Left Side of the Aisle #39

Topics this week:

- It shows what shape the economy is in when 8.5% unemployment is good news
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/06/jobs-december-2011-bls_n_1189058.html
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/business/for-2012-signs-point-to-retreat-in-consumer-spending.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/13/chuck-e-cheese-child-labor_n_1145891.html
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/12/fact-4-job-seekers-per-opening-in-u-s/
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0909_jobs_winship.aspx
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57343397/census-data-half-of-u.s-poor-or-low-income/?tag=strip
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/12/less-than-a-quarter-of-companies-to-hire-in-2012-careerbuilder.html
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html
http://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-workers/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/10/us-usa-markets-stocks-idUSTRE7B904720111210

- Outrage of the Week: tasers
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2004/03/shocking-developments.html
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/277047/20120105/jamie-gonzalez-8th-grader-shot-killed-texas.htm
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-01-01/news/ct-met-taser-use-increases-20120101_1_tasers-electroshock-weapons-doubts-surface

- January 11 was the 10th anniversary of the opening of Gitmo
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/06-1195.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagram_torture_and_prisoner_abuse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus
http://www.lectlaw.com/def/h001.htm
http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/faqs/faqs%3A-what-habeas-corpus
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2037444.stm
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/08/the_evils_of_indefinite_detention_and_those_wanting_to_de_prioritze_them/singleton/
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/01/10/hunger-striking-is-the-only-hope-guantanamo-prisoners-have-for-release/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/09/guantanamo-bay-figures_n_1195068.html

And Another Thing...: Why is January 1 the first day of the year?
http://wilstar.com/holidays/newyear.htm
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/newyearhistory.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year%27s_Day
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/111336
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1

Another reason tasers should be banned

Jaime Gonzalez, an 8th grade student in Brownsville, Texas, was shot three times and killed by police on Wednesday after he refused when - I love this description - he was "asked" that he put down what later proved to be a pellet gun.

[T]he two officers fired three shots, and hit Gonzalez at least twice, once in the back of the head.

I'm not going to judge the cops here: The gun supposedly looked real, they could have felt genuinely threatened, and reports say that on the emergency recording they can be heard several times demanding that he drop the gun before they fired. So while there are still several questions, such as the possibility of excessive force (how did he wind up getting hit in the back of the head, for example) and the severity of the perceived threat (was the gun pointed up or down toward the floor, for one example; did the boy take an "aggressive stance," for another), I will withhold judgement on that score.

But I am going to insist that this is just more evidence of why tasers should be banned.

Why? Because why the fuck wasn't one used? Dammit, this is exactly the sort of situation for which they were supposedly designed, exactly the sort of case for which they were intended. And yet we get a dead kid instead.

Nearly eight years ago, I wrote here that

With the increasing availability of tasers, especially combined with repeated assurances that they are safe and even "humane," will come the increasing temptation to use them routinely, no longer in lieu of lethal force but in lieu of persuasion and patience, no longer against someone posing a physical threat but against someone giving "a hard time," no longer for protection but for dominance.

The intervening years have proven the accurary of that prediction. And now, it appears, they're not only being used for things they supposedly are not for, they're not being used for what they supposedly are for.

Ban them. Now.

Footnote, I Don't Think You Quite Get It Div.: At a memoral service for Gonzalez, the Rev. Jorge Gomez said

"I implore you young people, learn from this experience. ... Young people, I invite you to get out of trouble. Don't get lost."

There is no indication Jaime Gonzalez was involved in gangs or any sort of trouble beyond the usual teenager crap like staying out too late. If he was "lost," it wasn't due to the sort of "trouble" Rev. Gomez meant.

A rambling meditation about power

A few posts down I made what I said I expected to be my only comment on Anthony Weiner. That's still true except that it got me thinking about something I've thought about before, a sort of recurring philosophical theme for me: power. Power in this case not in the sense of who has it and who doesn't but in the sense of the psychology of power, how we experience and relate to power from both sides of the powerful-powerless divide.

What really prompted this was the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the now-former head of the IMF who was arrested for sexual assault in New York. In the wake of the arrest, a number of people asked, in one form or another, why does this keep happening? Never mind whether Strauss-Kahn is himself guilty or not, there are more than enough proven cases of powerful people - the vast majority men - physically or sexually exploiting, abusing, even assaulting, those over who they have some authority or who are otherwise perceived to be in a "lesser" position. "Why? Why do they do it?" people asked.

Very frequently, the answer, the simple, bold, cold, answer came back: Because they can. Because they think they can get away with it. Because they think their position will protect them. Because no one ever tells them "no."

Because they can.

It was Lord Acton who said, in it's popular form, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Over the years, psychologists have performed literally hundreds of experiments testing the concepts of power and its exercise and overwhelmingly they have come to the same conclusion Lord Acton did: Power corrupts.

Writing in his "Frontal Cortex" column at Wired last summer, Jonah Lehrer noted that

[a]ccording to psychologists, one of the main problems with authority is that it makes us less sympathetic to the concerns and emotions of others. For instance, several studies have found that people in positions of authority are more likely to rely on stereotypes and generalizations when judging other people. They also spend much less time making eye contact, at least when a person without power is talking.

That is, the very experience of having power removes us from connection with others. Put another way, power undermines empathy. It's a state that social psychologist Deborah Gruenfeld calls "disinhibition," which

involves acting on your own desires in a social context without considering the effects of your actions. It implies a heightened sensitivity to your own internal state and also a reduced sensitivity to other’s interests and experiences.

This was illustrated in a series of experiments done two years ago by Joris Lammers (Tilburg University, the Netherlands) and Adam Galinsky (Northwestern University, Illinois).

Without getting too bogged down in procedural details, in the first they divided a group of volunteers in half and "primed" one of those halves to feel more powerful than they normally would and the other to feel less powerful than normal. They then divided each of those groups in half and swapped one of those halves. So now you've got two groups, each of which have half "high-power" and half "low-power" members.

They asked the first group to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how morally objectionable it would be for others to over-report travel expenses at work - that is, to pad their expense account.

The high-power members thought that was significantly more immoral than the low-power members did. That is, they seemed to be taking the more moral position.

However -

Each member of the second group played a dice game that would produce a score between 1 and 100 with an average of 50. They then self-reported the score to the experimenters. The higher your score, the more chances you got in a small lottery to be held at the end of the experiment, so the higher your score, the greater potential for gain.

The members of the low-power group reported an average score of 59. They were likely fudging a little. Those in the high-power group, by contrast, reported an average score of 70, which is so far removed from the expected average that the likelihood of this happening by chance was extremely small. The high-power group, to put it simply, cheated.

What this indicated is that high-power people judged others more harshly but themselves more leniently and what was objectionable to them when done by others was significantly less so when done by themselves. The attitude seemed to be "It's okay for me but not for you."

Power corrupts.

To test their finding more directly, Lammers and Galinsky ran a second test on a different group of volunteers. Divided, "primed," and reorganized the same way as before, the first of these groups was asked how acceptable or unacceptable it was for someone else to break the speed limit if they were late for an appointment and also how acceptable/unacceptable it would be for they themselves to do it.

For the high-power people, it was worse if others did it than if they did it themselves; again, they judged others' behavior more harshly than their own. The low-power group judged themselves and others the same.

The other group was asked a similar question about fudging on your tax return. Yet again, the high-power people were like "if you do it, it's bad; me, not so much." Interestingly, in this case the low-power people said it was worse, i.e., more immoral, for themselves than for others: They judged others more leniently than themselves. What remained consistent, though, was the sense of the high-power members that it was acceptable for them to do things which were not acceptable for others.

Because power corrupts.

So the pair of researchers did a third, more subtle version. In this one, they "primed" four groups: a high-power group whose members felt they were in such a position legitimately, another high-power group but one whose members felt they shouldn't have gotten that power (that is, the power was "illegitimate") , and the two associated low-power groups: one "legitimately" so and one "illegitimately" so.

In this case, the description of the experimental question wasn't clear to me, but as best as I understand it, the scenario was this: You find a bike lying around. You need a bike. How objectionable or unobjectionable is it for you to take the bike for yourself and keep it, rather than bringing it to the police in hopes that the real owner can be found? How about if someone else did it, that is, kept the bike?

Not only did both low-power groups find it more objectionable (more immoral) for they themselves to keep the bike than for others to do so, the "illegitimate" high-power group did as well. But "legitimate" high-power group found it to be significantly more objectionable for others to keep that bike than for they themselves to. Once more, it was "I can do what you can't; I can behave in ways you can't."

Because power corrupts.

Drs. Lammers and Galinsky

argue, therefore, that people with power that they think is justified break rules not only because they can get away with it, but also because they feel at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want. ... If [the researchers] are right, the sense which some powerful people seem to have that different rules apply to them is not just a convenient smoke screen. They genuinely believe it.

Because power corrupts.

You want a real-world example? Try tasers. As too many have forgotten (to the point where I have had taser-lovers actively deny it), they were originally pitched as an alternative to firearms, as weapons that could be, would be, used in situations where otherwise guns would have been.

Well, I have written about these contemptible things a number of times but even the very first time, over seven years ago, I predicted they would be abused:

The infliction of pain, sometimes intense, to "secure compliance" - better described as meek and unquestioning obedience - is well-established practice among police forces everywhere. With the increasing availability of tasers ... will come the increasing temptation to use them routinely, no longer in lieu of lethal force but in lieu of persuasion and patience, no longer against someone posing a physical threat but against someone giving "a hard time," no longer for protection but for dominance.

And we have seen exactly that in the years since. That has come exactly true.

We have seen children as young as six tasered. We have seen unarmed grandmothers tasered. (In fact, Amnesty International has determined that 80-90% of those tasered were unarmed.) We have seen people in wheelchairs tasered. We have seen severely mentally handicapped people tasered. We have seen people already arrested, already in handcuffs, tasered. We have seen people holding babies tasered. We have seen people tasered for running onto a baseball field. We have seen people tasered repeatedly for not obeying a cop's order quickly enough. We have seen people tasered for nothing more than being frightened. We have seen people being threatened with being tasered for nothing more than arguing with a cop.

And we have seen hundreds die.

The fact is, police have shown they cannot be trusted to use tasers in the way and for the limited purpose for which they were originally pitched and marketed. They cannot be trusted to not use tasers "routinely, ... no longer for protection but for dominance."

Because, dammit, power corrupts! And anything and everything we do with regard to social policy has to keep that in mind. Power corrupts.

Footnote: In considering the people who demanded higher morality of themselves than others. Drs. Lammers and Galinsky coined the term "hypercrisy." They suggested that the results were a product of seeking to avoid the possibility of punishment.

Personally, I think they are wrong. I think, rather, that the experience of low power has the opposite effect of that of high power: It increases empathy. So for example in the case of the bike, low-power respondents were thinking "It would be wrong of me to keep the bike - but someone else, well, you know, maybe they really needed a bike, so maybe, I dunno, maybe that wouldn't be so bad."

I did not expect this

I admit it, I did not expect this.

Johannes Mehserle, the San Francisco police officer who shot Oscar Grant in the back, killing him, as Grant lay face down and handcuffed in a BART station on New Year's Day, has been arrested and charged with murder.

Mehserle, who had refused to explain his actions to investigators, was arrested in Nevada.

Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff said murder charges were filed

because at this point, what I feel the evidence indicates is an unlawful killing done by an intentional act, and from the evidence we have, there's nothing that would mitigate that to something lower than a murder.

Damn. While it remains to be seen what will happen at trial, it's hard to imagine that all the video evidence taken by people at the scene can be overcome. It remains possible, just possible, that, as some have speculated, Mehserle thought he was pulling out his taser rather than his gun. But even in that case, I don't see how he could be convicted of anything less than assault and manslaughter. (Would that use of the taser would be assault with a deadly weapon or at least aggravated assault, but that ain't gonna happen.)

One other good word for Orloff:

"I understand that there's a great deal of emotion in the community and I understand that this situation raises a lot of significant social issues in our community," he said. "I would hope that people would ... let the criminal justice system play this out.

"In terms of those that want to protest on the broader social issues, I think peaceful protest can be a very healthy thing."

A DA endorsing the idea of social protests. Will wonders never cease.

We are so screwed, Part whatever it is now

This is an expanded version of a comment I left in response to the linked post.

Over at Crooks and Liars on Sunday, Nicole Belle had a clip from the Chris Matthews Show featuring a bunch of self-important pundits going on about how the real opposition that Barack Obama will face will not come from the GOPpers - who will give him a "longer than usual honeymood" - but from the left. (Video at the link.)

Belle notes, quite reasonably, that

to those oh-so-wise Beltway bobbleheads, we will be the "angry left" that Obama must marginalize in order to have a successful presidency.

But she concludes that this clip is

proof positive that the progressive blogosphere must be smart about picking battles in pushing a liberal agenda for America.

Which is why we are so screwed.

I mean, really? Seriously? That's the lesson to be taken from this? That progressives must be "smart about picking battles?" That the best course is to hold our fire, to be hyper-cautious, to think and re-think, to fuss about appearances, to - in short - let a lot of crap pass for fear of being called "angry" by Chris Matthews and his cohorts?

Haven't we realized that we'll be called "angry" and whatever else seems useful no matter how carefully we "pick our battles?" Haven't we realized that we will never satisfy them that we are not "angry?" Haven't we realized that they will always try to dismiss us, no matter how un-angry we try to appear?

Haven't we realized that the best, indeed the only practical, the only correct, response to that accusation is to say "Yes, I'm angry. Why the hell aren't you?"

Because I am angry. I'm angry about wars that drag on with the argument about the one being if we should continue participating in the carnage for three years or "only" a year and a-half and the argument about the other being how much we should escalate it and whether or not to spread it to another nation.

I'm angry about an economy in the dumpster and the argument being over how much we can give to the rich fat cats of the financial industry and how much we can take back from autoworkers and how the former are the victims of their crisis and the latter are the cause of theirs.

