legalised torture and murder

[unusualmusic_lj_archive]

Ladies and gentlemen, tasers KILL. And they are TORTURE. Taser Int'l is LYING. Police should not be running around with these things

Amnesty International has just published a report showing that, since 2001, 334 people have died in the US during or just after Tasering. Jarrel Gray was a partially deaf 20-year-old black man involved in an argument in the street in Frederick County, Maryland, when the police approached him and ordered him to lie on the ground. He didn't hear them – so they Tasered him. As he lay paralysed on the ground, they told him to show his hands. He couldn't obey. They Tasered him again. Jarrel died in hospital two hours later. Ryan Rich was a 33-year-old medical doctor who had an epileptic seizure while driving his car on a Nevada highway. He crashed into the side of the road. The police smashed a window to get into the car and Ryan woke up, startled. The police officer reacted by Tasering him repeatedly. Only when they were handcuffing him did they notice he was turning blue. He was dead before he got to hospital. The coroner noted dryly that the Taser "probably contributed" to his death. Taser International's brochures claim their weapons have "no after-effects."

There may, in fact, be even more deaths than are recorded. Taser International has responded to medical examiners saying their weapons kill not by changing their weapons, but by suing the medical examiners. After the chief medical examiner of Summit Country, Ohio, ruled that Tasering caused the death of three young men, they sued her, and she was forced to remove the conclusions from her reports. The president of the National Association of Medical Examiners says Taser International's behaviour is "dangerously close to intimidation".MORE

See also:

Excessive force

Capital Offense


Mission Creep


Taser company sues medical examiners who dare to note tasers as the cause of death, and bribes other coroners as well


Taser Incident of the day


Taser Tort

Comments

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

The thing I love most about the wilder and wilder misuse of tasers by US police is how clearly it counters one of conservative Americans' favorite myths about our cops: that they're burlier and harder and have way harder jobs than any other cops anywhere. And that's why they need all this weaponry to do that job.

Which, obviously, is why they've all lately gone on a "Tase the six-year-old/old lady/epileptic/accident victim who's acting up and then figure out the situation" rampage, lately. What a bunch of weenies, seriously.

I talked to my Fox News Republican dad after a particularly outrageous episode back in Portland several years ago. Some cops pulled a known dealer over, when they walked up on his drivers' side, he was eating the drugs, so they shot him a bunch of times. Then one of the cops tasered him until the battery ran out, basically - this took a couple of minutes and was witnessed and recorded by a street full of witnesses. The victim died without ever removing his seat belt, never mind menacing the officers in any sense.

Naturally, no fault whatsover on the part of the cops.

So anyway, my dad asked me what I thought about that, as it had happened a few blocks from where I lived, and I said I thought it was total bullshit. He surprised me a little by agreeing. He started talking about his time as a Lt. in charge of MPs in Saigon during the war, and how they were just *not allowed to shoot people.* They went out every night and arrested soldiers, crazy on a few days reprieve from war and generally drunk and stoned out of their minds, many of them armed whether they were supposed to be or not. "We had to break a few arms and wrists," my dad said, "But we never shot one of them. We would have faced a total shitstorm if we ever did."

[hematopoetic.livejournal.com]

AAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH