| Issue #40, January 12, 2007 |
DEADLY TASERS NOW TO BE SOLD IN CHIC COLORS
By Dan Rattiner
Two years ago here on eastern Long Island, two local people died after being hit by taser weapons. One of them, David Glowczenski, 35, lived in Southampton. The other, John Cox, 39, lived in Ronkonkoma. Both were mentally ill people successfully living in the area, supported by family and friends and occasional visits from medical people. Both of them, one in February and the other in June, became agitated and out of control one day and needed to be subdued. The police arrived, had trouble with them, tasered them repeatedly — one four times the other nine — and soon thereafter, they both died. The family of David Glowczenski has sued local authorities for what happened, asking for more than a hundred million dollars for his death.
As a result of these accidents, I did some research about tasers. Many of our New York police departments have them and they are used, or are supposed to be used, for only 1 to 4 second shots, after which time the victim should be fully disabled for about 30 seconds, (although if agitated and out of their minds, they may have to have repeated taser treatments to obtain the desired effects. The manual says no more than four.)
Test results put out by the manufacturer and the government have shown that tasers are perfectly safe to use, and have been used for several years by many police departments successfully, including those of Suffolk County and Southampton Town, which were the police departments involved with the deaths two years ago. When used properly, they work fine.
But then I thought that perhaps something in the research might have been overlooked. What I found was that the research done by the manufacturer was at a lab at the University of California with pigs, which have hearts very much like human hearts. Pigs suffering repeated bouts of tasers were unharmed by the shock and therefore tasers were approved for the police to use on humans. But then I found that scientists at the University of Wisconsin discovered flaws in the research methods. The pig and human hearts may have been the same. But the chest wall of a pig that protects the heart is ten times thicker than a human chest wall. Could that possibly matter?
What they found, in a study led by a Dr. John G. Webster, was that if you surgically reduce the chest wall of a pig down to the thickness of a human chest wall, you had very dangerous results. Human chest walls are between .4 and 2.0 inches thick. When tasers were fired into the chest wall of a pig greater than .7 inches from the heart, nothing went wrong. But when it was fired into a chest wall between .4 and .7 thick, the pig had a heart attack every time, and almost every time died of it. You do not want to fire a taser into the chest wall of a human being because you do not know the thickness of the chest wall ahead of time.
Last week, at a press conference in Las Vegas, the manufacturer of the taser introduced a new version of it called the Taser C2. It is designed to have the look and feel of a valued gift, something you might give a person for his birthday. It will shortly be on the market at stores across the land.
The older models were in the shape of a gun and were black and fired darts delivering 50,000 volts of electricity. This new one looks like an electric razor, is cute and sassy and comes in a variety of colors including pink. It also fires 50,000 volts of electricity. You can be 20 feet away, and the darts still go out. The victim still gets the full effect.
At the present time, it is against the law for a civilian to buy or use a taser in seven of the fifty states, one of which is New York. But they can be bought in Connecticut and 32 other states.
When you buy it — for about $350 — you will be given an instruction video and users manual. You also have to pass a background check to be able to own one, a process you can go through at the checkout counter in about a minute.
Over the weekend, as Taser International rolled out its new model, two more people in the United States died from being tasered. One was a mentally ill man in Nashville who was throwing musical instruments out of the back of a truck. The other was a man in the back of a police car in Fort Pierce, Florida who got wild and out of control. Amnesty International has recorded more than 220 deaths from Taser shots in the last three years.
Well, the marketplace is calling for Tasers for the shoppers and what the shoppers want the shoppers get. That’s what America is all about, n’est pas?
Or to put it another way, on the stock market I rate Taser International a BUY for one year, but then I advise selling it short.
Whatever happened to pepper spray or mace? Whatever happened to big grappling nets the police used for unruly citizens up until tasers arrived on the scene about ten years ago?
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