Fair comment.

Taser International – the Taser manufacturer - has long disputed claims the weapon affects the heart. Yet Tasers caused 530 deaths in the U.S. between 2001 and 2012. Note that they are an "increasingly popular consumer item" , Taser International's sales thus being assisted by its notoriety, just as gun sales go up in America after each mass killing.

Tasers are an issue that tends to bring up seamy and unpleasant behaviour, especially by politicians and police. They all want a risk-free easy way out, by transferring the risk and cost to someone else - in this case the suspect/victim. Thus they seek the maximum blackening of the suspect/victim to justify their extravagant and indiscriminate use of force.

Shadow Attorney-General John Quigley called Premier Colin Barnett the "Premier of cover-ups" over his handling of the release of a second video relating to the tasering of a prisoner (one Spratt) in the East Perth Watchhouse in 2008.

In a recent W.A. case, no criminal charges were laid against police officers who repeatedly tasered a man in the watchhouse (where they were not supposed to possess tasers) then charged him with assaulting police when CCTV footage revealed no such behaviour – presumably to try and obscure their criminality.

At the very least, the fixed electrode prongs should be removed so that police have to use the ejector leads. That will force them to wind up and re-pack the electrode wires, as well as load a new gas cartridge, each time they fire. a built in shooter-identification system. All Tasers should always have an ID system, plus - always - a computer system that records the time and of every shot, plus always a camera.

Great article...

I think there are also some deeper questions to be asked here. If the police are miss using Tasers and capsicum spray what else are they doing? And what’ wrong in the culture of the police where torturing people is somehow acceptable?

It might also be time to change the design of the Tasers to make it more difficult for police to misuse. For example they could be reconfigured to restrict the number of discharges within a given period, ie someone can be shocked twice within a single deployment and that’s it.

"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.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/tasers-a-form-of-torture-says-un/story-e6freuz9-1225758523986?from=public_rss

"The output current upon contact with the target will depend on various factors such as target's resistance, skin type, moisture, bodily salinity, clothing, the electroshock weapon's internal circuitry, discharge waveform, and battery conditions"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroshock_weapon

In addition, individual vulnerabilities, 'wiring', ANS, sympathetic tone/balance all would contribute how an individual responds and if the effect is fatal. This does not require a diagnosed heart condition/illness.

The question should be: How could the taser effect NOT affect the heart?

Dear Prof McCulloch
Thanks for this article. I believe this is a very important issue and I've been shocked as much by the incidents of brutality as by the seeming indifference in our society at what I can only describe as torture being inflicted by the authorities in recent times against a foreign student, an aboriginal child and a mentally ill man.

Like you, I believe that Tasers are facilitating this kind of violence. Like you, I believe that police undertakings to review "official guidelines", "standard operating procedures" and training will have little effect not only because that will detract from training in other areas - such as negotiation skills and dealing with disturbed individuals - but also because it fundamentally misunderstands human nature.

In relation to another article on this website, I wrote that in watching the taser-cam footage of the recent incidents I was strongly reminded of the documentary I had seen years ago on the famous Milgram psychology experiment (the one in which ordinary individuals could be persuaded to inflict painful electric shocks - or at least that's what they thought they were doing - on test subjects). The lesson I took from that experiment is that if you provide instruments of torture to people, the power to use them over others and the implicit or explicit approval of authority figures, then even the most ordinary and otherwise-harmless individuals can perpetrate appalling cruelty.

So what have we done? With the issuing of Tasers we have essentially created a portable Milgram experiment on the streets of our cities and towns, only this time with real 50,000V equipment. And for some reason we delude ourselves that the outcome will be different. I don't even blame the individual officers (not entirely anyway). The blame lies with those in authority who have created the conditions and then perpetrated the fantasy that standard operating procedures, codes of conduct and a few hours of training can turn us all into angels.