I'm angry that we can cough up a trillion fricking dollars to kill Iraqis and Afghans and bail out the banks but choke on $15 billion to preserve the planet and head off global warming by pushing renewable energy.

I'm angry about persistent hunger, persistent homelessness, persistent poverty. I'm angry about the widespread lack of affordable health care.

I'm angry about persistent racism and sexism, I'm angry about invasions of our privacy by government and corporations, about undermining of Constitutional freedoms by a White House devoted to executive power and a Supreme Court devoted to police power. I'm angry about years of government criminality and even angrier at the apparent intention Mr. Change to not do a damn thing about it.

I'm angry about cops who think that the casual use of a potentially-lethal torture device - a taser - is acceptable any time anyone doesn't obediently follow orders.

So yes, dammit, I'm angry. About a lot of things. If you're not, why not?

And among the things I'm angry about is the persistent, politically self-destructive, inane, fantasy that if we're just polite and dignified and don't come off like, I dunno, crazy hippies or something, if we'll only tiptoe around what we say and when we say it and how we say it and about what we say it for fear we'll get called a name, we'll have all kinds of influence and all kinds of great things will happen.

Haven't we realized that as long as we live by their bullshit, we die by their bullshit? Haven't we realized that the only way to knock down a dismissive stereotype is not to try to disprove it (which only legitimizes the question) but to refuse to accept it and just to carry on and the hell with what they call us? Haven't we realized that we have to do what we think best, not what they think best for us?

Haven't we learned that in politics you never win by backing up and that a compromise without any gain is not a compromise, it is a surrender?

Haven't we learned anything?

Thanks to Lean Left for the link to the Obama-won't-prosecute story and to Jonathan Turley for the link to the taser story.

But don't count on it

The Policing Board in the UK

has formally endorsed the chief constable's decision to deploy Taser stun guns[, the BBC reports].

Twelve guns were given to specialist police teams in a pilot scheme in January. ...

The chief constable will decide if the weapon should be used on a permanent basis after an equality impact assessment is completed.

The decision was taken in the face of a legal challenge to be heard in January and a call by Sinn Féin for the action to be deferred until after the judicial review.

In defense of the move, police officials pulled out the usual clichés:

The DUP's Peter Weir said it was a "logical move".

"Would the opponents of Tasers rather that police officers were forced to use handguns in every situation where a Taser should be used?

"Or perhaps they would like to make it impossible for the police to use necessary and proportionate force in order to defend innocent members of the public?"

This kind of sneering dismissal is not only bullshit, it's not even original bullshit. It's run of the mill bullshit that presents guns as the only alternative to tasers and suggests that opposition to tasers equals opposition to public safety. It really reads, "You're either with us or you're with the criminals! Why do you hate innocent members of the public?"

But if the record of tasers was one demonstrating that it only gets used in cases where otherwise guns would be used, there would be minimal opposition. The point, the point, the point - the point that never seems to register with these chowderheads is that tasers are frequently, mostly, used not as an alternative to deadly force, but as an alternative to any force, often enough to no force. Used instead as a means of domination, of humiliation, of intimidation, as punishment for resistance, as a convenience rather than a necessity.

Meanwhile, Great Britain is not the only place experiencing tasermania. Police in the Australian state of New South Wales are expanding their deployment of tasers.

Specially-trained police officers at this year’s Bathurst 1000 [auto race] will be equipped with taser stun guns after Commissioner Andrew Scipione yesterday announced the weapons would be issued to general duties police officers across the state. ...

Until yesterday, the weapon was restricted to the NSW Police Force’s riot squad and elite tactical operations unit, but now general officers with special training will be able to carry the weapon.

As has become typical, the decision to expand the use of tasers, which were described by local police commander Lionel White as "just another tool," came before, not after, a NSW Ombudsman report into their safety, which is not expected to be presented to the NSW parliament until later this month.

Footnote: Scipione said tough police procedures would avert the sort of deaths that have been associated with the weapons.

“We have really strong ... procedures that govern the way we use these devices and it can’t happen here[," he said.]

They had "strong procedures" in New York, too.

Maybe this is the one that will get them thinking

Maybe a different kind of tragedy is what's required to move them. From Reuters:

A New York City police lieutenant committed suicide on Thursday, eight days after ordering the use of a Taser stun gun against an emotionally disturbed man who then fell to his death, police said.

Lt. Michael Pigott had been on desk duty since the September 24 incident, when police responded to an emergency call saying that a man, Iman Morales, 35, was behaving erratically in his Brooklyn apartment.

Police chased Morales naked through the building and then he stepped onto a ledge. After a standoff, Pigott, a 21-year veteran of the police department, ordered a sergeant to fire a Taser at Morales.

Morales fell 10 feet (three meters) to the sidewalk and died of severe head trauma.

Pigott was stripped of his gun and badge and put on desk duty for violating department rules against using a taser in "in situations where the subject may fall from an elevated surface." He was described by colleagues as "torn up" over the incident and he said he was "truly sorry."

Apparently, he was. On Thursday morning, he went into a police locker room, got another officer's gun, and shot himself in the head.

The sharp edge of this double tragedy is that Michael Pigott, the man who realized the enormity of what he had done, who apparently knew there had to be consequences, it couldn't be brushed off, became his own second victim, one more sufferer, physically and mentally. And at the same time, those who would dismiss what happened to Morales, just like those who shrugged off the cases of Pastor Al Poisson, of Andrew Meyer, even of Robert Dziekanski, undoubtedly sleep quite soundly.

But this time a cop died. So maybe, just maybe, it will make them think a little.

You had to know this was coming

It happened in Boulder, Colorado, a week ago. A security guard claimed a van owned by an employee of a neighboring restaurant was on property the guard was hired to patrol. He booted the van. The van owner denied the claim, the restaurant's owner and the guard got into an argument, it escalated, each later claimed the other was being threatening, and, and -

Both men drew Tasers.

"They shot each other," Police Sgt. Pat Wyton told [a local] newspaper. "It was just kind of a bonehead deal."

Neither man was injured. This time. But I do wonder if when, and it will happen, the first person dies from a taser hit that wasn't done by a cop if everyone will be so quick to claim the taser had nothing to do with it.

Footnote to the preceding

The Globe & Mail (Canada) reported a few days ago that

[t]asers pose potentially fatal health risks that studies proving their safety don't take into account, a U.S. doctor told the B.C. taser inquiry yesterday.

San Francisco cardiologist and electrophysiologist Zian Tseng became interested in the use and effects of tasers after a taser-related death in San Francisco in January, 2005. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Dr. Tseng suggested tasers could induce cardiac arrhythmia[, which would not show up on an autopsy]. ...

Much of the scientific justification for the safety of tasers is based on formulae that don't examine their use in the "real world," Dr. Tseng said.

"What's not allowed in these theoretical calculations are worst-case scenarios," he said. "Tolerability in healthy volunteers under optimal conditions does not mean safety."

Dr. Tseng also noted several flaws in and concerns about the "safety" studies on tasers:

- Many of the studies were financed by Taser International; in at least once case, researchers were company employees.
- They used simulated stun guns, not actual tasers.
- The heart rate of subjects was monitored before and after the shock but not during it.

