ridden John Ashcroft to approve the program. Comey, however, did not publicly give specifics as to what program he opposed.

CAP’s Peter Swire wrote on ThinkProgress at the time that Comey’s testimony implied that “other programs exist for domestic spying” outside of the NSA program. Radar’s Christopher Ketcham suggests that another spy program does exist: “Main Core,” a program that authorizes “computer searches through massive [unspecified] electronic databases” in order to discover “potential threats” in the event of a “national emergency”:

According to a senior government official…”There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” … One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

Remember the ten easy steps to fascism:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

This explains all those secret private prisons around the country, the odd obsession that Cheney and Rumsfeld had about playing shadow government games, Cheney's claim that the Vice President was outside the law and the Constitution, the indifference to foreign workers, the ICE raids, Blackwater mercenaries, Gitmo, Tasers being issued to police and being scrubbed from autopsy reports, identifying every crime and misdemeanor as terrorism, and the officious arrogance of the airport security, doesn't it?

These loyal Bushies must have been promised really neat uniforms and high glossy black boots so they could shock and awe their craven neighbors. Is that why they gutted the treasury? To create a depression that would make Americans desperate to support a fascist regime? It might have worked when Georgie's grandfather Prescott Bush tried to start a coup against FDR.

Are they hoping another terrorist strike will do the trick?


crossposted at SteveAudio and American Street

One heart and mind won over

To lawsuits and demands for compensation, I presume.

After his release from the American-run jail, Camp Bucca, Mr. Ani and other former detainees described the sprawling complex of barracks in the southern desert near Kuwait as a bleak place where guards casually used their stun guns and exposed prisoners to long periods of extreme heat and cold; where prisoners fought among themselves and extremist elements tried to radicalize others; and where detainees often responded to the harsh conditions with hunger strikes and, at times, violent protests.

Through it all, Mr. Ani was never actually charged with a crime; he said he was questioned only once during his more than two years at the camp.

American detention officials acknowledged that guards used electric devices called Tasers to control detainees, but they said they did so rarely and only when the guards were physically threatened. The officials said that detainees had several ways to report abuse without repercussions, and that all claims were investigated.

Officials declined to give specific details about why they had detained Mr. Ani or why they had freed him.

"He was released because the board that reviewed his case didn't believe he any longer posed a threat," said First Lt. Lea Ann Fracasso, a spokeswoman for detention operations, in a written answer to questions. "He was originally detained as a security threat. I don't have anything more."

Christianists to Pick Up Artists

Conservatives cite ‘neutrality’ memo as proof of military’s hostility to Christianity

A conservative group claims the United States Air Force violated religious freedom by advising officials not to discriminate against subordinates based on their religion. 

The Family Research Council on Tuesday released a report on religious freedom in the United States Armed Forces, which concluded the Obama administration was cracking down on Christianity. 

The report stated that high-level officers within the Air Force were cooperating with “anti-Christian activists” like attorney Michael Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. As evidence, the report compiled a list of incidence which purportedly showed religious freedoms being violated.

Tasers kill. The police know this and keep on using them.  So I guess they're just letting the lawsuits pile up?

Edward Snowden: US officials are preventing me claiming asylum

Arizona being Arizona... APS seeks higher bills for new solar customers

The Cheney presidency was where the NSA spying started.  Before 9/11.  No surprise there...

We are not Trayvon Martin.

Republican pick up lines to woo women voters....

Aren't we already there?

Just ask the Afghans and Pakistanis... and the Iraqis, Yemenis...

The growing use of unmanned aircraft in combat situations raises huge moral and legal issues, and threatens to make war more likely as armed robots take over from human beings, according to an internal study by the Ministry of Defence.

The report warns of the dangers of an "incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality", referring to James Cameron's 1984 movie, in which humans are hunted by robotic killing machines. It says the pace of technological development is accelerating at such a rate that Britain must quickly establish a policy on what will constitute "acceptable machine behaviour".

Just like the horribly irresponsible misuse of Tasers by the police force, drones remove several inhibitors to killing when soldiers aren't on the ground and judging the situation up close. If we are to live with such devices, we need to make it harder for authorities to use rather than easier. To start with, a list of how many innocent people have died would be ... educational.

We've talked about this before.

This never ends well.

'Tis the season to be tasered

Fa la la la la la ow ow ow...

Digby of Hullabaloo quoting The Daytona Beach News:

Can running your mouth off at a police officer during a confrontation in a crowded store get you blasted with a Taser?

It happened last month when a Daytona Beach police officer stunned a yoga instructor. The officer used her Taser when the teacher refused to pipe down inside the Best Buy store on West International Speedway Boulevard.

Sounds ok until you read further.

The interaction with the police was less than one minute from start to tasering....

And then there is this: (my bold)

A News-Journal review of all Taser incidents by Daytona Beach police in November shows officers used the weapons 10 times. Beeland's was the only incident that did not involve violence or a fleeing criminal suspect.

Officials with the ACLU and Amnesty International USA say other tactics should have been used, especially because Beeland was not acting violently or threatening the officer in any way.

"In my view, a Taser should be used only as an alternative to a gun," said Glenn Katon, director of the Central Region of the ACLU in Orlando. "Is yelling (at an officer) enough resistance to cause someone to be Tasered?

"People are getting killed with Tasers," he said.
Taser use has become so commonplace, Katon said, that officers no longer employ other training tactics they've learned to subdue people.

"I certainly don't want to see an officer get hurt, but a cop should have enough training to be able to use something other than a Taser to calm someone down," Katon said.

It's so quick just to taser somebody into submission and then figure out what the problem is. Why on earth do police need any training at all?



Could it be this policewoman went to the Blackwater camp for training?