So why the public indifference? I can't help but compare the response to the footage showing the treatment of cows in Indonesian abattoirs - which led to immediate government action - with the response to the footage of brutal Taser use. Could it be that repeated negative rhetoric about minorities and the disadvantaged in our society - "illegal immigrants", "queue jumpers", "extremists", "welfare cheats", "aboriginals of convenience" etc - have rendered us insensitive to their ill-treatment? Have we come to believe that people who are not-like-us are not entitled to our sympathy and in fact punishment, cruelty, denial of rights, exclusion is what they deserve?

It is without a doubt that Australian citizens are being used as target practice. And that the Australian government has allowed for this to happen is even more deplorable. Why? Well it keeps politicians happy as they promise us less crime and safer streets and more police. More police means people are not trained adequately to deal with what they are faced on the streets. Yes it may be a hard job, but less than a year academy training is not enough. Let's be real. Are they psychologically tested throughout their working life, and are some of them the bullies who ruled the playground and now patrolling our streets?

Then let's not forget about capitalism and the effects it has on all of us. It makes some of us rich and some poor. Poverty, low socio economic status, mental illness or drug induced psychosis does not mean that these people should be treated with less respect and they are human beings included under the UN Convention of Human Rights. Which part of these articles do governments, politicians, law enforcement not understand? If we treat an animal the way taser victims have been treated, animal activists would have been up in arms ages ago. So is it a case of conditioning us to become more complacent into thinking that if we are all good and behave ourselves, not have a mental illness or take drugs that we will be saved? Unfortunately, that is not the case. In the USA a blind man was tasered because the officer thought his walking stick was a samurai sword. And recently a video was released from a US police car, where a woman was tasered because she would not show the officer the contents of her bag. She stopped breathing and had not CPR been administered she would have become another victim. Amnesty International in their report: Less than Lethal, weapons of choice, identified a man who had pulled up on the side of the road and was having an epilieptic seizure. Police tasered him because he was not following their directions. Obviously this man could not because he was having a seizure and he responsibly pulled over on the side of the road so as not to cause harm to others. This man was a doctor and he died. His death certificate identified epileptic seizure as cause of death, BUT had the taser not be used, would he still be alive today? Or was the coroner intimated, forced or sued to state that on his death certificate. This just goes to show, that no-one is safe. So please!!!! No more hoodwinking!!!!

The mythical terms "less than leathal" "tasers save lives" are just that, mythical. How can any intelligent human being on this planet state that these weapons of torture are safe, just after someone has died? In the US when someone dies in custody the taser company is quick to offer assistance to the law enforcement precinct. One must wonder why this is the case? Is it because they are geniunely offering assistance or are there deeper and more sinister reasons, such as protecting their interests and their pockets?

In USA any Coroner who has dares to state that the taser has killed a person, has been bullied into submission or sued so to retract their statement. We are now witnessing the same thing happening in Australia. Important question: What did Roberto Laudisio Curti die from? It is blatantly obvious that had he been left alone he as with the other 5 Australian victims, they would not have died. So did the taser kill him or positional asphixia? Let's not forget the preferred term these days of "excited delirium." Remember the game of chinese whispers, this is what's happening with this term. At the same time it is protecting the interests of capitalists such as taser companies, researchers whose research is funded by such companies, researchers who hold shares in these companies and other stake holders.

And then to bring it all nicely together, something resembling a travelling circus, these researchers are asked to give evidence at Inquest and their line of questioning is calculated well beforehand by the interested parties counsel. Well of course they are going to say what is expected of them and what they are being paid for and of course to protect their own interests, which helps to make them richer too. And each time someone dies as a result of taser, the travelling circus just happens all over again. Let's not worry about the few that die on the way they say, taser use is spread world wide and it is easy to keep duping all the nations of the earth. Why don't we keep using mythical terms, we have an abundance of them in our tool kit.

