Another expert opinion

National Post - In his testimony, Reilly acknowledged that the reason people died after receiving a Taser jolt remains unknown. "We're groping in an environment where we don't have all the facts," Reilly said. Still, in his experience, he said, there was a probability of "well less than 1%" of harm or death from Taser use. [LINK]

First of all, he has nothing to back up including harm in this accounting. So far as I am aware, we're still working on the questions of significant injury and 'death-by-taser'. The term harm is overly-broad and nearly meaningless. Harm might include long-term harm. The M26 and X26 tasers have been around less than a decade. Harm is a toss-away useless distraction. If you include damaging the public trust of the police, then the harm rate is nearly 100%.

On the assumption that he is lumping all tasers, M26 and X26, in together (mistake number 1), and he is probably including those "FAKE" taser-in-the-back demonstrations in the denominator (mistake number 2), and possibly even including the non-tasering taser incidents (denominator washing at its most blatant, I assume he isn't...), then perhaps his assessment of the risk of death (not including harm) of being under 1% might be roughly in the correct order of magnitude.

Remove the denominator washing, and "well less than 1%" might become roughly 1% adjusted to represent the risk from a full-on X26 tasering across the chest. THAT's the risk we're interested in; everything else is just luck-of-the-draw.

Even the most outspoken taser critic probably wouldn't want to try to defend that the taser-associated death rate being as high as 10%. Obviously that sort of number is simply not supported by the facts. But 0.1% for a properly weighted and compensated rate seems perfectly plausible (depending on how you look at the raw death rate and how much you trust the coroner's findings where Taser has had too much influence). The truth is (in my opinion) somewhere between those two values (in other words, within sight of 1% either way) for full-on X26 chest hits.

So Reilly is being more-or-less reasonable. He might not be perfectly accurate, and he may be washing out the denominator a bit as compared to full-on X26 hits across the chest, but at least he's not being silly.

On the other hand, Webster's 6 in a million, worst case is just being plain silly.

Denominator washing

When you want to achieve an attractive ratio, and you can't really do anything about the numerator, then perhaps you can turn your attention to the denominator. If you can can get away with inflating the denominator, then it artificially decreases the resultant ratio.

I call it denominator washing.

That's why I cry FAKE when Taser tries to include those obviously much safer (cardiac wise, as backed-up by a recent study [LINK]) training sessions where the taser is applied almost anywhere except across the chest. [LINK]

And there have been reports that an officer yelling "Taser taser taser" counts as a taser deployment in some departments.

Increase the denominator to flatten out the overall statistics.


Compare "6 in one million (worst case)" to this approximately renormalized extremely-rough guesstimate: [LINK]


Take the 2008 Taser Challenge: [LINK]

Risk / 33,279,000

The Star (1 June 2008) - Dr. Paul Dorian, a cardiologist at St. Michael's Hospital and the author of the most recent Taser study, would never say it's impossible to meet a deadly fate at the end of a taser. But it's rare. According to his research, an analysis of the existing literature coupled with his own observations and study, the odds of a "death by taser" are the same as dying from, say, living next to power lines, getting breast implants, or drinking from a bisphenol-leaching plastic water bottle. [LINK]

Nice sound-bite, but meaningless. It seems as if Dr. Dorian is denominator washing to the highest possible degree. He seems to be including the entire population as the denominator. It also sounds a bit like Kroll's "Safer than Tylenol" stupidity.

What any reasonable and informed person would be interested in is the worst case death rate from a full-on X26 taser to the chest with the barb(s) in the worst possible location. This is the crux of the argument. Taser and Kroll claim that the tasers are perfectly safe (cardiac-wise) even in the worst possible case. Most critics would disagree (based on the real world news).

Once we can agree on the worst case (even within the same order of magnitude), then we can subsequently and explicitly adjust for external factors such as barb placement, misfiring, missing the target completely, all the way to ...not actually ever being involved with the police in the first place (in case you want to include the entire population in your denominator).

I've already made a rough estimate of the risk-of-interest.

2007 British Columbia: 496 taser incidents. Perhaps 25 full-on X26 taserings across the chest. One or two deaths. Result: 1 or 2 deaths divided by roughly 25 full-on X26 deployments = about a 6% death rate. Might be 1% (maybe). Might be 10% (maybe). Might be a bit higher. Might be a bit lower.

See previous post titled: Death rate estimated - feel free to provide rebuttal [LINK]

If Dr. Dorian has anything to back-up his outlandish claims then I'd like to see it.

Beware denominator washing (a topic of many previous posts including [LINK]).

Webster is being ignored

I note with some satisfaction that today (Tuesday, 6 May 08) most of media outlets are picking up Reilly's almost-reasonable opinions about tasers and their "not zero" safety [LINK], and are (for the most part) studiously ignoring Webster's crazy "6 in a million worst case" nonsense ([LINK] and [LINK] if you're interested).

I've already discussed How low is low? [LINK] and The Karma Factor [LINK]. Add to this the possibility of denominator washing [see below and LINK] and there seems to be the slight possibility of finding common ground between Reilly's opinions and the real world outcomes that we are seeing [raw data: LINK]. Even getting within sight of roughly an order of magnitude (within the range of ten times to one-tenth) would be a tremendous first step.

[Clarification - I'm assuming that Reilly's view when adjusted, normalized and finalized will be in approximate alignment with the real-world incidents that we're seeing. I admit I'm being generous with my view of his opinion at this time. It's because he is being so much more reasonable - I think - than Webster. But if Reilly starts to move his opinion away from being aligned with the real-world incidents, then my opinion of his opinion would shift exactly in step.]


