HARPOONED AND ZAPPED TO DEATH BY TASER

On August 1, police officers in the small Wyoming town of Glenrock tasered a 72-year-old man who was driving his antique tractor in an annual parade. He was zapped in a dispute over where to end the parade route. The incident nearly erupted into a riot as outraged parade spectators rushed to the old man's defense.

Tasers were introduced into the police service to reduce the number of incidents in which the police resorted to deadly gunfire. The manufacturers of Tasers have convinced police administrators and line officers alike that these weapons are "non-lethal." However, in far too many instances that has not been the case.

In browsing the internet, I have found an alarming number of incidents in which the police use of Tasers resulted in death. The ages of those who were harpooned and zapped to death ranged from the late teens into the twilight years.

Statistics are hard to come by, but from 2001 through 2005 there were 152 deaths of people tasered by the police. 61 people died in 2005 after being zapped by police Tasers, a 27 percent increase from the 48 Taser-related deaths in 2004.

A recent study by University of California at San Francisco cardiologists Byron Lee and Zian Tseng of data provided by law enforcement agencies from 50 cities found the number of in-custody deaths went up six-fold in the first year a police agency started using Tasers. They found that the harpoon-like darts shot out by Tasers emit 50,000 volt pulses several times per second. Those electrical pulses can actually overtake the heart and cause a heart rate that’s 250 to 300 beats per minute.

Lee and Tseng believe officers may be aiming too close to the heart. Also, I believe that officers may be triggering the Tasers too long so that those electrical pulses will continue to be emitted into a person after he has been downed.

I have questioned the use of Tasers in a couple of previous blogs. That angered some of my police friends. I know that most of the attacks against the use of Tasers are made by anti-police groups, groups that strongly oppose the use of just about any kind of force by law enforcement. But I am not anti-police and I believe that our law enforcement officers must be allowed to use whatever reasonable force is necessary in order to do their job, including deadly force.

I wonder just how many police gunfire deaths have been averted by the use of Tasers? I suspect very few, because when push comes to shove, an officer will rightfully resort to the use of deadly force whenever his life or the life of someone else is in immediate jeopardy. Tasers are used mostly to subdue an unruly subject, rather than in a life-threatening situation. Some cops have used Tasers simply because they were pissed off .

The trouble with Tasers is that they’re too easy to use. Most cops, while they may draw their guns in the face of a threat, are hesitant to resort to deadly force. Police officers do not enjoy killing anyone unless, of course, that person is a cop killer. Because they have been convinced by the Taser manufacturers that these weapons are non-lethal and safe, they do not hesitate to use them. Furthermore, a number of highly publicized incidents indicate that Tasers have too often been misused.

The number of people killed by police gunfire far exceeds the number killed by Tasers. But you can bet that in almost all of those shootings an officer's life or the life of a citizen was in imminent danger and, in those instances, Tasers could not have served as a viable alternative to the use of firearms. Tasers do, however, reduce the number of bumps and bruises inflicted on cops by non-life threatening combative arrestees.

Considering the number of Taser-related deaths, I think it’s time to seriously re-examine the use of these "non-lethal" weapons. Do Tasers really prevent police officers from killing people with their guns? I don’t think so. And if they don’t really cut down on the number of killings by police gunfire, isn’t it time to throw these zappers into the trash heap alongside the discarded lead gloves and wooden night-sticks?