Note, too, that in all the videos I've seen demonstrating the device, in every single one, it's applied to the back, not across the chest. So to sum up, the claims for the "safety" of tasers are based on studies financed by Taser International, sometimes done by Taser International employees, performed on prepared, healthy subjects who are likely somewhat apprehensive but surely are not terrified, agitated, exhausted, intoxicated, or stoned, who are not shocked repeatedly, who do not have heart conditions, but who are shocked in a way least likely to affect the heart in a test that does not gather evidence at the time the heart is most likely to be affected.

Pardon me if I don't find that establishing a convincing record about real-world effects.

Footnote: Dr. Tseng also said that shortly after his interview appeared in the Chronicle,

I was contacted by [Taser International, Inc.] directly to reconsider my statements to the media," he said. "They even offered to ... give me grant money for research."

(Brackets in original.)

I suppose he should consider himself lucky they didn't sue him.

Current events

This story is a few days old but I just came across it yesterday via Truth Not Tasers and it seemed worthy of mention.

According to the Asbury Park (NJ) Press, the Attorney General's Committee on Less-Lethal Force is considering allowing the use of tasers by police in the state. The panel is being heavily lobbied by - of course - Taser International and - of course - the New Jersey Fraternal Order of Police, the latter of which said through a representative that

[i]f there is a way that officers can perform their sworn duty without employing deadly force, then we have a moral obligation to do so.

Interestingly, that "moral obligation" did not seem to revolve around saving lives but about sparing police the trauma of shooting someone, which "often require[s] thousands of hours of counseling and support to overcome."

Typically, supporters of tasers arranged for a parade of witnesses who "trumpeted the praises" of what they described as a "tool" rather than a weapon and downplayed its effects, saying it

said sends small projectiles onto a suspect's skin, scrambles the nervous system for about five seconds, then leaves one blinking but unharmed.

They also presented it as something used only in the worst situations. Aside from the NJFOP's connection of the use of tasers to avoiding "deadly force," there was this:

Toms River's Frank Rogers, a retired deputy superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, told the panel the weapon allows an officer to stay safely away from a suspect while still disabling the person without having to use a conventional gun.

In short, the same old bullshit. Fortunately, there was some skepticism among panel members.

One panel member, Robert Davison, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Essex County, said he worried police might rely on the Taser when time and talking might restore calm to a chaotic moment.

Dentist Maryam Seluki of Willingboro said she opposes such weaponry. "These have a great potential for being lethal and for being abused."

Meanwhile, Tom Smith, CEO of Taser Int., claimed in response to being asked if being tasered was painful that "We have had people describe it as pain. We've had people describe it as pleasure." However, he didn't specify whether the latter group consisted of people being tased or of people doing the tasing.

He also said that New Jersey is the only state where the use of tasers is banned. Another good thing to be said for my old home state. May it lose that honor only by becoming, initially, "one of a few" states to ban the suckers.

A shocking return to the death penalty

A few posts down I addressed the death penalty. But that penalty can be imposed in other forms long before trial.

Raw Story links to a story from Saturday's Cleveland Plain Dealer reporting on yet another excuse being made, another whitewash of, deaths related to police use of tasers. This case is particularly disturbing because it goes a little further than others.

Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler must delete any reference that Tasers contributed to the deaths of three men, a Summit County Common Pleas judge ordered Friday.

The deaths of Dennis Hyde and Richard Holcomb, who were on drugs and in an agitated state when police shot them with Tasers, should be ruled accidental, visiting Judge Ted Schneiderman wrote in his ruling. Any reference to homicide or "electrical pulse stimulation" should be deleted from death certificates and autopsy reports, he said.

That is, this is not a case where an examiner refused to find taser use contributed to a death, it's a case where in response to a suit by Taser International the judge ordered the county medical examiner to change her professional conclusions and report something other than her actual findings - bluntly, he ordered her to lie to protect the interests of the Taser corporation.

The Arizona Republic reported on Friday that this is part of an aggressive campaign on the part of Taser International, which

increasingly is targeting state and county medical examiners with lawsuits and lobbying efforts to reverse and prevent medical rulings that Tasers contributed to someone's death. ...

Many medical examiners, who are charged with determining the official causes of death, view the Scottsdale-based company's efforts as disturbing, the spokesman for the National Association of Medical Examiners says.

"It is dangerously close to intimidation," says Jeff Jentzen, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. "At this point, we adamantly reject the fact that people can be sued for medical opinions that they make."

Taser International takes the position that any medical examiner who says being tased contributed to a death is by definition unqualified to make that determination, while arguing in court that its own hand-picked and company-paid witnesses are unbiased experts. It insists that it is impossible for the taser to do any lasting harm and particularly that it's impossible for it to induce heart failure, that instead the deaths are caused by a mythical state called "excited delirium,"

used to describe deaths of suspects who become so agitated by drugs, psychosis or poor health that their bodies shut down during struggles with police.

That is, they become so "agitated" that they just ... die. No exact reason, no actual direct cause, they just die. They just do. Not our fault. Not at all. Oh, there're claims that it's an "overdose of adrenaline" and some such, but even the claimed condition's proponents will admit that can't be proved even by autopsy, so why that should be more than idle speculation is unclear.

What is clear is first that cops and medical examiner allies have been using this excuse for excessive force for decades - even though it is a diagnosis which is not recognized by any medical manual or respectable medical organization - and second that the common factor in virtually all (if not all) cases of "death due to excited delirium" is the victim having just been in a struggle with police, including, often enough, having just been tased. Claims of coincidence can carry you just so far.

What's more, the assertion that tasers can't affect the heart are untrue according to research reported in the May 1 Canadian Medical Association Journal, which found that if the barbs strike such that the current flows across the heart, it can induce reactions. In the typically restrained language of scientific papers, the researchers said

it is inappropriate to conclude that stun gun discharges cannot lead to adverse cardiac consequences in all real world settings.

By the way, the same issue of CMAJ has a lead editorial called "Tasers in medicine: an irreverent call for proposals," which notes, among other things, that almost all research on the "safety" of tasers has been sponsored by the Taser corporation itself (a pattern it is repeating with research on "excited delirium") and refers to

a small group of dedicated researchers who diligently write letters to journals pointing out flaws in studies reporting harm from tasers. Unfortunately, some of these researchers occasionally neglect to mention their participation on TASER International’s medical advisory board or board of directors.

The whole has a fair amount of dry wit and is well worth reading.

The bottom line fact is that, as I have said more than a dozen times, tasers are dangerous weapons designed to inflict disabling pain and which all too often prove deadly - and which have, exactly as I predicted, become a weapon of domination, one intended to induce meek submission, no longer (as they supposedly were intended to be) an alternative to lethal force but an alternative even to no force. And the risks associated with their use will continue to increase as more police forces obtain them precisely because cops are falsely trained that they are "safe." As a result, and as experience has shown, police simply cannot be trusted to use tasers in the way their proponents insist is their purpose, as a last resort. They should be banned.

