Tuesday, April 1, 2008
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Exposing how tasers, when abused, can become a high tech torture instrument. Asking the question should the penalty for resisting arrest be death?
Available for conversations around tasering, speaking engagements, panel discussions, interviews, academic discussion groups and other events related to tasering policy development.
No federal agency keeps track of injuries or deaths related to Taser usage. Amnesty International says since 2001 it has registered 270 "Taser-related deaths," or incidents in which a Taser was used prior to a suspect's death "but not deemed the primary cause of death by a coroner or medical examiner."
The name stands for the Thomas A Swift Electric Rifle, an allusion to the weapon carried by the hero of early 20th century science fiction young adult novels.
Tasers fire two barbs (with quarter-inch fishhooks on the end) capable of producing 50,000-volt pulses into the targets' central nervous system.
The shock frazzles the body's electric signals, contracting muscles and incapacitating the target.
Aimed by a laser sight, the two probes have a range of 21 feet and are tethered to the gun by lightly insulated wire. Both need to strike skin or clothing to be effective.
Fabric two inches thick or more, though, can render the jolt ineffective.
Tasers can also be used without the probes, by placing the guns end directly onto a suspect's skin, and firing.
The weapons also have small microprocessors inside them that record every time an office shoots them, and how long the shocks lasted.
As the manufacturer has produced lighter and smaller pistol-shaped stun guns in recent years, police departments have purchased Tasers with increased frequency.
1 comments:
Heads up Francis and AAPP!
We've got another one!
http://capitaljournal.cjonline.com/stories/040208/loc_264158406.shtml
In this case, the man was having a medical condition. The deputies tasered him anyway and he died.
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