Since 2002 when Taser launched its more powerful 26-watt model, there have been at least 400 deaths worldwide attributed to the deployment of the stun gun.
The device, shaped like a pistol, fires two darts attached to 21-foot wires. When both darts hit, an electrical circuit is completed and the weapon automatically discharges an excruciatingly painful five-second cycle, which contracts the skeletal muscles, causing the person targeted to become rigid and collapse.
The trigger can subsequently be pulled over and over, delivering additional five-second cycles, and it can be held down, discharging a continuous flow of electricity until released. Each weapon has a computer chip, called the data-port, which records the number of trigger pulls.
Taser has mounted an aggressive legal campaign against all those who have launched liability lawsuits for wrongful death after a stun gun attack. Last month, the company celebrated its one hundredth “successful” defense. In one case, the company managed to convince an Ohio judge that any suggestion that the tasering death of three men in the state had anything to do with taser deployment should be removed from the official autopsy reports!
But as evidence mounts as to the deadly consequences of taser deployment, particularly in multiple bursts, the company’s legal footing has been increasingly diminished.
Swine studies performed by the United States Air Force in 2007 after the device had been on the market for several years established that repeated cycles cause dangerous increases in the amount of lactic acid discharged by muscles into the bloodstream, “sufficient to induce cardiac arrest.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/tase-a13.shtml