Footnote: Thanks go to Excited-Delirium for the link to the Arizona Republic story, to Truth not Tasers for leading me to Excited-Delirium and for tipping me to the CMAJ article, and to Tasered While Black for pointing me to Truth not Tasers.

Another Footnote: Truth not Tasers has the text of a solid editorial from the Globe & Mail (Canada) on the CMAJ findings and an official inquiry into tasers opening in Canada; the original is behind a pay firewall. It also has a list of 342 people - 322 Americans and 20 Canadians - who died shortly after being shocked with tasers by law enforcement personnel. The list continues to grow.

And a Third Footnote: To show just how impartial and unbiased he was, Judge Schneiderman of the Ohio case went even further in the case of the third man, one Mark McCullaugh:

McCullaugh, who had a history of psychiatric illness, died in Summit County Jail on Aug. 20, 2006, during a struggle with deputies who used Tasers and pepper spray. Five sheriff's deputies were indicted in his death.

Schneiderman ordered Kohler to rule McCullaugh's death undetermined and delete any references to homicide and the death possibly being caused by asphyxia, beatings or other factors.

Note that this went beyond the scope of the suit, which only related to the use of the taser, and that again, the judge is ordering the medical examiner to change an official record to reflect his desired conclusion. In this case as opposed to the first two, police officers had been charged - and the judge was in essence ordering that evidence be changed in a way that would exonerate them.

Which surely was the right thing because as we all know, cops can never be guilty of anything.

Another shocking tale

I found this through the blog A Sense of Urgency and tracked back to the original source, a report in the Houston Chronicle from last Wednesday:

Electronic control device producer Taser International Inc. said Wednesday it received an order for 700 devices and related accessories from the U.S. Forest Service for an undisclosed sum.

The Forest Service is the latest federal department to place an order with Taser. The departments of Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, Interior and Agriculture have previously order Taser devices.

The order will ship by the end of the year.

Deb at A Sense of Urgency wonders, legitimately enough,

Who thinks this is a good idea? Is it for protection against the proverbial lions, tigers and bears?

Personally, I figure it's for necessary protection against some rowdy redwoods somewhere. They can get pretty uppity, y'know.

Are you shocked?

Everybody, it seems, is talking about the incident at the University of Florida when a student named Andrew Meyer who was aggressively questioning speaker John Kerry was arrested and tasered.

About half of the focus has been on the student and about half on the cops with some room left over to sneer at Kerry for what more than one called "sonorously droning on" as the incident unfolded. Dealing with those in reverse order and so getting to my real concern last (wait for it), I first want to offer a mild defense of John Kerry.

There are a number of news accounts of the incident, but they tend to start at different points and so some things get lost. One is that when Meyer first went to the mike - and apparently he did push to the head of the line - he vocally complained that members of the audience did not have enough time to question Kerry, which may well have been true: After Kerry spoke for 45 minutes, there was a time of, if you will, official questions from one person, leaving the audience no more than 25 minutes for Q&A. At that point, campus police went to remove Meyer but Kerry intervened, saying he should be allowed his question. He answered a question from across the hall and then went back to Meyer.

Meyer asked three questions - why did Kerry concede the 2004 election in the face of evidence of foul electoral play (referring to Greg Palast's noteworthy book Armed Madhouse), why is there no move to impeach Bush to prevent an attack on Iran, and was Kerry in the Skull & Bones Society at Yale along with Bush - but did so at considerable length and even at that point seemed in no mood to relinquish the mike. His mike was cut off, campus police moved in on him, and the struggle began. At that point, Kerry can be heard on various videos saying "It's all right, let me answer his question."

Now, what Kerry should have done at that point is gone down off the stage, up to the cops, and said "I said it was all right!" and insist they let Meyer go - and then he should have said to Meyer that he will answer his questions but in return Meyer had to agree to surrender the mike when he, Kerry, was done.

He didn't. But he did enable the questions to be asked at all and did at least make some objection to the police action by saying that it was okay and he would answer them. He indicated later that "I believe I could have handled the situation without interruption," which at least implies he thinks the police overreacted.

One other thing: Some have written about Kerry "droning on" (he was actually answering the question about the 2004 election) while Meyer was "screaming in pain." Okay, but remember that the videos are taken just feet from Meyer. Kerry, who was using a sound system, can barely be heard in the background. What makes anyone think that Meyer's cries were any more noticeable or intelligible where Kerry was than Kerry's voice was where Meyer was?

Enough of that. There has also been some commentary about Meyer himself. Some of it, as Jon Swift astutely pointed out, came from conservatives denouncing the Left's suppression of free speech until it sank in that Meyer is to the left of Kerry, at which point all bets were off and all of the commentary from all sources, it seems, was intended to label him just a troublemaker who got what he deserved. Well, yes, he was an obnoxious loudmouth - the screaming for help that began when the cops tried to hustle him out of the hall, i.e., even before he was actually arrested, and the subsequent appeals to onlookers to follow the cops because otherwise they'd kill him made him look particularly boorish to me - but no, no way did he get what he deserved or deserve what he got. The police acted hastily, stepped in unnecessarily, were overly aggressive and violent, and bottom line were responsible for creating an incident where there need not have been one.

On Countdown, Rachel Maddow was asked if upon first seeing the video, she thought "overzealous campus police who went too far or loudmouthed activist looking to make trouble who was dealt with?" She answered "Yes." That's exactly my take on it, which is why my real focus, my real concern, is one one particular point:

The taser.

The goddam em-effing taser.

Once again we see the police whipping out a taser like some cliché old-West gunslinger to intimidate and punish rather than to protect. There is no doubt from the multiple videos that Meyer was first threated with being, and then was, tasered for nothing more than failure to cooperate. In fact, while it's hard to be certain, this video seems to show that he was already handcuffed when he was tasered; clearly he was on his stomach with his hands behind his back. He was handcuffed and shocked despite his clear statement that if released we would leave quietly (which getting him to do was the original point, supposedly). They tasered him not because they had to but because they could.

But maybe they couldn't. According to the Ocala Star-Banner's account, University Police Department Captain Jeff Holcomb

said there would be an investigation into whether the officers used force appropriately, adding that employing a Taser gun would only be justified in a case where there was a threat of physical harm to officers.

Which there very clearly was not. He was very painfully shocked with 50,000 volts not because he was a threat, not because of any danger he presented to the six campus police on him, but because he refused to actively cooperate, meekly and submissively, with police demands. This was the deliberate infliction of physical pain not in self-defense but as punishment for resistance. And frankly if it was up to me the cops responsible would not only be fired, they would be prosecuted for criminal assault. Perhaps we can at least hope for some kind of reprimand, although the University may be trying to fashion an out: One report which I can't locate now (so no link) said one cop was injured - so we may well be treated to a claim that the six of them feared for their safety in the face of this one kid lying face down on the floor.

It's far from the first case where tasers have been used in such a way. Sold by the manufacturers on the grounds that they offer an alternative to potentially lethal violence, they have from the beginning been something else. They very first time I mentioned them, 3¹/₂ years ago, I declared that

[w]ith the increasing availability of tasers ... will come the increasing temptation to use them routinely, no longer in lieu of lethal force but in lieu of persuasion and patience, no longer against someone posing a physical threat but against someone giving "a hard time," no longer for protection but for dominance.

