Police use stun gun on 6-year-old...

oh hush, thats discipline, like when i burn my kids with a soldering iron when they get out of line.

Spare the rod spoil the child!
 
more info

Taser safety claim questioned
Medical examiners connect stun gun to 5 deaths

Robert Anglen
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 18, 2004 12:00 AM

an Arizona Republic investigation has revealed that Taser's claims are based on autopsy reports the company never possessed.

For years, Taser officials cited these reports as proof that the stun guns never caused "injury or death to another human being." Now, officials acknowledge they never had those autopsy reports and didn't start collecting them until April.

The Republic's review of autopsies and interviews with medical examiners found Tasers have been linked to at least five deaths.

Medical examiners in three cases involving suspects who died in police custody cited Tasers as a cause or a contributing factor in the deaths. In two other cases, Tasers could not be ruled out as a cause of death.

These deaths raise questions about a weapon police routinely use on drunks, shoplifters, mentally ill people and others who refuse to obey commands.

The Republic's review of autopsies and interviews with medical examiners found Tasers have been linked to at least five deaths.

Medical examiners in three cases involving suspects who died in police custody cited Tasers as a cause or a contributing factor in the deaths. In two other cases, Tasers could not be ruled out as a cause of death.

These deaths raise questions about a weapon police routinely use on drunks, shoplifters, mentally ill people and others who refuse to obey commands.
Often, company officials point to a person's pre-existing conditions and insist the person would have died with or without being shocked by a Taser.

But relatives of those who have died in Taser-related incidents say the company rushes its defense, predicting the outcome of cases before investigations are finished.

Kelly Deitrich, whose brother, Raymond Siegler, died in February after being shot by police with a Taser in a Minneapolis group home for mentally ill people, said Taser's explanations are misleading.

"That is the polite way to say it," she says. "The other way to say it is they are full of you-know-what."


Taser safety claim questioned

Michael Chow/The Arizona Republic

Medical examiners connect stun gun to 5 deaths

Robert Anglen
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 18, 2004 12:00 AM


Thousands of police departments, including every major law enforcement agency in the Valley, buy Tasers on a claim that the electric stun guns will instantly take down suspects without inflicting harm.

That assertion of safety has generated record sales for Scottsdale's Taser International Inc., which markets its guns as alternatives to deadly force and says its goal is to arm every police officer in America.

But an Arizona Republic investigation has revealed that Taser's claims are based on autopsy reports the company never possessed.

For years, Taser officials cited these reports as proof that the stun guns never caused "injury or death to another human being." Now, officials acknowledge they never had those autopsy reports and didn't start collecting them until April.


• Claims safety based on pig, dog tests

.


The Republic's review of autopsies and interviews with medical examiners found Tasers have been linked to at least five deaths.

Medical examiners in three cases involving suspects who died in police custody cited Tasers as a cause or a contributing factor in the deaths. In two other cases, Tasers could not be ruled out as a cause of death.

These deaths raise questions about a weapon police routinely use on drunks, shoplifters, mentally ill people and others who refuse to obey commands.

When presented with cases linking Tasers to deaths, Smith says the medical examiners got it wrong and dismisses their reports.


Smith says his company's report presents the "big picture" of Taser-related deaths. He says it proves that Tasers are not to blame and that actual autopsies are not needed to summarize each case.

"I know in my heart what the truth is," Smith says. "Taser hasn't killed any of these people."


Often, company officials point to a person's pre-existing conditions and insist the person would have died with or without being shocked by a Taser.

But relatives of those who have died in Taser-related incidents say the company rushes its defense, predicting the outcome of cases before investigations are finished.

Kelly Deitrich, whose brother, Raymond Siegler, died in February after being shot by police with a Taser in a Minneapolis group home for mentally ill people, said Taser's explanations are misleading.

"That is the polite way to say it," she says. "The other way to say it is they are full of you-know-what."


Among those raising questions about Taser is the human rights group Amnesty International.

Amnesty says there is a pattern of deaths in the United States and Canada involving Tasers. It is asking law enforcement agencies to suspend purchases until more independent studies are performed.

