[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: A well-argued blog from Albuquerque points to problems of “single-bidding” for the TASER on-body-cameras, the way the City has been signed into a five-year contract – the cost of the cameras is a minor element ion the $1.9 million contract – the scandalous links between police chief and TASER International and serious […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: The Attorney General is considering whether to review and ease New Jersey’s strict regulations governing the use of stun guns by police officers. New Jersey was the last state in the country to approve the use of stun guns. Last year cheaper tasers were withdrawn for inadequate reliability. Regulations allow police […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: A very brief report: Taser unable to subdue a suspect – A video captures the fatal Nov. 4 shooting of suspect, Michael Blair, holding a knife after officers deploy a TASER multiple times.]] Houston Chronicle, by Mike Glenn ROSENBERG, Texas — A video released Wednesday shows the last few minutes in the life […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : Taser International admits to problems of reliability in its products, according to this post. A $10,000 piece of equipment claims to tell police if their Tasers are working right. The Aegis “Axeos” – a simple-looking spectrum analyzer that analyses waveforms – will read a Taser’s peak current, voltage and pulses per second. […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : The Hamilton Police Services Board is asking for a $1-million investment in new tasers from the City Council. But which tasers? The X26 (2003 technology) or the X26P, which TASER says is greatly superior but which is not yet tested for Canadian use? Or the more expensive, double-barreled X2? TASER claims […]
An unnamed man, armed with a bat and a knife, was tasered on 29 August, but the taser was ineffective. He was then shot and died in hospital of his wounds.
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : A knife-wielding homeless man was fatally tasered on June 10 after lunging at a Lancaster police officer. But the results of taser use are far from clear. Two cases: the Taser’s barb hit a fleeing homeless man, but he pulled it out and continued to run. A second time, the barb […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS : This report is of interest as showing the need to replacve the taser inventory in a California city: Taser life expectancy is approximately 5 years. Over the past 2 years, many of the current inventory tasers have encountered internal software malfunctions, possibly due to the exceeded service life. The cost to […]
[[Summary / Comments: Law enforcement agencies urged to adopt uniform policies that adhere to federal law and safety standards: “The patchwork of guidelines, training and practices in our state means that when, why and how tasers are used can vary not only by department, but also by officer. The lack of clarity and standards should […]
[[Summary / Comments: The British police clearly favour the taser: The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) here answers questions about tasers in the UK police, including the history of adoption and under-estimate of their potential dangers and their misuse, assurances of their reliability (each taser is quality-controled by the manufacturer …) and the intention […]
[[Summary / Comments : At issue here is the unreliability of the taser: six Burnaby RCMP officers to restrain a man after a Taser had no effect. A woman calls here boyfriend who calls the police when an unwanted man sprawls naked on her sofa. He was drunk: the officers Tasered him and it did […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: Our interest here is in the unreliability of the taser (X26): Police may gave been justified in using a Taser against a bare-chested man who was threatening a crowd with a hatchet, but when an officer tried to fire it, the weapon malfunctioned, and the officer pulled the trigger a further three […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: Another case of the taser not working: Limmie E. Varner, 46 was running away from a grocery store with stolen alcohol, police said. They shot multiple taser prongs but the taser prongs had no effect, reports said. The prongs stuck to his multiple layers of clothing but did not have contact with […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: A long self-serving post (copied from a pdf file) by an upstart taser competitor, Karbon Arms – that has actually taken over from Stringer, which TASER International successfully put out of business. The text accuses TASER International of cynically misleading the police on the X26’s safety, overcharging for its parts, attempting to […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: A Russian news site (RT.com) is covering the lawsuit brought by Colin Faby against TASER International, claiming he went into cardiac arrest as a result of being shot twice in the chest by a Taser in December 2007. The 17-yr-old was then handcuffed, went into cardiac arrest fir 30 minutes. He now […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: A case that raises serious questions about taser reliability, even if used “appropriately” … Police were called after several men were allegedly smoking marijuana in a parking lot. One man, police said, pointed a gun at his own head when they were frisking him. He was tasered, but this didn’t stop the […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: A taser used six times with fatal consequences against Bobby Louis Merrill is being tested: Was it defective? Is this the police passing the buck? Is the testing company going to do an adequate job? (At least Saginaw is not sending the stun0guns to TASER International which is the usual procedure.) Meanwhile […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENTS: The TruthNotTasers (TNT) blog titles this report “TASER – The Whole Story” – and police psychologist Mike Webster directly attacks numerous serious fault-lines in “taser science” and how police have been misled about tasers. We recommend reading the whole 3100-word text. A few phrases are in bold: these were highlined in our source. […]
[[Summary / Comments : The Taser X3 is a waste of money ! … The Department of Public Safety is scrapping 1,000 new X3 tasers bought in 2010 worth $1.6 million taxpayer dollars. A police spokesman says the X3 was way too big. “So much so that it interfered with their ability to get in […]
[[SUMMARY / COMMENT: An important admission that the life-cycle of tasers is, according to the manufacturer, 5 years. In other words, the majority of tasers in use in North America are quite possibly past the recommended “deployment lifecycle”. The Warren Police Department recently discontinued use of the stun guns, after finding that in 23% of […]