That is, they would become weapons not of protection but of convenience, used not to save lives but to save effort, to secure not public order but passive obedience. And that, in fact, is exactly what they have become, as incident after incident after incident has shown.

From AP last month:

In a confrontation captured on videotape, a hospital security guard fired a stun gun to stop a defiant father from taking home his newborn, sending both man and child crashing to the floor. ...

"I've got to wonder what kind of moron would Tase an adult holding a baby," said George Kirkham, a former police officer and criminologist at Florida State University. "It doesn't take rocket science to realize the baby is going to fall."

[William] Lewis, 30, said the April 13 episode began after he and his wife felt mistreated by staff at the Woman's Hospital of Texas and they decided to leave. Hospital employees told him doctors would not allow it, but Lewis picked up the baby and strode to a bank of elevators.

He was confronted by security guards, one of who, within 40 seconds of the encounter, prepared to use his taser. The hospital defended the guards, claiming Lewis "became verbally abusive by using vulgar expletives," behavior it called "threatening." Yes, oh my gosh, he used vulgar expletives! I'm sure they were things neither guard had ever heard before!

And, as it all too typical in this case, who got charged? Lewis, of course, charged with endangering a child, I assume by dropping it when he was tasered. That was so bogus that a grand jury refused to indict him.

More recently, this is from the New York Daily News for Monday (via AmericaBlog):

A retired 20-year veteran of the NYPD said yesterday that cops used excessive force against his son when they zapped him four times with a Taser, hit him 15 times with a nightstick and put him in a choke hold.

Retired Lt. Alexander Lombard said his son, Alexander Lombard 3rd, 17, was beaten by cops after they arrived at a "community sponsored" barbecue at 126th St. and Park Ave. last month. ...

But Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said in a statement that a police sergeant "employed a Taser against the suspect's ankle" to subdue him after responding to a large disturbance at about 3:30 a.m.

Which is curious since the photo accompanying the story shows what sure as hell looks like taser burns on Lombard's side. If the cop didn't know the difference between Lombard's ankle and side, I strongly suspect there are two other more traditionally-compared parts of his own body about which he is equally confused.

[Noel] Leader, [co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care,] who went with the father and son to file a complaint with the Internal Affairs Bureau, pointed out that disorderly conduct was the sole charge against Lombard.

"The mere fact that he was hit with a Taser four times," Leader said, "and there's no resisting arrest charge, no criminal possession of a weapons charge - it's evident to me that this incident did not justify use of a stun gun."

An amazing number of them don't. Far, far too many. Tasers have become (if they were not always) exactly what I predicted from the start they would be: Weapons not of last resort save guns, but of first resort, weapons used not for self-protection but for securing passive obedience, weapons of control and cruelty that express not a cop's concern for their safety but their inability to control their own frustration. They should be banned.

Footnote: Perhaps an unnecessary one since this seems to be getting spammed into comments on this, but under the heading Frontiers of Free Enterprise comes a website (to which I will not link) that the day after the incident at the University of Florida was hawking "shirts, hats, buttons, stickers and more" reading "Don't Tase Me, Bro'" and "What Did I Do?"

Shocking science news

To protect and to serve, to protect and to serve, just keep repeating it, over and over. Maybe you'll believe it in spite of it all, such as this from AP for July 1:

RoboCops and robot soldiers got a little closer to reality Thursday as a maker of floor-cleaning automatons teamed up with a stun-gun manufacturer to arm track-wheeled 'bots for the police and the Pentagon.

By adding Tasers to robots it already makes for the military, iRobot Corp. says it hopes to give soldiers and law enforcement a defensive, non-lethal tool.

Yep, it's a robot armed with a taser. They still have to be guided by a human, but it makes the use of tasers one step more a standard procedure, one step easier, as now the shooter doesn't even have to be anywhere near the victim in order to deliver a 50,000 volt shock - repeatedly, if they so desire.

It's not even the first example: A rival company already makes a track-wheeled robot that can be fitted with a taser with a laser-dot aim.

John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org is concerned that it's a step on the road to a time when autonomous robots would decide on their own when to use force, even lethal force. Admittedly, it's hard to be reassured on that score when a company executive says "Right now, we have no plans to take any robot with a lethal-weapon approach to the market," emphasis of course added, but my real concern remains what it has been since the beginning, that instead of how they were pitched, as a next-to-last alternative to lethal force, tasers would become a first alternative, a convenience, a way not to avoid violence but to "secure compliance," i.e., enforce meek submission to orders.

I maintain that the history bears that out. I've noted numerous cases before, and here's another, this one from May and found via Left End of the Dial:

Waxahachie [Texas] resident Allen Nelms says a call to 911 to get medical attention for his diabetic seizure got him Tasered by police instead.

He said he still has no answer as to why police broke down his door with their guns drawn before shooting him multiple times with a Taser as he lay in bed.

Nelms, 52, is not only diabetic, he's partially disabled and has rheumatoid arthritis. Early in the morning of April 28, he was having a diabetic seizure, prompting his live-in love, Josie Edwards, to call 911 for paramedics. Instead, a police officer arrived, asked what was going on, and called for backup.

A half-dozen cops arrived, kicked in the couple's front door and with guns drawn stormed the bedroom where Nelms was lying in bed. They screamed at him to get on the floor, ignored his pleas that he had called for medical help, not the police, shot him at least three times with tasers, and handcuffed him, relenting only when paramedics intervened as the cops went to pull the taser barbs out of him.

In her statement, Edwards, who has Lou Gehrig’s disease and is on oxygen, said the cops were "laughing." They also demanded to know what she was doing there and upon being told she lived there, they wanted to know

about what time Nelms came home and if he was drunk or on drugs, if he ever got into fights or if he had hit her.

Nelms said he'd never before had a problem with calling for paramedics and had no history of violence during seizures. After he was checked over, the police and paramedics left. No charges were filed.

Nelms and Edwards filed a complaint, which resulted in a bored one-paragraph response five days later that claimed an internal investigation had determined that - wow, as much of a shock as the taser hits - the cops had acted properly.

Footnote: The case isn't over yet; local attorney Rodney Ramsey has filed notice with the city on Nelms’ behalf to preserve all documentation and evidence relating to the incident.

“I don’t care if I make a dime on this case. I don’t care if this costs me money,” he said. “I want to know what policy says you can kick somebody’s door down and Taser them for asking for medical help. This is not going to happen in this town anymore.”

Ramsey said he wants the names of the officers involved in the incident and that he will renew his efforts to see a citizens review board of police established in the city....

Footnote two: Another real shocker: Nelms is black. Mister Injustice Roberts, any comments?

Now, this is a shock

This item is from over a month ago, from an October 1 AP story, in fact, but I thought it important enough to bring up even after this extended time.

Phoenix - Taser International Inc. has voluntarily changed some of its broad safety claims and limited its use of the word "non-lethal" in an effort to appease Arizona officials concerned about possibly misleading marketing, officials said Wednesday.