By denominator washing I mean that 'someone' has apparently decided that it would be beneficial to increase the total number of taser 'incidents' and 'deployments' by including everything under the sun. Reportedly, in some jurisdictions, even threatening to use a taser or displaying a taser counts as a deployment. If they can get away with inflating the denominator, then it artificially decreases the ratio. That's why I cry FAKE when Taser tries to include those obviously much safer (cardiac wise, as backed-up by a recent study [LINK]) training sessions where the taser is applied almost anywhere except across the chest. [LINK]

Video of more FAKE taser training hits to the BACK

Ardmore Police Get New Tasers and Get Tased [LINK]

Follow the 'Featured Video' link on the above-linked page to watch the KTEN video.


Note how each and every police trainee is tasered in the BACK in accordance with Taser's policy of generating FAKE taser deployment numbers for use in the denominator washing of their taser safety data.

(Previous posts related to denominator washing [LINK])


Background - News reports seem to show a trend that people that die after being tasered are quite often tasered in the chest. Basically, there seems to be a statistical surplus of taser hits to the chest amongst those that die.


Those the truly believe that tasers-R-safe (cardiac-wise) should, logically, be very quick to welcome the opportunity to have all these taser trainees tasered in their chest (exactly in the manner that the taser is used on the street) to help establish evidence for their position. The fact that they don't avail themselves of this excellent opportunity is highly indicative.


Hey Taser - I double-dog-dare you to change your training policy. Have all the trainees turn around, don a suitable face shield, and take the full 5-second taser hit directly to their chest. And if they're so tough, repeat the exposure for several cycles.

If you don't invoke this policy change, then perhaps it is because you're very scared of the possible outcome. It certainly would be awfully embarrassing to have a healthy, drug-free customer killed during his taser training.


See also The 2008 Taser Challenge [LINK] from May 2008. We're coming up on the 1st anniversary of this simple challenge.

Let's renormalize the 1.4%

"1.4 per cent mortality for individuals subdued by police using a taser..." [LINK]

"An analysis of 183 Victoria police incident reports from 2005 to 2007 revealed the device was used in push-stun in 57 per cent of all cases where police activated their tasers." [LINK]

As Taser well knows, using the taser in push-stun (or 'Drive Mode', almost always not into the chest) is vastly safer (with respect to cardiac issues) than shooting the barbs and trailing wires towards the chest. That's why Taser loves to wash out the statistics (denominator washing) by including all deployments in any mode.

So right off the bat, we can make one correction to the overall mortality rate by adjusting out the Drive Mode deployments using the Victoria incident statistics given above.

1.4% times (inverse of (100%-57%)) = 3.3%

In other words, if the overall mortality rate for all individuals 'subdued by police using tasers' in any mode is 1.4%, and if 'Drive Mode' is generally much much safer, and if deploying the barbs and wires only occurs in about 43% of all usages, then the actual mortality rate when using the barbs and wires must be about 3.3%.

And this is being very generous due to lack of detailed data. For example, I suspect that there may be other categories of deployment such that my calculated 43% (from 100% - 57%) is too high. If so, then the calculated 3.3% mortality rate would be that much higher again.

And this is just the first correction.

Another correction might be required for the reported 20% failure rate [LINK] Or the reported 10% ineffective rate. [ibid]

3.3% becomes 4.1% becomes 4.6%.

Now we're getting within sight of the unwashed (no denominator washing) mortality rate for full-on X26 taser deployments where the barbs land on the chest.

And it all roughly matches: [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]

Do the math...

Taser and their fan boys claim that the taser is essentially perfectly safe (other than external risks such as 'falling down and banging head').

Some Taser fan-boy idiots have 'calculated' (sic) or promoted the idea that the risk of death from internal factors is either 'zero', or 'one-in-millions'.

I believe that these claims of near-perfect safety are full of crap.


Let's examine the available data in the case of the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

A recent investigation into the Access To Information process requested "all reports prepared by police officers in 2007 and 2008 after their use of tasers." Reportedly, there were 150 taser incidents in Winnipeg during the time in question. [LINK]

But we need to adjust for the denominator washing. (Actually we don't need to, but it's a moderately large factor and we'll be closer if we take a stab at adjusting it out.) Here's what I mean: Not all taser incidents are dangerous. If a police officer holds up his taser and triggers it to emit a spark in order to threaten the subject, then no reasonable person would claim that such a taser display carries any direct and significant risk. Also, it seems reasonable to assume that a taser applied in Touch Torture mode to an extremity, or anywhere such that the current doesn't pass in the area of vital organs or pathways, is probably much safer than full-on taser shocks to the chest.

Without complete access to all the information, it is not possible to make very accurate estimates, but rough guesses are completely possible. Let's assume that one-third of these taser 150 incidents in Winnipeg involved full-on taser hits to the chest. That makes roughly 50 full-on taser hits to the chest during the two year period. We'll take the full two year period - perhaps it should be some other period (perhaps more, perhaps less).

You can pick your own number of you don't like mine.

And Winnipeg has had one taser-associated death: Michael Langan, age 17, Winnipeg, MB - on July 22, 2008.

1/50 = ~2%

This result is in the same ball-park as previous estimates that I've made. They're all in the low end of the single digit range. 3%, 5%, 2%. For a rough guess, these are all in the same ball-park.

So we can conclude that a full-on taser hit is not very 'high risk'. But since we're talking about life-and-death, it's fair to call it a moderate risk (of death!) when all external risk reduction factors don't enter into the equation, and all the misleading denominator washing is removed.

Now obviously, if the taser was really replacing the gun, then a 2% risk of death is far better than a ~100% risk of death.

But since tasers are used roughly 100 times as often a police have historically used their guns (for example, do you really think that the Winnipeg police would be shooting 150 citizens dead every two years - geesh...), then we have a major problem...