"If a number of Taser-related deaths were attributed to 20 different things, that would be something else," he says. "But we see the same three causes."


Tasers linked to deaths
Medical examiners in different parts of the country have linked Tasers to at least five deaths.

The Republic, using computer searches, media accounts, police reports and Taser's own records, identified 44 cases in the United States and Canada of death following a police Taser strike from September 1999 to March 2004.

Siegler, who lives in Mesa, complains that the company fails to tell the whole story.

For example, in its report on Raymond Siegler's death, Taser writes in bold type that he died "about a week after he was hit by a Taser."

Siegler says his son actually "lay in a coma for a week until we turned off the life-support system."

Siegler says tests a day after the 40-year-old was shocked showed low brain-stem activity.

"He went into cardiac arrest after being shocked," he says.

and this is from the ARIZONA REPUBLIC.
 
Originally posted by TT/A1233
Give me a break!

You're suggesting hitting a kid's arm with a broom? Cops aren't trained to hit people with brooms....THINK THINK THINK:

LIABILITY!

Then you suggest pepper spray? You ever been hit with that stuff? Are you on crack?

Let me assure you a 6yr old threatening you and himself with an edged weapon (and has used that weapon on himself) isn't some sort of parlor game.

We must utilize our training and if we deviate from it must answer for the consequences of not using that training. IE....LAWSUITS. We're trained to use the Taser when confronted with a situation where your subject isn't responding to verbal commands. The after-effects of the Taser are usually completely gone after 15-30 seconds, no matter the subject's size. Pepper spray is at least 20 minutes and sometimes half a day.

Those officers did exactly as they were trained to do, no harm no foul. Can you imagine if they tried to forcibly remove that glass and he cut someone or himself. I can just see the attorney now:

"Officer, didn't you have a Taser stun gun with you? If so, why didn't you use it to incompaciate my client? Instead you chose to forcibly grab his arm using too much force resulting in his wrist being broken in 3 places?"

It's pretty obvious those on here criticizing the police haven't had any training in the use of these weapons, "The Force Continuum", civil liability and justifiable use of force and the law. Basically it sounds like clueless MMQB's.


I can assure you that had it been the cops kid with a piece of glass, he would have found another way. I myself have three children ages, 20, 18, and 13, and I can handle anyone of them with a piece of glass. These are suppose to be trained police officers, and yet they can't stop a six year old with a piece a glass, not a knife or a gun but a piece of glass. Your right they should have put that mad dog down. I think your the one on crack seeing that you brought it up?

Get a clue!!!!!!!!!
 
Originally posted by Pablo
are you kidding me, if it is indeed a black kid expect the aclu, johnny cochran, jesse jackson, and al sharpton to come out in force.

Yah... and John Kerry would be at a black church.. but alas, the election is over. Doubt we'll see that now. :)

***DISCLAIMER***

This was a joke, not intending to start ranting debates over Bush or Kerry

I'm Chris Wren, and I approved this message. :D

***DISCLAIMER***
 
Dont forget to beat your kids so they don't become glass weilding thugs. That way you can avoid having to bust a cap in they're azz!
 
Alledgedly tied to 5 deaths.

Does anyone think they'll ever find the perfect *weapon*.
Give it a break, the kid was off the charts and immediately admitted to a pch ward.

And nice to see the race card played.

Where's the parents?. The kid was 6 YO.

They're the ones to be held to blame, IMO. Or is everyone around here of the thought that parenting stops if the kid id feed?. Parenting used to be about responsibility. Now it seems often in some families, the parents are as responsibile as 3 YOs, IMO.

And again, nice seeing people leap to conclusions about an incident they only have clues that the Media have released.
So much for innnocent until proven quilty. Odd how some people are saying the cops are quilty without hearing their side. I guess due process is only for criminals.
 
Now after having read what this police officer could have done differently in a situation that nobody here has been in I have a few simple question:

Where were the parents of this poor helpless weak child swinging glass at himself and others?

Why is it that it is automatically assumed that the police must have done something wrong?

