Nezumi: If they're going to take the possibility into account, then they're going to. But if something happens due to a condition they have no reasonable and accurate way of knowing about, then there should be no fault found. Someone shouting "I have a heart condition" doesn't really count in to my mind... if it meant not getting tazered, I can see a lot of people shouting it while trying to get away.

And quite frankly, I find most humankind to be rather idiotic. Especially when it comes to "public perception" being more important than reason. That just bugs me. Especially when it would result in someone getting injured or killed (granny pulls a stiletto, cop hesitates, someone dies)

The number of Taser related fatalities is supposedly what... 120?

How many people (including police officers) have died as a result of going hands-on with suspects? Notwithstanding the possibility of the officer's weapon being taken away, just trying to wrestle someone to the ground (if they have, say, a medical condition) can end up with that person getting killed. Not to mention the occasional fatality from accidental blows to the head (be they from a baton or the concrete).

In order for 120 dead people to have any statistical meaning at all, you need to compare those 120 dead people to the total number of Taser encounters to get a fatality rate. In order for that statistic to be at all useful, you should compare it to the fatality rate for situations where the officer did something other than deploy a Taser. They've been around since 1969, and only managed to kill 120 people so far?

I'm not saying the Tasers can't kill someone... just that fatalities are probably a lot less likely when a Taser is used instead of most of the other solutions a policeman has on hand.

The heart condition reared its ugly head here. We've had 4 deaths in Omaha during the 1st 18 months that tasers have been allowed to be used on the force. The 1st was due to a malfunction of the equipment -- It zapped both the officer & the intended target and did not stop pulsing until the battery was drained. The target was the one that died. The repeated pulses induced a GM seizure, he had Temperal Lobe Epilepsy. The autopsy says he beat his head in on the steel stairs where he & the officer were laying.
The second is still out for discussion -- No apparent cause of death. The 51 year old lady died instantly when she was hit with the taser dart, it didn't even discharge.
Number 3 died when his pacemaker toasted -- that incident was caught on patrol car cams from 2 cruisers, and the officer has been dismissed from the force.
The 4th death occured when a 67 year old man, with alzheimers, became agitated. He was stopped on an Amber Alert from the treatment center he was a resident at. The alert was poorly worded by 911 dispatchers, and the officers at the scene thought he was the perp. instead of the victim. He had a ruptured heart.

So far, 3 of the cases have been ruled "operator error" (1, 3, & 4) and The state has required a S.O.P. be established under strict guidelines & retraining of all officers authorized to carry tasers. This ruling came from the state attorney general's office in response to the legislature considering a ban on their use.

1 is not operator error, it's clearly mechanical malfunction.

2 is a "wtf" scenario. It could just as easily have been a bludgeoning from a nightstick, or even the shock of being restrained, if she fell dead from the dart.

3 - how can a policeman be expected to know the old man had a pacemaker? Or were there other improper actions going on that we don't know about?

4 - this one falls on the head of the dispatchers. The police were doing what they thought they were supposed to, and when you get an Alzheimer's patient outside of the joint, they can very easily look like "Mrs. Bitchy at the traffic stop".

And about Mrs. Bitchy? Tasering her was the right thing to do. She was uncooperative and still behind the wheel of an active automobile. She was beligerant and shouting at the officers, and refusing to cooperate. Had the officers drawn their firearms, it would have been overly excessive force. The confines of the car prevent effective bludgeoning of her with the billy club - an act which in any event would have left a far greater lasting physical reminder of why you don't mouth off at the cops. (Incidently perhaps providing her with greater Pavlonian training, but sadly there was the space issue.)

If the cop had reached in to grab her and physically remove her from the vehicle, she could have reached for a weapon, or she could have stepped on the gas, which could easily have resulted in the cop falling under her vehicle and being gravely injured or killed.

The tazer was clearly the correct method to employ at the time.

I have to chime in...

Not every police department trains it's officers in the proper use of tasers, and many of them do not have clear guidelines on when they should be used.

Tasers do not have a limit on the "tase" time. Most of the complaints about their use stem from officers using jolts of more than 3 to 5 seconds, which is what the limit is supposed to be. Tasers record usage, and some incidents have tase times of over 10 seconds.

Nothing is "non-lethal". I can kill you with a washcloth or a ping-pong ball if I want to. Taser is supposed to be re-wording their advertising.

Any deaths resulting from Taser use stem from a combination of the following, not just one condition:
Physical health
Lack of training
Abuse of the situation (i.e. Tasering someone because they won't stand up)
Abuse of the weapon

Deaths are rare, and used properly a Taser saves more lives than it takes. People die from Mace and pepper spray, too, and for the same reasons I've listed for the Taser. All in all, if used properly and appropriately, the number of deaths would be minimal and certainly acceptable given the alternatives.

Just my 2 nuyen, for what it's worth.