Taser: 2% risk times 100 use-ratio = 200
Gun: Almost 100% risk times unity = 100

Annoyingly - CBC previously reported that police gunfire was not even reduced by tasers anyway. So it's actually 100 + 200 = 300 if you catch my drift.


Obviously those claims of near-perfect safety (with respect to internal risk factors) are simply not true. They're not even close. They're off by several orders of magnitude.

Unless you still cling to the belief that all these taser-associated deaths are simply coincidental deaths. And those 50-odd coroners that attributed partial cause to the taser were wrong. And that case where Taser was found 15% responsible for the death is wrong. And that the Earth is flat...

'High'? Nobody said anything about 'high'.

(AP) - A study released in June by the National Institute of Justice didn't find any "conclusive medical evidence" that exposure to so-called conducted energy devices, including tasers, carries a high risk of serious injury or death. [LINK]


Read that extract very carefully and you will realize that the NIJ report is perfectly consistent with a low to moderate (for example 5%) risk of death once the X26 taser darts land on the victim's chest (after all the denominator washing is excluded).

I firmly agree that there is no evidence of a high risk of death (that's duh-obvious). A high risk of death (say 60% for example) is simply not supported by the facts. But a low to moderate risk (in the 5% range) certainly is compatible with the facts. If Taser will admit to a risk of death in the 5% range (for darts on chest, once all the denominator washing is removed), then I'll accept that.

And given the reality that the risk is non-zero, then we shouldn't be surprised when the Taser is occasionally found to be The Cause of Death. And those "few deaths" will still be more than sufficient to bankrupt Taser.

Although 5% (for example) is a long way from 100% (twenty times better), 5% is actually infinitely larger than 0%.

Low to moderate is not zero.

And nobody ever said anything about 'high'.

Are you smarter than a 5th grader?

WPXI.com - Allegheny County officials are forming a committee to investigate the physical effects of being stunned. District Attorney Stephen Zappala said the group will include medical professionals and law enforcement personnel. The group is being formed after two recent police Taser incidents in the Pittsburgh area.

[I guess they are starting to doubt Taser's spin and propaganda.]

Last week, Jason Schmidt, 29, was hospitalized after police used a Taser on him. Officials were called to a house on Observatory Hill on Friday, where they said Schmidt was acting erratically and was having convulsions. It took four stuns by two officers to subdue him, police said. Schmidt is currently in intensive care at Allegheny General Hospital.

Earlier this month, police in Swissvale stunned Andre Thomas, 37, who later died. On Monday night, more than 60 people attended a meeting focusing on Thomas' death. Two autopsies on the body were inconclusive. The medical examiner is waiting for the results of toxicology tests. Thomas' family said they believe police used excessive force. [LINK]


So Allegheny County's committee is going to figure it all out are they?


Here is my suggestion for a starting point (just a sanity check):

You now have the beginings of a data set; it might not yet be strictly statistically significant, but it might still be common-sense indicative. You have one taser-associated death and another taser victim in the ICU. Let's call this numerator 1.5 to split the difference. It's within a heartbeat of being either 1 or 2, so 1.5 is perfectly reasonable for this type of rough estimate.

Next, estimate the approximate number of taser deployments over some reasonable period of time. To be fair, it doesn't have to be just the past month. Take the past several months (this is being generous to the pro-taser side). You can decide how many months to include: 6, 8, or even 12. The exact number of months to include is not very critical since we're just trying to establish a rough order of magnitude (ROM) estimate of the risk of death from a taser deployment.

Now, remove from the denominator all the Touch-Torture (non-dart) mode deployments unless they were fired directly into the subject's chest (a la Pikes). Remove any misses. Remove any other denominator washing (for example, don't include any taser training hits to the back). Don't include any 'displays' of the taser spark. You want to denominator to be a reasonable reflection of real taser deployments that actually had darts on the chest and thereby should be included in the risk calculation.

Finally, divide the numerator (1.5) by the denominator (more or less about 100?).


So, is this taser risk of death ratio close to 1-in-10 million ?

Does it seem to be "safer than Tylenol" ?

These are Taser's claims (or those of their spokes-puppets or pro-taser minions).


Or is your result more like a single digit percentage result (within sight of 5%)?


To obtain Webster's 1-in-10 million number, you would have had to taser every living soul in Allegheny County on a weekly basis for several months and still have had just two casualties. Not likely.


So, what are your conclusions?

File under: 'No Sh_t, Einstein'

Headline: Tasers 'less dangerous than guns' [LINK]

Wow. Really? Are you sure that you're keeping up there, Gomer?


Seriously, talk about missing the point...

The above-quoted statement is technically true in the duh!-obvious sense, but the argument it supports is the refuge of taser-debate newbies and plain fools. (Anyone need a badge? [LINK])


Even Taser International has been forced by circumstances, and by their goal of increased sales, to walk away from this original taser lie - that tasers have anything to do with replacing guns. They want tasers to replace pepper spray, the baton, hands-on, talking, waiting, and burning hot cigarettes pressed into flesh...


Tasers are used far, far, far and away more often than the police have historically and generally-acceptably used their guns. The ratio of overuse varies with both jurisdiction and almost certainly over time as well.

It would be ridiculous to try to put too accurate a number on it. But it's generally much more than ten, and generally much less than a thousand. I've decided to call it approximately one-hundred (as a rough order of magnitude estimated average). You can argue about the ratio here or there, or then and now, but 100x is a fair and reasonable number.

Given this ratio of overuse, it can be seen that any claim that tasers replace police gun fire is approximately 99% Bull Sh_t. Essentially, it's a damn lie.


The facts are that tasers are used to replace other (apparently safer, with respect to risk of death [LINK]) weapons, basic de-escalation techniques, and perhaps even simply waiting the subject out.