Why does a furious and obviousely dangerous child have more rights to not be harmed than anybody around it?

It seems to me that the police reacted according to their training and experience with harmfull situations. Now maybe some of you can find different ways for dealing with a six- year old in RETROSPECTIVE.

This child should have not been swinging glass at himself and others it is at simple as that. The child wasn't killed and not seriously harmed and will finally get the mental treatment that shoud have been awarded to him long before this inccident.
 
Thats whats so great about this country, you can voice your own opinion without fear. To all of you who disagree with my opinion, lets just agree to disagree. I'm done with this topic, respect to all. :)
 
Originally posted by bruce
*******
He was treated and taken to a hospital, where he was committed for psychiatric evaluation.
*******

If the kid was in a full rage, then yes, that level of force may have been necessary. Again, without being there, or having all the facts of the situation, passing judgment isn't fair.

I sure hope they bill the parents for all this.

IMO, for a 6 YO to get that out of control, would indicate the possibility of there being larger issues at home.

You hit the nail on the head !!:mad: If I pulled that crap I would have gotton the beatin of my life !! 6 years old !!! Give me a break !!
 
dammmm just read the whole post .... conclusion ???? like I said a good kick in his ass !!! don't care if he is black , white , green , yellow...welll you get my idea :p
 
Come back to reality!

Originally posted by Dillinger
I can assure you that had it been the cops kid with a piece of glass, he would have found another way. I myself have three children ages, 20, 18, and 13, and I can handle anyone of them with a piece of glass. These are suppose to be trained police officers, and yet they can't stop a six year old with a piece a glass, not a knife or a gun but a piece of glass. Your right they should have put that mad dog down. I think your the one on crack seeing that you brought it up?

Get a clue!!!!!!!!!
Yea well let me assure you know your own kid. I however DO NOT and am going home in the same condition as I went to work. If YOUR kid is threatening me (or him/herself) with an edged weapon (knife / glass...same thing...duh :rolleyes: ) I'm going to disarm him without me having to touch him if at all possible. It's what we're trained to do. You must have skipped everything I outlined about liability and deviating from your training.

You guys seem to think this thing is some sort of cattle prod....well it's not. It doesn't cause pain, it simply causes all your muscles to contract and immobilizes you for an extremely short amount of time. IT'S PAINLESS! Once the shock is over you're disoriented for a few seconds and that's it! WOW... You guys would rather someone hit the kid with pepper spray, or strike his arm, or physically try to wrestle an edged weapon away....NOT! Why?...when you can ZAP the little $hit and it's over.

Using force doesn't always have most pleasant outcome but the Taser has been proven as the safest way to apprehend a combative subject.

Now understand this statement, our policy and most department's policy states you will use the Taser as the 1st means of force on the force continuum to get compliance. If you deviate from your policy and something goes wrong you're in a very bad spot, most likely from people like you....SUE, SUE, SUE. Guess what happened to this kid....NOTHING!! He's not hurt and he's not damaged in any way. Get over it already.

Go ahead, try and explain this one to your chief or to a jury:
"Officer, didn't you have a Taser stun gun with you? If so, why didn't you use it to incompaciate my client? Instead you chose to forcibly grab his arm resulting in his wrist being broken in 3 places and a cut in his right eye causing his blindness?"

Some of you guys need to get away from the emotional aspect of this and come back to reality.
 
parents

How do you let a 6yr old get that out of control? What the hell is the world coming to? Glad I live where I do,very small town America. We don't have crazy sh** going on here.
 
If that kid was threatening my kid with a piece of glass, I'd TASER him myself.

If MY kid was threatening another kid with a piece of glass I'd TASER him myself.

Therefore, if my Kid was threatening himself with a piece of glass, yes, I would TASER him, myself.
 
My kid would never be in this situation because I raised him with discipline.Beleive me,he would not want to deal with me if I caught him doing something like this.He would BEG for that tazer!

How come nobody has thought about the fact that 6 year olds used to not do this kind of stuff.In this day and age we raise our kids to be adults too fast and most people are even afraid to discipline their kids.No wonder they think they can get away with murder.This is why when my kid gets too far out of line he gets his a$$ spanked just like I did as a kid.I have friends that were raised with that" spare the rod spoil the child" crap and they grew up to be losers or in jail.

