Tasers have been used on about 600,000 times, according to police, with only about 200 deaths. Goodness gracious! More people die from choking on donuts in police stations. Of course, they’re mostly police officers, but still. When’s the last time the ACLU marched on Dunkin’ Donuts?
Six states have outlawed Tasers. Blue states, naturally. After all, it’s much better to have police chose between a well swung club and a well greased Glock than a painless Taser. Painless for the police, that is. And since they’re there to protect and serve us, shouldn’t we be concerned about our cops? No? Well, the next time you’re in trouble, call a criminal to come help you. Well, maybe criminals aren’t the best measure of police conduct. But if it works with Iraqi terrorists, why not apply it to cops at home?
The availability of Tasers has done wonders for the taxpayers as well. The number of police officers who have suffered horrible, painful, debilitating injury (often resulting in retirement on full pension) when their closed fist was attacked by the face of some miscreant has been reduced by a full 3% since Tasers came into use. I’m estimating that number, by the way, so don’t blame me if it’s less than 3%. There’s no good source for this stat, so I have to go by my personal observations.
So many of the bleeding hearts have promoted the claim that police use Tasers as a convenient way of shutting down an otherwise potentially disruptive arrestee that people are forgetting that Tasers are our friend. Just look at the videos, where calm and deliberative police are able to get a “situation” under control by merely taking a few jabs with the Taser on the cuffed perp who just can’t manage to lie there happily. Hey, if the cops tell you to freeze, you better freeze. After all, they’re the cops and law-abiding Americans do whatever they say.
Need an example? Consider the case of Long Islander David Glowczenski, whose family called the police because he was suffering a mental breakdown.
His sister, Jean Griffin, says, “We called them for safety because he was disoriented. …And an hour later he was dead.”
Glowzenski died after a confrontation in which an officer stunned him nine times with a TASER, and he wasn’t on drugs or alcohol, Andrews notes. “He committed no crime; he didn’t do anything wrong,” Griffin says.
Would they have felt better if the cops had just put a bullet between his eyes in the first place? No, no, a thousand times no! What was the police officer to do? He got a call and dealt with it. Did you think he was going to just stand around all day waiting for the guy to calm down, making sure no one else was injured in the meantime? Puhlease. Cops have better things to do, especially when they carry Tasers. After all, there’s always a kitten stuck up a tree on Long Island, and there would be no one there to get the little kitty down if the cop was tied up all day waiting on disoriented people.
The poor, maligned Taser started out life as an alternative to the use of more lethal, harmful force, and has found its niche as the “go to” tool in the police officer’s belt with good reason. It’s like the duct tape of police work, a million great uses with only the occasional unsightly death. It’s time we stopped blaming the Taser because some video-loving kid thought he could abuse our constitutional right to speak by asking questions that were just downright unpleasant. Whatever happened to the constitutional right to smack some smart-ass kid who doesn’t know to keep his trap shut. Didn’t his mother ever tell him that children should be seen and not heard?
So the next time your eye-balling some cop when you’re all hopped up on liquor and angel dust, you better pray he’s got a Taser hanging from his belt. Remember, the Taser is your friend.
Your facts are wrong.
After TASER deployment in Orange County, FL, officer injuries decreased 80%.
After deployment by the Phoenix PD, *suspect* injuries decreased 67%. Officer-involved shootings dropped 54%.
In Putnam Co, FL, officer injuries decreased by 86%
In South Bend, IN, officer injuries decreased by 66%. Between 2003-2006, TASERs were used 632 times with no injuries, and twice stopping people from committing suicide.
In Hemet, GA, no officers have been injured since deployment, and only one suspects suffered injury — a minor abrasion when he fell down.
In Austin, TX, officer injuries decreased 50% and suspect injuries decreased 82%
In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC, officer injuried decreased 59% and suspect injuries decreased 79%.
In Cape Coral, FL, officer injuries decreased 93% and suspect injuries decreased 68%.
In Topeka,KS, officer injuries decreased 46% and suspect injuries decreased 41%.
In Sarasota, FL, officer injuries decreased 65%.
In Cincinnatti, OH, officer injuries decreased 56%, suspect injuries decreased 35%, citizen complaints decreased 50%, and overall use of force decreased 50%.
In Columbus, OH, officer injuries decreased 23%, prisoner injuries decreased 24%, citizen complaints decreased 25%, use of impact weapons dropped 25%, use of OC spray dropped 38%, use of strikes, kicks, and punches dropped 32%.
In Long Beach, CA, officer injuries dropped 25%, liability claims dropped 31% and internal affairs complaints dropped 9%.
In Oklahoma City, officer involved shootings dropped 58% the first year after deployment, and an additional 15% the next year.
In Seattle, officer involved shootings dropped 100% the year after deployment, the first year in 15 years without a fatal shooting.
In Miami, in 2000, thyere were 493 instances of physical control and 24 use of firearms by police. After the deployment of TASERs, in 2003, there were 103 uses of force and *zero* firearm discharges.
So much for “Truth about Tasers.”