So, right off the bat, the taser would have to be at least 100 times safer than the gun, SIMPLY TO BREAK EVEN in a simple (amoral) body count.

(And when I use the word 'safe', I'm most concerned about DEATH. Injuries are obviously important, but they're not even on the same page as death. Let's sort out the taser-death issue before moving on to discuss injuries.)

The researchers compared the results with firearms, which had a mortality rate of about 50 per cent. [ibid]

Guns are 50% deadly. Perhaps not as high a mortality rate as some people might think.


Therefore, given the overuse ratio of 100x, just for a basic (amoral) body count break-even, the taser needs to be at or below a 0.5% risk of death.

And it meets that goal.

435+ taser-associated death out of some 700,000 (?) deployments is 0.06% risk of death.

That's about ten times better than required for (amoral) body-count break even.

You may be surprised by this relatively low ratio (just 8.3x) of first-order improvement. You might have assumed that it's many thousands of times safer. But not when normalized to make the comparison fair.


But wait... ...there's more to consider.


The mortality rate for firearms (guns) almost certainly only includes cases where the bullets actually hit the subject. I'll bet that (for example) a shot fired that does not contact the subject does not enter into the calculation of firearm mortality.

But Taser International are professional denominator washers [LINK]. They include almost everything in the denominator. They absolutely, positively include the incidents where the taser is applied in the Touch Torture mode. The certainly include the essentially-FAKE training and demonstration hits into the BACK. I'm not sure if they include 'display'.

A few of these inflationary denominator-washing factors, each of which is individually in a several-to-one ratio, brings the actual oranges-to-oranges comparison much closer to unity once adjusted for the overuse ratio.


And we've not even touched on the Karma issue [LINK] of moving from a scheme where those that attack police are subjected to a significant risk of death, to a scheme where anyone might eventually be subjected to a low to moderate risk of death. Bad karma. Very bad. Evil. Which is why I kept mentioning "amoral" above with respect to the raw body count.


Taser International's rebuttal would be that tasers cannot possibly be responsible for any of these 434+ [LINK] taser-associated deaths. Unfortunately for Taser International, that argument has now been officially rejected. [LINK]


So what are we left with?

Can we make the taser safer? Perhaps the new X3 has a waveform that eliminates the apparently-dangerous DC pulse after the arc phase? That would be interesting...

But it's not our job to design tasers.


So the only handle we have is to vastly cut back on the insane 100x ratio of overuse as compared to guns. This needs to be cut back by about 95% to 99%. And the 95% is being generous by potentially allowing about five times more taser incidents than the usual rate of police gun fire. Generous and trusting is what that is.

This sort of massive cut-back imposed by new sweeping restriction on the use of tasers is exactly what Judge Braidwood has recommended. Given that he couldn't bring himself to recommend a moritorium (at this time), then it was the only reasonable way forward.

He's a very smart man.

Bless his heart.

More than 14 million years - or something like that...

(CP) Legal power of Taser is cause for concern at Canadian inquests

You can read the entire article at [LINK]. My role is to examine the propaganda coming from Taser spokespuppets.

(CP) VANCOUVER — ...Steve Tuttle, spokes[puppet] for Taser International... "Look at our 14-year track history... ...more than a million exposures to the Taser system in the field and with volunteers."

"million exposures": The vast majority of these exposure are 'FAKE'. By fake I mean that the typical training scenario puts the X26 barbs anywhere on the trainee except across the chest. Even in actual street deployments, the 'Drive Mode' where the device is applied to the lower torso appears to be far more common than using the stand-off mode where the barbs are fired towards the chest. And even if the barbs are fired, they're only going to actually land on the chest in the worst location in some fraction of those incidents.

Taser is 'Denominator Washing'. [LINK] "More than a million" is meaningless. The X26 barbs on chest number is unknown, but it is certainly a very tiny fraction of that meaningless washed-out denominator.

What is the death rate when the barbs actually do land on the chest? [LINK][LINK][LINK]

"14-year track history": Taser's Smith admitted that "...the original technology did not work that well". And then he went on to describe the (19Hz) X26. [LINK] The X26 taser has been out since 2003. The taser-associated death rate started to go up dramatically starting at about the same time. See figure below and [LINK] for details and source links.

[URGENT] M26 as X26 experimental 'Control'

This post is ex26tremely important.

I'd like to ensure that all taser-safety researchers and investigators (and perhaps plaintiffs' expert witnesses) take full advantage of the M26 vs. X26 data, and the amazing opportunity that may be found buried deep in the various taser-deployment and taser-associated death databases.


The M26-associated death rate per actual deployment provides a perfect experimental 'control' for the X26-associated death rate per actual deployment.


The older M26 taser was introduced in 1999. The newer X26 taser was introduced in 2003. The two devices have waveforms that are significantly different. For various reason, recent suspicions about safety are settling on the X26.

The real-world applications of the two models must be very nearly identical. There are periods of many years when both models were in common use. Therefore, the M26 is the ideal experimental 'control' for questions about the real-world safety of the X26.

And separating all of the real-world results into two model categories (M26 vs. X26) will help to unmuddle the X26 results (presently diluted by the M26 data, another form of denominator washing not yet properly and fully accounted-for).