Anybody remember a few years ago when a 6 yr old boy went to school and shot a 6yr old girl to death because he didn't like her?He got the gun at home fom his aunt&uncles crack house.The daddy was in jail.They interviewed the dad and he thought it was funny.They showed his aunt picking him up on the news and she brought him a toy and a happy meal.What kind of message do you think that sent?The judge told the little girls family to leave them alone.Sorry,but in my world I would waste that whole family over my kid and sit in jail myself.

You never heard of this kind of crap until the hippies and DR. Spock came around with that time-out BS.Used to be normal for a parent to spank a kid and send them to their room and this stuff was not happening all the time.This is IMHO where parents need to get back to.

I may sound racist saying this but oh well,I also notice that Blacks and Hispanics seem to pay less attention to what their kids are doing and rarely if ever discipline them.I figure this is the reason they are harder to deal with in society and make up the majority of criminals.Not saying this is the case all the time,but I see it more often with them.Where I live is a majority of Hispanics and you should see them at the supermarket and places like that...its pathetic.
 
I had to sit down and think about this one for a few minutes after reading about it. My conclusion is that it was justified. I do wonder if there were other options on the table, but it's really easy to Monday morning quarterback the cops when we weren't there. I won't do so.

As far as Taser/pepper spray safety: First off, Tasers do NOT make you ****, piss, and puke yourself. They are extremely painful but after the shock is over, it's done. Pepper spray lasts for an hour or more, depending on the person. Usually if you spray a subject, everyone in the area is going to feel it too.

Are either of these devices fatal? To the average healthy person, NO. You are going to find people that are more succeptable to these items and will be injured or even killed by them. The purpose of Tasers and pepper spray is to protect the OFFICER and the general public. If a guy wants to fight a cop, he sprays him or Tasers him and the guy dies from it I don't have a problem with it. We're not talking innocents here, we're talking about criminals. Why must the criminal always be the victim?

I'm getting Tased on 11/22. I'll let you know how much fun it is after that.
 
This is a very difficult situation to evaluate. I would generally say don't use a Tazer on a 6 year old but we were not there and didn't see exactly what was going on. One thing is this kid was definately out of control and a danger to himself and others. Now the questions are why couldn't the parents stop this and why couuldn't the police stop this without a Tazer. My guess would be that the Tazer was the fastest way to end the issue. Maybe this will bring a change in the weapon to adjust the setting for shock to compansate for a big dude on crack vs. a small person or child. I have heard of some big goons just pulling the wires out. I think if someone that has used a Tazer they could fill us in more on that aspect of this story.
 
Re: Re: WOW

Originally posted by no-nos
yes i' am for real and no i'm not the kids parents ( real funny) i am a father of 2 boys and as far as me being to young to value life, I'M 35 AND SERVED SIX YEARS IN THE ARMY SO PLEASE SAVE THE SPEECH! (let's not make this a personal issue, i respect everyone's opinion and if i disagree with someone i don't start being a smart a$$.) who ever said this is ok, does'nt realize what your saying (imo) this means that everytime a kid acts-up the police have the right to go ahead and administer a shock of god knows how many thousand volts? tasers have been known to kill people in the past, this is a 6yr old kid suppose this was your child, how would you feel about it then, and please don't tell me "i'm fine with it", nothing will most likely happen here and i'll tell you why and you may disagree with this all you want but i've lived in miami all but 6 yrs of my life, this will get swept under the rug because this happened to a BLACK CHILD unless the black community leaders do something about this, nothing is going to happen, and for those who live here know that, police shoot blacks around here when their unarmed and then fabricate a story, it's been done before..
it's sad when you have three police officers dealing with one kid and the best thing they could come up with is this and remember this was not a spur of the moment type of situation, they had time to call the school and county police, and then they even tried talking to the kid, you mean they can't deal with a six yr old all 3 of them? i just hope they did'nt do any permanet damage, please keep in mind this is a six year old, IMO if a police officer can't deal with a 6yr old then they need some serious training. Again this is my opinion.

a little bit of info


TASERs are at best an unknown danger and at worst, two-time killers, according to a 1998 Amnesty International report ("United States of America: Rights for All--Police Brutality and Prison Abuse in the USA"). The report states, "In July, 1996, a 29-year-old woman, Kimberly Lashon Watkins, died after being shot by police with a TASER in Pomona, California. Just five months later, Andrew Hunt, Jr. died when Pomona police reportedly shot him several times with a TASER after he had been handcuffed."