The move by the nation's largest maker of stun guns comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission investigates the company and as the Arizona Attorney General's Office conducts its own inquiry into safety claims. ...

In January, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said his office was probing claims Taser has made about safety studies on its products.

The "company officials," it seems, must have been employing some new meaning of the word "voluntarily" of which I've previously been unaware. But to continue:

According to Taser and the Attorney General's Office, the stun gun maker submitted a list of language changes the company has already made, including an 18-point "product warning."

Among the changes, Taser explains that it uses the term non-lethal as defined by the Department of Defense - which doesn't mean the weapon can't cause death, but that it's not intended to be fatal.

Other changes include substituting the phrase "leave no lasting after effects" to "are more effective and safer than other use-of-force options." ...

Amnesty International has compiled a list of more than 100 people the group says have died after being shocked in scuffles with lawmen.

Taser maintains that no deaths have been directly caused by the weapon alone.

That last statement is significant because it is a major step-down for the company, which previously insisted the weapon was innocent in all such cases. This statement, however, admits both that it could be an indirect cause of death and that it could be a direct contributing factor.

Meanwhile, the SEC is

conducting an expanded official investigation of claims Taser has made about safety studies; an end-of-year sale analysts have questioned because it appeared to inflate sales to meet annual projections; and the possibility that outsiders acquired internal company information to manipulate the stock price.

I've said all along about Tasers that they are dangerous weapons. In some ways they are more dangerous than guns in police hands. Not because they are inherently more deadly - they are not - but precisely because their supposed safety would lead them to be used almost casually, as a convenience, a method of enforcing dominance without effort, employed not only in situations where potentially deadly force would otherwise be used, but even in cases where little or no force would otherwise be used. Which is exactly what has happened.

As far as I'm concerned, the suckers should be banned and the sooner Taser Inc. is run to ground, the better.

What the hell?

Updated Is this another step down the dark ladder?

Pittsburgh (AP, August 20) - Two women protesting the war in Iraq were taken to a hospital Saturday after police broke up an unauthorized march involving about five dozen people on a busy one-way street near an Army recruiting station.

David Meieran, who helped organize the protest, accused police of "inappropriate and excessive force."

Sgt. Clint Winkler, a supervisor on duty, told The Associated Press that one woman who would not leave was subdued with a Taser. He also confirmed that a police dog bit another woman on the leg when she refused police orders to disperse.

Both women and a man involved in the march were arrested, Winkler said.

"They were told to disperse, peacefully disperse, and failed to do so, so we started down the sidewalk - officers in front, K-9's behind us, and started pushing the crowd down the sidewalk," Winkler said. He said the march broke up after the arrests.

Tasered? Police dogs? "Unauthorized march?"

What the hell is going on here? Now, this AP report is all I've found on this, meaning I have to admit there could be more to it, but based on what's here, this was not "inappropriate and excessive force," it was criminal abuse, outrageous, and unconscionable.

For one thing, for over a year I've been warning that the use of tasers, sold on the basis that they offer an alternative to lethal force and aggressively promoted as "safe" and "harmless,"

will become routine, that they will not be seen as weapons of protection and necessity but of control and convenience.

And what do we have here but exactly that? A woman tasered for what? For "refusing to leave?" What the hell? Did she attack a cop? Did she threaten anyone? The cops themselves don't say that. It was because she "refused to leave." Obey or suffer!

Siccing a police dog on a woman for "refusing to disperse?" What the hell? What is this, Bull Connor's Birmingham? Are these cops auditioning for the next Abu Ghraib?

"Unauthorized march?" What the hell? Hey, you lamebrain twerps, you ignorant jackasses, you Constitutional cretins - marches which follow traffic rules and do not deny the use of public facilities to others come under "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" and do not need your flippin' permission! I don't give a flying damn if it was a "busy" street or a "one-way" street or any of the rest of it.

Now, again, I don't know for certain because the article doesn't have all the necessary details, but the police official did say the cops "started pushing the crowd down the sidewalk" - down, not onto - which seems to me a pretty damned good hint that the march was on the sidewalk, not in the street, and so was not blocking traffic.

Municipalities can impose "reasonable time and place restrictions" on demonstrations without running afoul of the Constitution - but the purpose of that authority is to insure that others are not unreasonably denied access to public facilities (including sidewalks). It is not a means for them to make blanket demands for permits for any and all public gatherings; otherwise they could insist that even a single protestor or a single person handing out leaflets could be required to get official permission before acting. It is to regulate access to be fair to all - and therefore any assembly which does not hinder the ability of others to use that public facility should not need any "authorization."

But Pittsburgh, it seems, has a history of trying to use administrative claims to limit, control, and even prevent public protest. Apparently when that doesn't work, officials are prepared to turn violent. They should all be in the dock. Scum.

Updated to note that thanks to Tim and Harry in comments, there is some more information about what happened; check there for the links. It seems that, interestingly enough, the march did go into the street and when it moved up onto the sidewalk at the recruiting station, it did pretty well block the sidewalk - but all that occurred with "limited police interference." The trouble started when a Fox cameraman got his equipment into the face of one protester and when they objected, a "minor confrontation" developed which lead to the cameraman "screaming" at the cops to arrest the protestor - at which point, hell broke loose with cops chasing protestors, hitting them, and using other such routine crowd control tools as pepper spray, tasers, and police dogs. One video at the site clearly shows a cop walking up to a woman already held on the ground and tasering her. It also develops that the woman who was bit was bit on the back of the leg; i.e., she was moving away from police when it happened.

One sidebar is that it seems a number of the protestors were wearing masks, something supposedly done, at least according to some at other actions, to express solidarity with Palestinian militants but which in my opinion is merely a pointless affectation. Based on reports at the link, however, it seems that police focused their assault on precisely those members of the group. Which suggests to me that the cops were afraid of them, saw them as threatening (or, perhaps more precisely, as more threatening than the others). The old line about how "paranoia strikes deep" works both ways.

Be that as it may, none of this additional information has altered my opinion: scum.

Update to the update: As of Sunday evening, all those arrested had been released in good health.

The shocking truth

Every time there is an incident involving an injury caused by a Taser, the company vociferously denies any connection between its oh so safe device and its results. No matter what happens, it's always someone or something else's fault. But the cases keep trickling in. The Indianapolis Star for last Friday reported that

[a] Taser stun gun used on an Indiana man by a Chicago police officer this year caused the 54-year-old man's death, though drug use was also a contributing factor, the Cook County medical examiner's office said.

Ronald Hasse received a five-second electrical burst from the Taser, followed by a 57-second charge, Dr. Scott Denton, a deputy medical examiner, said Thursday.

A 57-second charge? A 57-second charge? That's not "stunning" someone, that's not "subduing" someone, that borders on, if it doesn't cross the line right over into, outright torture.

Taser International jumped on the autopsy's conclusion that Hasse had an extremely high level of methamphetamines in his blood; a company PR flack said he was "bewildered" that the drugs weren't listed as the cause of death. But

[t]he drug probably would not have killed Hasse without getting "pushed over the edge" by the stun gun jolts, Denton said.