Well, any Australian who believes in these mythical terms, including some high ranking officials really need to have their intelligence levels tested. I wonder if one of their own died as a result, how they would feel and would their thinking change? For all those that say that tasers don't kill, please be our guests, and be televised on national television and fired upon multiple times in the same way that our victims have. BUT, Oh No, that's right you would not be allowed to be televised and fired upon multiple times because of ETHICS. In a controlled environment, healthy subjects are not allowed to be fired upon multiple times because it is not ETHICAL. Persons with a mental illness or drug induced psychosis are also not allowed to be experimented upon in a laboratory. YET, these same people are treated worse than animals on the streets, and what happened to the same ETHICS that existed in the controlled environment?

We need independent research to be done in this area. Anyone who presently states that the taser did not kill the victim does not know that with 100% accuracy, unless they think they are God. This includes capitalists, politicians, governments, coroners, law enforcement etc. If dead people could talk they may help to shed some light on what actually happens. It is not only painful for the victims' families to lose someone they love but to be dragged into an Inquest for years. Families are insulted further when findings and recommendations exonerate officers whom it is so blatantly obvious to the public have colluded, lied and covered up their corruption. Inquests reward these officers bad behaviours and their institution promotes them. Where is the justice in that?

I see two issues here that police work has in common with health care.

First, there is community risk aversion that pushes providers to "do something". We don't like children dying from missed meningitis so we want everyone to have antibiotics (side-effect: inappropriate use of antibiotics). We don't like criminals to get away - we want them apprehended. Side-effects: car chases and Taser firing.

Second, we have young, inexperienced, immature workers on the front line. Yes, they are supervised. And, to become experienced and wise, you need practice. No amount of training or intellect will give a twenty-five year old the wisdom and judgment of a fifty year-old.

Policing is one of the few jobs where you can lose your life in an average day's work. You have to selectively work with people who don't like you.

The best approach might be to err on the side of "just let him get away." If someone steals a car, robs a store, the effort to apprehend them 100% of the time is not worth lost lives. That sentiment has to come from the community.

Finally, human services inevitably involve human error. If we want the police to err on the side of safety, we need to reassure them that we won't be demanding higher apprehension rates.

The link below shows the tasering of Angela Jones, who had a cardiac arrest and would have died if police did not do CPR on her. Taser companies are now saying that they cannot tell from the video if this was actually the case, something to that effect. This style of wording was also recently used by a coroner in a high profile case in Australia. Capitalism has infiltrated the government and now its institutions.

http://afteramerica.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/woman-suffers-heart-attack-after-cop-tasers-her-3-times/

The link below brings you to the tasering of Angela Jones, an actress on her way home, pulled over by police and when asked to show them the contents of her bag she panicked. She suffered cardia arrest.

Note the comments by taser company at the end. This is exactly what a Coroner recently said in a high profile inquest in Australia. It is almost like they are being tutored into what and what not to say. Pretty bad state of affairs.

Sorry I thought I lost this post, but it is another link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30JnVAPUVnE

I've seen a few articles and studies on the "less lethal" weapons and have been amazed at the wounds inflicted and how lightly they are used. The worst was the bean bag rounds that were fired into protesters faces, causing blindness and skull fractures.

Tasers and pepper spray seem to be used as "compliance" tools rather than as a weapon, this is the issue I see as the real problem. A weapon is meant to be a method of force to stop crimes and criminals, and basic weapons training states that you should not draw a weapon for use unless you are going to destroy the target. So Tasers and sprays should be used as a weapon and not as a method of "beating up" someone so that they do what you want.

I agree with Jude, Tasers have no real place in the arsenal as the Taser isn't being used as a weapon, and it should be either replacing the pistol or not be on the belt. I understand that police don't want to get battered and bruised dealing with criminals (etc) but since when was it okay for them to assault people?

Those cops definitely need to see a jail from the inside´. Tasers are lethal weapons, if they weren't deaths wouldn't be reported. And a commissioner defending this kind of over violence against kids need to get his head examined.

An experienced policeman was killed by an axe-wielding person in a domestic violence dispute today - leaving behind a spouse and children.

That doesn't excuse poor judgement amongst other police officers but it does put the risk of their everyday jobs into perspective.