The Lancet also articulated the need to study "injury threshholds" and the effects on nerves, adding that two people with no history of cardiac disease went into cardiac arrest between five and fifteen minutes after being hit with TASERs.












:eek:


Does anybody have any questions why racism will never die? It's amazing how anyone could say what should or should not have been done, when they weren't there.
 
Just a few items to compare.
An HEI ignition system is about 20 MILIJOULES.
The low setting on a Defribulator is 20 JOULES.

If I recall an old spec on the Tazers it was less then 10 Milijoules.

I been bite numberous times with HEIs, and they were just a real attention getter, and even in that range there used to be (if not still) warnings about them being fatal for those with cardiac conditions.

I've also been defribulated, at 20 Joules. Now that's something to really get excited about. Raising up off the table, and then needing some Demoral for the headache afterwards was something.

No doubt some people will not tolerate even 5 millijoules, but why should a cop have to resort to gun fire, or a PR24 to beat the criminal into submission?. The kid was in the wrong, plain and simple, there is no guestion of that. I for the life of me can't understand how the like's of Rodney King, and others some how get exempted from the law. Let's not forget in his case he was drunk, and driving at 80 MPH thur a residential area. I for one, think the cops need to use what ever force it takes for a suspect/criminal to submit to their commands. We don't have enough cops to put into harms way to let perps kill themselves or others. Maybe when enough people refuse to even be cops, the rules will again fair law and order rather then the criminals.
 
Originally posted by sixgun86gn
My kid would never be in this situation because I raised him with discipline.Beleive me,he would not want to deal with me if I caught him doing something like this.He would BEG for that tazer!

How come nobody has thought about the fact that 6 year olds used to not do this kind of stuff.In this day and age we raise our kids to be adults too fast and most people are even afraid to discipline their kids.No wonder they think they can get away with murder.This is why when my kid gets too far out of line he gets his a$$ spanked just like I did as a kid.I have friends that were raised with that" spare the rod spoil the child" crap and they grew up to be losers or in jail.

Anybody remember a few years ago when a 6 yr old boy went to school and shot a 6yr old girl to death because he didn't like her?He got the gun at home fom his aunt&uncles crack house.The daddy was in jail.They interviewed the dad and he thought it was funny.They showed his aunt picking him up on the news and she brought him a toy and a happy meal.What kind of message do you think that sent?The judge told the little girls family to leave them alone.Sorry,but in my world I would waste that whole family over my kid and sit in jail myself.

You never heard of this kind of crap until the hippies and DR. Spock came around with that time-out BS.Used to be normal for a parent to spank a kid and send them to their room and this stuff was not happening all the time.This is IMHO where parents need to get back to.

I may sound racist saying this but oh well,I also notice that Blacks and Hispanics seem to pay less attention to what their kids are doing and rarely if ever discipline them.I figure this is the reason they are harder to deal with in society and make up the majority of criminals.Not saying this is the case all the time,but I see it more often with them.Where I live is a majority of Hispanics and you should see them at the supermarket and places like that...its pathetic.


i agree with you on most of what you said, except the last paragraph, i know you may not be a racist but your DEAD WRONG if you tthink we pay less attention to our kids, is that what you think? that blacks and hispanics make up the majority of criminals because we don't care for our kids, like white's do ? please come on you don't see any black or hispanic kids taking uzi's and ak's to school and trying kill everybody they see at random, do you think that happened because his parents did'nt love him? a parenrt will always love his or her child unconditionaly,
 
Top