There are several lines of evidence that appear to be indicating that there is a peculiar X26-bias in the real-world (all raw data, no excuses) taser-associated deaths:

1. My review of the X26 waveform starting at the beginning of 2008 found some indication that the X26 could only be more dangerous than the older M26 taser. See [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] and many many more.
2. The recent December 2008 RC/CBC-sponsored Taser Analysis study focused on the same X26-unique monophasic pulse that I've been worried about for more than a year. See these posts for links to the CBC report [LINK] [LINK].
3. The monthly taser-associated death rate shows an upward step-function in 2003 (the same year that the X26 taser was introduced). [LINK]
4. The Canadian taser deployment statistics seem to indicate an X26-bias in the taser-associated deaths. See [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
   

Many of the blame-the-victim excuses being applied to the taser-associated deaths would be revealed for what I feel they are if the taser-associated deaths show any statistically significant bias towards the X26 taser.


My view of this line of argument is that we might be onto something very significant.


I strongly urge all taser-safety researchers to make efforts to gather and analyze the M26 versus X26 taser-associated death rates per actual deployment.


If the initial and seemingly-indicative data continues to demonstrate the same X26-bias, then there will be no escape route for Taser International.


And keep mind that Taser International only ever claimed a puny +5% increase in their made-up Muscular Disruption Units. So even a slight increase in real-world risk with the X26 would fully justify that there be an immediate X26 moratorium. Let them use their older M26 tasers if they're shown to be much safer.


I smell something much larger than just a slight bias...

I smell blood.

How does Taser International define "extremely low"?

Stun gun maker Taser International has released studies saying a shot to the chest has an "extremely low" risk of causing a heart attack. [LINK]

So, anyone else notice that Taser International is extremely reluctant to put a numerical value on exactly what they mean by the phrase "extremely low"?

When I've had access to limited data sets that allow me to divide the taser-associated death rate by the estimated rate of taser darts hitting chest for a given region I consistently get values in the low end of single digits - about 3% as a rough order of magnitude. [LINK] Keep in mind that this is after all denominator washing [LINK] has been removed leaving only an estimated rate of taser chest hits. [LINK]

Taser International tries to leave the impression that the risk is always so low that it has never happened.

The "Cardiac Safety" page on their website makes outrageous claims, and compares being hit with a taser to being hit with a ping pong ball. Kroll makes the false claim that unlimited duration taser hits are no more dangerous than a single short duration hit. This claims is clearly false as indicated by the real world results as reviewed by Prof. Savard. He noted a linear proportionality between exposure time and risk of death [LINK]. See also [LINK].

I've noticed that the news reports of young healthy folks being tasered and more-or-less immediately begining the process of dying seems to have a high rate of chest hits. [LINK]

There's another 'smoking gun' that we're working on. We are still working on it, and we hope that we can bring it to you in the coming weeks.

Injuries vs. Death

Apparently some so-called experts, even some doctors (!!), don't seem to make much of a distinction between an injury and a death.

Read this post [LINK] on the Truth...Not Tasers blog about a so-called study by the 'Canadian Police Research Centre', and then read it again and notice that these obviously pro-taser folks in Calgary are casually lumping DEATH into the same pot as injuries.

"No use-of-force technique available to police officers can be considered 'safe.' ... Every use-of-force encounter between the police and a citizen carries with it the possibility for injury for one or all of the participants, however unexpected that injury might be," says a synopsis of the report.

Oh shut the f-ck up.

What is the claimed and actual rate of DEATH ?

Look, if there had been 22 people injured in Canada by tasers, then I wouldn't have bothered to create this blog.

The issue with Taser and tasers is the apparent discrepancy between the claimed level of safety and the actual field safety for the taser (with respect to DEATH from internal mechanisms). And the bad training. Which leads to overuse, misuse and abuse. Which - when all combined - leads to the unnecessary deaths of innocent people (people that would never in a million years have been shot with a gun by the police).

Taser quotes 'studies' by Webster that claim the the chances of death, by any internal mechanism, is in the single digit parts-per-million range. Taser has never acknowledged any internal risk mechanism. Kroll claims the taser is "safer than Tylenol". That's the claim.

Do you believe that?

And do NOT include all the denominator washing that Taser likes to create [LINK] and include [LINK].

What's the actual death rate once the X26 dart(s) hit the chest and the device is cycled one or more times?

The taser has been described as a street level death lottery.


I'm sick and tired of this sort of crap propaganda from these sort of pro-taser folks that can't even make up a good lie.

And why would the folks at the so-called 'Canadian Police Research Centre' try to slip such clumsy pro-Taser propaganda past us? What's with THAT?

If this (injuries/death: same thing) is the quality of output that we're going to get from the Canadian Police Research Centre, then I say that they should be disqualified from the debate.

"deathsandinjuries" - all one word

Taser International spokespuppet Steve Tuttle, "Overly restrictive policies on taser device usage will force police officers to migrate to other, more dangerous force options, such as batons, physical force and even firearms, resulting in more, not fewer, deaths and injuries in police confrontations." [LINK]

The above statement is typical Taser-speak. It is as misleading as it can possibly be. And yet, if you parse the words just-so, then it could be defended as being technically not-completely false. But if you read it the way they intend it to be taken, then you'll be left with false impressions that will muddle your thoughts and lead you to false conclusions.


The most despicable trick that the scoundrels at Taser International are using is to lump deaths in with injuries.

"...deaths and injuries..."

Think about that. It's basically a lack of distinction that is evil.

Any thinking human, one with even the smallest shred of moral fiber in their soul, would instinctively realize that injuries are not even in the same chapter as death, let alone on the same page.

In my ethical book, there is first death, then (after a gap) there is permanent injuries, and then (after another gap) there is non-permanent injuries. Taser International has lumped all these together as "deaths and injuries". If it was going to be an e-mail address, then it would be deathsandinjuries [all one word] @taser.com.

Taser International is very intentionally muddling the taser-death issue by mixing in injuries. It's yet another form of denominator washing where they fiddle with the categories to suit their purposes.