Awww, Bill. I am SO disappointed to find out that you’re a shill for the Taser company. Your stats are all taken straight from a Taser in-house powerpoint presentation designed to overcome questions and challenges to the rampant issues surrounding the use of Tasers. See PPT:
http://www.taser.com/research/statistics/Documents/Injury%20Reduction%20Stats%20PUBLIC%2004%2025%2007.ppt .
Bummer. Bye Bill.
So, it doesn’t matter that it’s true, then?
There is no data whatsoever to back up any of your claims. It all comes from your employer, Taser. Now while I can appreciate that you’re a good company man, scanning the blawgosphere to protect your employer and spreading whatever “data” Taser is paying you to put out there, you’ve been dishonest by not disclosing that you’re a shill, and your simple recitation of purported “facts” doesn’t make them facts at all. Very impressive, but without any proof behind them except that your employer says so.
While taser.com is free to state whatever it wants on its own website, paid shills have no right to come here and use my bandwidth to promote or defend its product. So, bye Bill.
Even our buddy Irwin Kramer from Clientelevision (http://blog.simplejustice.us/2007/08/01/good-bad-or-what–legal-television-network.aspx) disclosed his affiliation with his company.
Bad Bill. No donut.
Scott, for a moment – and just a moment – I didn’t catch the tongue-in-cheek nature of your post. My first thought? That you had been experimenting with a Taser on yourself. Thanks for the blog, it’s a good read.
Thanks Millie. It was kinda hard to keep it up without spewing. Do you think I pulled it off?
We’ve had a few folks stop by to state their case, Paul from Avvo, Nicholson from lawyerratingz (what a mess that turned out to be) and Irwin. But nobody, until old Bob here, played it so fast and loose that they concealed the fact that they were a shill.
There’s a lesson here somewhere. Maybe Bennett will tell me what it is?
The real issue is the police culture and the great leniency and breadth in which the police operate, including a neutralized and sometimes complicit judicial branch, that some who like to simply neuter and add to the police rolls. 9/11 has contributed to the rise of this culture, just as technology, lobbyists, corporations that produce tasers, ankle bracelets, and teh most pernicious the Utopian special interest groups, who focus on one malady with little to no idea or possible ability to comprehend the complexity of the system in which we all co-exist.
This kid was resisting arrest and was possibly dangerous that is clear from the several vantage points at which I watched the video. So, as to the level of force that was used I am not going to proffer an opinion, as the video cannot tell us how much actual resistance he is offering. We cannot tell.
The crux of our problem lay within the origin of the arrest in the first place. It is such a complex and difficult thing, considering the post 9/11 and post Columbine and Va Tech era in which we live. However, the first amendment is the first amendment. And well, an aside, not germane to Myer here is the fourth amendment and it’s erosion.
We in fear of “them”, a group whose composition and traits differ depending on the speaker are the problem. “They” need to be restrained, “they” need to be subject to searches on teh roadside, and a little fakery with some voodoo science and dogs to please some guy in a robe is fine, because they deserve it. “They” act up at political events, and “they” are a danger.
The problem here is not about tasers, it is about what undergirds our current tremendous Nixonian national paranoia. Not that the fears are unfounded, but to allow them to control our culture through a group who attracts, among many fine members, a number of undereducated bullys who can abstract why the Constitution is important. “They” are their enemy, and the applause of rags (like Raleigh NC’s News & Observer) about “law and order” and the affirmations of superiors bolster their fragile self esteems or simple sociopathic tendencies.
It is more courageous to walk through life with your head held up and your eyes peeled and circumspect, than to hide, mouth breathe, suckle the government pensions plans, adn beat up on “them”.
“They” are punk rock kids, Mexicans, hippies, any young person, black people, Indians, excitable dorky political junkies jabbering at the University of Florida, ad nauseum. We are all a member of someone’s group of “they”. We need to remember that, and resist the move to allow the police to barge into our cars, lives, personal lives, etc. We need not jump on someone’s agenda and erode our rights and by default give to the King, err…government. You will be called soft on drunk drivers, a nigger lover, unpatriotic Spic lover who gives away American jobs, etc, as the self righteous add more traffic cameras, roadblocks, tasers, ankle bracelets, and statutes to America.
Correction: Not that the fears are unfounded, but to allow them to control our culture through a group who attracts, among many fine members, a number of undereducated bullys who can NOT abstract why the Constitution is important
Not sure why I didn’t give my full name and occupation before.
Tasers Don’t Care If You’re Canadian
Not to
Tasers Don’t Care If You’re Canadian
Not to
Tasers Don’t Care If You’re Canadian
Not to
William Oliver (aka Billoblog.com) is a sitting member of the NIJ’s panel studying the safety of tasers.
The NIJ has issued an interim report, but the FINAL report is not expected until 2009. Presumably they’re still studying the issue and writing their final report.
Meanwhile, one member of the panel is apparently out blogging the many benefits of tasers. He wrote a pro-taser article on his blog in 2005.
Why is he on the panel? How many more him are on the panel?