A-Tasering We Will Go…

About a month ago, a Polish man was “tased” at the Vancouver International Airport. He died. Eye witness video of the event has just been released and it’s pretty darned horrible. He is obviously an upset, agitated and not all together man. For me, as a veteran of the Vancouver bus system with an office just blocks away from the Downtown Eastside (where the poverty rate, HIV infection rate and drug addiction prevalence all vie for the highest in cities of the developed world), Robert Dziekanski looked like your average wacked-out character.

I am going to spare you from an extensive literature review of the safety of Tasers. Studies on both animals and people suggest that they are incredibly safe, but critics argue that the data cannot be extrapolated to real life as many who receive Taser stuns are in a state of “excited delirium” - an essentially meaningless term applied to people who are on drugs (mostly), totally freaked out, psychotic, violent, under extreme psychological or physical stress etc. It is used as an explanation for deaths while in police custody. Amnesty International points out that many Taser deaths are in people who show the signs of “excited delirium”...of course Taser and the cops might argue that means they could drop death no matter what you did to them.  The Taser company is also handily informing police around the US about the dangers of the “disorder.” For a nice, lefty review of the political situation, check this NPR article.

But even if Tasers can kill (which they obviously can..around 150 people so far in the US according to Amnesty), many will argue that they save more lives than they cost. One study from the Potomac Institute argued that Tasers save 70 lives for every person killed. A group of UK researchers agreed.

This analysis is based on using Tasers in replace of more deadly force. But what I really want to know is whether, armed with Tasers, police are more likely to use force at all. The UK analysis (one author works for Taser sometimes) suggests that compared to batons, and pepper spray and “empty hand skills,” Tasers cause fewer injuries to officers and subjects. Nice. But does having a very effective weapon, that can be used from a distance with very little risk of injury to the officer, make them more likely to deploy it at all...when maybe they don’t need “sub-lethal” force at all?

I wonder what psychologist Phil Zimbardo - who conducted the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971..where normal undergraduate students became monstrous prison guards IN SIX DAYS - would have to say about it....does having weapons make people use them?