NOT TO MENTION that I've seen at least one so-called 'study' where the injuries inherent with use of a taser (dart penetration injuries, electrical burns) were taken as givens and not counted as injuries. Watch out for that trick.


Let's go through the rest of the Taser-spew phrase-by-phrase:

"...more dangerous force options..."

Note "...more dangerous..." versus "...potentially more lethal...".

Braidwood page 218: ...the incidence of deaths proximate to their use suggests that they [tasers] are potentially more lethal than more traditional intermediate weapons, such as batons, oleoresin capsicum (pepper) spray, or rubber bullets.

Note that Judge Braidwood has not allowed himself to be muddled into considering injuries as being an equivalent consideration as deaths. The debate is about potential lethality, not the "danger" of a twisted finger.


"...and even firearms..."

There is nothing to prevent any officer from choosing to use a taser in cases where they would be legally authorized to use a gun. Obviously, if a police officer is legally justified in using a firearm, then he or she may use a taser if the opportunity presents itself. I don't believe that there is anything in the Braidwood recommendations that would force an officer to migrate to use of firearms.

In fact, I doubt that anyone could even find a hypothetical circumstance where the new "...overly restrictive policies on taser device usage will force police officers to migrate to ... firearms."

The above perfectly-reasonable and ultra-clarifying parsing of the statement from Taser International reveals their statement to contain a deceptive, fear-mongering, damn lie.


This level of despicable deception should be kept in mind when dealing with these scoundrels.

Taser subtly shifts its safety claims again

As part of its carefully-planned, almost-imperceptible sneaky legal shuffle away from liability [LINK], Taser has just subtly shifted the wording of its safety claims again.

"...the taser device is not... ...unreasonably dangerous..." [LINK]


So now the taser is 'not unreasonably dangerous'.

In other words, it is dangerous - just not unreasonably so.


That's a vast change from the taser being perfectly incapable of affecting the heart in any manner whatsoever as Taser and Kroll have repeatedly claimed.


Can we all now agree that there actually is a moderate risk of DEATH from internal risk factors (such as cardiac effects) when the X26 darts actually land on the victim's chest?

Such an acknowledgment would certainly help to explain all those incidents where people have died immediately after being tasered.

I have guesstimate the odds of DEATH as being within sight of the low end of the single digit range - once all the possible external safety factors and denominator washing factors are eliminated (leaving only the inherent safety margin alone, naked, scared, and certainly not 15-to-1).

The risk certainly ain't millions-to-one as Taser and their fan-boys have tried to claim. They're obviously off by several orders of magnitude.

It's like watching a bad child shifting sideways - heels left, toes left, heels left, toes left, heels left, toes left.

Hey, where do you think you're going?

More quotes from Dr. Bozeman

Background: The findings represent a three-year review of 1,201 CEW uses at six law enforcement agencies across the United States. The study was funded by the National Institute of Justice.

(Note, those 1201 taser "uses" are washed-out and would not be limited to just full taser hits, dart deployment mode, to potentially dangerous locations on the subject's body. For example, if a subject was shocked in the so-called drive stun mode, "touch torture" mode in my jargon, right in the leg, it would be counted as a 'CEW Use' for this study. It's a study that, by it's very design, is an example of denominator washing.)

"The Taser is a weapon and it can clearly cause injuries and even deaths in some cases," Bozeman said. [LINK]

While the research found that stun guns are safe, Bozeman cautioned, "These are serious weapons. They absolutely have the potential to injure or kill people." ...

...In the cases reviewed for the study, two people died, but autopsies found neither death was related to use of a Taser [circular logic at the highest level]. ...

...Three people were hospitalized after being zapped, two with injuries from falls. It was unclear whether a third hospitalization was related to the use of a stun gun, according to the researchers. [LINK]

Metalink to cached version of now-deleted Zoominfo [LINK]

Overall, Dr. Bozeman's use of the word "safe" appears to overlap with "tasers can cause death".

The word "safe" has been twisted into semantic nonsense.

Especially when you estimate how often taser darts just happen to land in potentially-dangerous locations.

If you have been paying attention, you'll have noticed that I'm fairly careful to refer to "the inherent internal risk factors such as cardiac effects". Including incidents where the subjects may been drive-stun tasered into their elbow does nothing to answer The Main Question.

But Dr. Bozeman's other crystal clear statements that basically acknowledge that taser's can kill is the takeaway point.

And note this - this is one of Taser International's favorite studies.

Typical... scratch the surface and a different picture emerges.

Australia (NSW): Rules draw new line on the use of Tasers

Australia catching-on to the evil side of tasers.

NSW Police will only be able to use Tasers as a last resort and in situations where negotiation and conflict resolution has failed, under new operating procedures. ... Mr Daley said all frontline officers trained in the use of Tasers were already told never to use the device to resolve a passive or non-threatening situation. ... [LINK]

I'm happy to read that Australia is taking steps to rein-in the use of tasers. Tasers have too freely been used as an instrument of "persuasion" (electrotorture), considering that they are perfectly capable of causing or contributing to death.

--

Police Minister Michael Daley said, "They present an option that is infinitely less lethal than a firearm."

"...infinitely less lethal than a firearm..." (ibid)

The above short statement contains two falsehoods.

The first is the comparison of tasers to firearms. In every jurisdiction I've studied, tasers are used approximately one hundred times as often as the police have historically used lethal force. It's an approximate ratio, but a good round number. (The second part of this first falsehood is that police use of firearms tends to increase when tasers are introduced, typically dropping back to the original level after a year or two. I've seen this same trend mentioned in two studies, one covering numerous cities in the US.)

Any comparison of tasers to firearms is approximately 99% pure pro-taser propaganda.

The second false aspect is the word "infinitely".