And the simple fact is that despite the high level of speed, Hasse didn't die until he was shocked.

Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline stopped the distribution of an additional 200 Tasers after Hasse died. He did not halt the use of the weapons by police, however. ...

Meanwhile, officials in the suburban Chicago community of Dolton initiated a federal class action lawsuit alleging Taser misled them with campaigns emphasizing the stun gun's safety.

The lawsuit filed in Chicago last week contends the device has never been "adequately or independently tested" and has been involved in deaths around the nation.

The village wants a refund of the $8,572 it spend on the Tasers, the lawsuit says.

Good for them and let's hope they are able to carry this through to victory.

Stunning developments

The police department of Merrillville, Indiana,

[f]aced with growing liability risks, ... has decided to stop using its stun guns on combative suspects[, says the Indianapolis Star for Tuesday].

Police Chief Nick Bravos said the department chose to get rid of its 12 Taser guns. Instead, its officers will use pepper when faced with out-of-control suspects. ...

To prevent any person from being endangered by the stun guns' electrical shocks, Bravos said he decided the department could do without them.

Previous posts about tasers have come on March 7, 2004, July 26, 2004, November 14, 2004, January 15, 2005, January 21, 2005, and April 20, 2005.

Footnote: Chief Bravos also said he'd made use of double-locked handcuffs mandatory. Double-locking prevents the tendency of the cuffs to continually tighten, leading to injury. The motive may have been to avoid liability suits, but still, I'd call it a good thing.

It's for your own good - really

The militarization of local police forces continues apace. As reported in the April 30 issue of New Scientist magazine,

the research arm of the US justice department, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is funding research into three ... devices, all of which are intended to be used by the nation's police forces to bring down suspects and control crowds.

One is a radio-frequency weapon apparently similar to one made for the Marines, designed to cause severe pain at a range of about 2000 feet (600 meters) by heating skin with a 95-gigahertz microwave beam. (Presumably, the police one, designed to be portable, would have a more limited range.)

Another is described by NIJ as a semiconductor laser "man-portable heat compliance weapon" for "force protection, crowd control, and access denial." Little is known of this one because, the magazine says, "there is no known weapon, military or otherwise, that appears to work this way."

Further clues to the nature of these two devices can be gleaned from a November 2004 report produced by the NIJ's research division. In it, Joe Cecconi of the NIJ described a possible directed-energy prototype weapon as being shotgun-sized, producing an area of intense heat 15 centimetres in diameter at a range of 16 metres, with a magazine capable of delivering 12 shots each of less than a second.

Finally, there's a laser which stuns the victim by producing what's being called a "plasma flash bang" at the point of impact; again, it's a weapon similar to one designed for the Marines, this one called the Pulsed Energy Projectile system.

New Scientist notes that NIJ has provided so little information about these weapons that it's impossible to judge their effects or their safety. But additional concerns have already been raised about them: Neil Davison of the Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project at the University of Bradford, UK, notes that it's quite possible that such weapons, despite the intense pain they may cause,

may not leave any identifiable traces, [so] allegations of abuse will be hard to prove.

He also notes there has long been a demand for a capability to turn the power output of these weapons up or down. "Some of these weapons may have a 'lethal' setting," he warns.

Set your phasers to kill.

One of my biggest and oft-expressed concerns about such "less lethal" weapons (the preferred term now that the description "non-lethal" has proven bogus), one that is still rarely addressed but is beginning to gain traction, is that they will become weapons of convenience rather than of necessity - as tasers already have. That is, they will be used not only in situations where potentially lethal force otherwise would have been used but in situations where no force otherwise would have been used. They will simply become a quick and easy way to "enforce compliance" - that is, to obtain meek submission to authority. And the potential for control not only of "suspects" but of others, particularly of demonstrators and other dissidents behaving in ways disapproved by authority, is both obvious and ominous.

Frontiers of free enterprise

Marketing of tasers - the gizmos that deliver a paralyzing, 50,000-volt shock to the victim - is expanding. What's being expanded, however, is not so much the marketing as the market. From CBS News in Chicago on Monday:

Taser stun guns are back in the news again. Despite the scores of injuries and deaths associated with the police taser, Taser International, the leading manufacturer of tasers, is now aggressively targeting a new audience and you might be surprised to learn that it's you.

In a promotional taser video, an eerie voice tells potential taser buyers why the X26C is the weapon for them - "It's the most powerful non-lethal weapon ever developed."

Taser International believes the future of the high-tech weapon lies in the millions of citizens who want to protect their homes and families but don't want to buy a firearm.

Yes, that's right, soon you, too, can protect your home! yourself! your family! with the latest thing in high-tech crime deterrence. What's more, there is no background check involved and no training is required! Does that concern you? Don't worry! Taser International is right there in its concern for safety, you betcha: Purchasers of the $1,000 devices are offered one hour of personal instruction and a DVD training video. Both are, of course, entirely voluntary.

I've written about tasers and the questions raised about and by them several times before. And the questions continue to pile up:

- Last fall, Amnesty International, which opposes tasers, issued a report documenting nearly 100 deaths in the US alone since June 2001 from police use of this "non-lethal" weapon. Recently, AI upped that number to 103. (The version sold to police packs more of a wallop and has a longer range than the model intended for general public sale.)

- On Wednesday, AP reported on the case of a 110-pound woman who was tasered nine times in the course of being arrested in a dispute over her stay at a motel in Florida.

- Also on Wednesday, local news told of an Orlando, Florida police officer being charged with misdemeanor battery for tasering a suspect who was tied and handcuffed to a hospital bed in order to force him to give a urine sample.

- Yet again in Florida (Is there a pattern developing here?), on Tuesday a Santa Rosa County sheriff's deputy resigned to avoid being fired for excessive use of force in an incident from August: After a car chase, the suspect pulled over and put both his hands out of his car window, indicating surrender. The deputy walked up to the car and tasered him. He was the second Florida cop to quit under threat of being fired for abusive use of a taser in the last month.

One of the fears critics have about tasers is that, as I've argued previously, they encourage the use of a weapon and the infliction of pain not only in situations where lethal violence otherwise might have been employed but also in situations where no violence otherwise might have been employed. They become weapons of convenience rather than protection. The experiences in Florida seem to confirm precisely those fears.

Footnote: One wonders if this, from Reuters for Wednesday, had anything to do with the decision to broaden the market:

Taser announced Jan. 6 that the SEC was investigating the company over statements about the safety of its stun guns and a distribution deal struck in December 2004.

That deal increased suspicions because it happened late in the fourth quarter and raised questions about when Taser planned to book revenue from the agreement.

Last year Taser was among the hottest stocks on the market. On a split-adjusted basis, Taser shares shot up more than 375 percent, hitting $33.45 Dec. 30.

Ever since news of the SEC investigation, the stock has been on a steady decline. Taser shares closed down 3.3 percent to $7.64 Wednesday.

That's a 77% decline in stock price in less than four months and puts it below where it was before last year's soar. That's not good news. Well, yeah, it is good news. Just not for them.