Taser safety margins are primarily external. The inherent (internal) safety margin is significantly lower than the "15-to-1" claimed. Once taser darts land on the chest with a transcardiac vector, the risk of death (real world on typical real world subjects) creeps up to surprisingly high levels.

And perhaps that explains why Taser International has apparently yanked down their "Cardiac Safety" webpage, and recommended not aiming at the subject's chest.

It's only by what I've termed 'denominator washing', where the taser usage figures are inflated with might-as-well-be FAKE training and demonstration hits into the back, and in some cases perhaps even display-only mode deployments, that they can manipulate the figures down to very low values.

If you estimate the actual darts-on-chest rate and compare that to the real world death rate (including so-called 'excited delirium' taser-deaths), then you see that the word infinitely is a hopeless exaggeration.

I'm not arguing that tasers are as lethal as firearms (don't be stupid). My position (shared with many) is that the claims of safety are vastly overstated, and the risks associated with taser use are significantly understated.

The new guidelines came in after the death of a Vietnamese man who was stunned by a police Taser in Sydney’s southwest last month.

Do your own math...

Compare the answer to "infinitely".

PS: police firearms appear to be about 50% lethal.

Taser International (TASR) et al - shades of deception

Examples of deception by Taser International et al. Potentially very useful for shredding their corporate or personal credibility in court. This is not a complete list by any means.

Example 1: Claiming that the tasers (M26 and X26) emit only 2mA "average" and implying that this is relevant. This claim is utter deception; it is obviously intended to confuse and mislead those that are not educated about technical topics. See [LINK] for detailed explanation. Further details available upon request - blog e-mail address is in the right hand column.

Example 2: Do you remember when Smith4Brains testified at SECU that the X26 taser is powered by a couple of wee-little harmless [-looking] batteries of the same sort (CR123A) used in digital cameras? He was trying to leave the deceptive impression that those batteries wouldn't hurt a flea. Those claims were intentionally deceptive. Those are powerful lithium cells and they drain them at a rate that is literally off-the-scale of the battery application notes. See [LINK] for an explanation using their own deceptive numbers.

Example 3: Claiming that their legal win/loss record was unblemished, when in fact they had quietly settled some lawsuits. They described these settlements as "dismissed" and (apparently intentionally) left a false impression with many. And they did nothing to correct the false impression when the misinformation was spread by ill-informed taser fan-boys.

Example 4: For years there existed a discrepancy in that all taser training and demonstration taser hits were only ever fired into the subjects' backs, or connected to the same area, or clipped to one leg. Trans-cardiac (chest) applications were intentionally avoided. (Now they advise "avoiding the chest" for all.) And yet they claimed that these "FAKE" taser deployments were evidence of safety. They counted them as safe deployments (my term is "denominator washing"). This was deception on a grand scale.

Example 5: Claiming that the X26 taser's waveform consists of just short pulses, and claiming some sort of magical "chronaxie" safety advantage of the "short pulses". In fact, the X26 taser has a waveform with significant low frequency spectral components, and those spectral components are continuous 100% duty cycle for as long as the trigger is held down. To be fair, this false claim by them probably started out as an elementary technical oversight; it was probably not deception at the outset. But their failure to correct this dumb-ass technical error is clearly pure deception.

Example 6: Taser International fights the various acidosis taser-death mechanisms. They cannot deny acidosis, but they gamely try to downplay the self-evident role that the taser deployment would play. The deception involves their struggling to maintain a straight face while trying to pass-off their position as reasonable. See [Kroll] and especially [Ho].

Example 7: Taser International and their minions have repeatedly claimed that tasers do not affect the heart. As late as May 2009, Taser International sent their unwashed hired help, on expenses I'll assume, to a meeting of the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) to try to defend this insane position (their mere attendance being an obvious 'red flag' if there ever was one...). See [LINK]. Meanwhile, buried in their legal paperwork is the admission that the taser "...can produce... changes in... heart rate and rhythm..." - see [LINK]. This is a huge discrepancy between their various statements (marketing lies, false claims, and legal warnings).

Example 8: Taser International and their minions and fan-boys have a nasty habit of failing to disclose that which should obviously be disclosed. I could find no mention of "Braidwood" (or anything similar) in their most recent Annual Report (15 March 2010) [LINK] - a matter clearly worthy of SEC investigation. Or Kroll's Mole-Role Trolls [LINK]. Or William Oliver (a.k.a. Billo the blogger) was discovered to be sitting on a NIJ panel "studying" (LOL) the safety of tasers, while actively promoting tasers in his spare time [LINK]. Or the seemingly-slimy connections, both direct and financial, between Taser International, the IPICD, and those promoting "excited delirium" [LINK][LINK][LINK] and more.

Example 9: Kroll's repeated and infamous reassurances of taser safety. His utterly-deceptive IEEE Spectrum article in which he repeats his many technical mistakes, including forgetting about Fourier (Hint: There's no such thing as 100 microseconds of 19 Hz). His claim of a reassuringly large "15-to-one" (sic) safety margin (self-evidently a vast overstatement). His claim that tasers are "safer than Tylenol". His evil comparison of being repeatedly being tasered to being repeatedly hit with "a ping ping ball" - at one time prominently published on Taser International's website under "Cardiac Safety" (sic), since then mysteriously pulled (?). All of these claims have misled people and organizations. The actual safety margin is much lower than they've claimed. And they've utterly failed to contemplate other Taser-death mechanisms.

Example 10: Taser International often makes claims and statements that appear to make sense in the limited context of the moment. But a wider view (and a better memory) reveals their statements to be at odds with their previous statements. (10a) They claimed at the time that the 1999-era M26 taser was "safe" BECAUSE the output waveform is high frequency and thus very low duty cycle. But the newer less-safe 2003-era X26 taser has a waveform that contains a DC pulse after the arc phase. When repeated at 19Hz this is low frequency and is thus continuous 100% duty cycle. In spite of the lower peak amplitude of the X26, there's no disagreement on either side that the X26 taser is the most dangerous of the two. But even well past 2003, they were still claiming the characteristics of the M26 waveform as safety factors. (10b) When asked about variations in taser current given inevitable variations in the resistance of humans, they immediately claimed that the taser is "a constant current source" and is thus insensitive to variations in the resistance of the target. Later, when investigators finally became curious about taser output, it was noted that a high percentage of units were out of spec, some were above spec. The response from Taser International was to start nitpicking the exact value of test resistor used. The contradiction is self-evident. Their habit of ever-changing stories aren't even good deceptions.

Example 11: The entire "excited delirium" (explain-away in-custody-death for hire) industry. Taser International and the IPICD (...Lawsuits) are connected right from the initial "start-up funding" for IPICD. These connections were not exactly highlighted (they were hidden, downplayed, and denied). The slimy connections were revealed by outside investigators one-by-one, including too-direct-to-be-ethical web-links to the University of Miami. Their insane claim that "excited delirium" (as might apply to a taser-death) has a history that goes back 150 years to a previously-described condition, Bell's Mania - where mental patients would starve themselves to death over a period of several weeks, is obviously utter nonsense. There are so many irrational aspects to their claims about "excited delirium" as a handy excuse for In-Custody Death (always in-custody) that the entire industry falls apart under its own illogic.

Example 12: A pair of cases where Taser International's outrageous behavior resulted in a couple of legal face-plants. These are deception (very poor attempts) because of what they were trying to accomplish. (12a) A B.C. Supreme Court judge has roundly rejected attempts by Taser International to discredit a lawyer and a medical expert who participated in the Braidwood inquiry... Justice Robert Sewell said allegations of bias and dishonesty against lawyer Art Vertlieb and Dr. Keith Chambers were "unnecessary, scandalous and vexatious," and ordered Taser International to pay their legal costs. [LINK] (12b) In denying Taser International's Motion for Summary Judgment... Judge Almquist also found that a portion of Taser International's motion was "substantially immaterial and irrelevant to the substance of the motion and created unnecessary time and expense for the parties and the court" and was filed in "bad-faith". He ordered the scoundrels to pay plaintiffs' counsel the sum of $15,000 in attorneys' fees to compensate them for the time spent responding to the motion. [LINK]

Example 13: Back in May 2009, 'someone' (LOL) in San Jose, California arrived from search.yahoo.com on "www.Excited-Delirium.com: Presentation by Dorin Panescu" by searching for first:"dorin" last:"panescu". Gee, I wonder who that was? Perhaps someone that had just returned (all expenses paid) from testifying at the Braidwood Inquiry, and was checking the news? Then, the same anonymous Internet user, accessing the Internet at an ISP-reported location just blocks from the listed address for Dorin Panescu, fraudulently stuffed the ballot box on a poll I was running. Simplest explanation is that 'someone' was caught red-handed engaging in deceptive behaviour. Fresh off the witness stand at Braidwood (?). [LINK]

Example 14: Taser International's bought and paid-for expert witness presented 'evidence' to 'prove' that the taser current has no effect on the heart. Unfortunately the same defective computer model also showed that the taser would have absolutely no effect beyond, perhaps, making one pectoral muscle slightly twitch. This is deception; but it's just not very good deception. It's laughable. [LINK]

Taser mole spokespuppet still drooling lies

A certain pro-taser arsehole that has been previously discussed in this blog [LINK] is continuing to leave his idiotic comments all over the on-line news outlets. His mindless comments typically have the following, grammatically- and factually-incorrect, Zuskin-trademark heading:

"Taser Saves Lives Everyday" (sic, and also very sick)


His latest moronic comment is the following:

Tasers have never killed anyone,

Yes they have. See De-spinning the Spin at the top of the right hand column for a couple of choice examples. $6.2M judgment for failure to warn (of the risk of death). And a case where three coroners that have pointed directly at the taser shocks as THE cause of a fatal cardiac arrest. Even Taser chairman Smith admitted that use of tasers results in lives lost in a ratio that he felt was acceptable (but who the hell gave him the right to make such moral trade-offs?). So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

'...a taser cannot kill a person unless they die due to a fall... '

Utter B.S. See De-spinning the Spin. The obvious-in-hindsight blood pH issue has been established in court. Coroners have found that taser shocks can cause cardiac arrest. And many more.

'Tasers give Police control over the uncontrolable, ...'

First, you don't have to capitalize the word "police" - they're not gods. Secondly, chuck yur spilling...

Back to tasers: tasers are unpredictable. Sometimes they work as they're suppose to. Sometimes they don't (today's example: [LINK]). Sometimes they are associated with the subject's death. Sometimes they are linked causually to that death. But most often they're overused, misused, and abuse. The taser success stories are so rare that Taser often celebrates them with a press release.

'...without getting hurt. Tasers reduce injuries to Police and Perps alike. ...'

Tasers have been called a 'street level death lottery'. I think that most 'perps' (and victims) would prefer to risk a minor injury rather than take a chance of being killed. A due to Taser's endless denominator-washing, the risks are actually higher than you might have been led to believe. Recent reports have warned of the risks of accepting the maufacturer's propaganda at face value - so you should stop quoting it.

Also, search this blog for a lesson on Karma. See [LINK] [LINK] and [LINK].


I hope that someone can figure out the exact relationship between this idiot and Taser. There is obviously a connection that drives him. If it isn't his life's savings tied-up in now less valuable TASR stocks, then perhaps there is a family connection. There must be something...


Where is Michael Moore when we need him?