Another Death From A 'Non-Lethal' Taser

According to Taser International, maker of the popular electroshock weapon, its "innovative products" -- used by police forces across the United States and billed as non-lethal alternatives to firearms -- are intended to "Protect Life, Protect Truth, and Protect Family." In practice, however, firing electrodes at people and injecting them with high doses of electricity, it turns out (surprise!), is not such a terribly great way of protecting human life, hundreds of people having died from its use, a truth the company has worked hard to deny.

The latest person to discover the hard way how lethal a Taser can be is Washington state resident King Hoover. Now, having been tased by Pierce County police after apparently refusing to leave an apartment he had become an unwelcome guest at, Hoover is admittedly not the most sympathetic of characters. While details are murky, Seattle-area TV station KOMO reported on August 31st that police were called to the scene after Hoover became disruptive, culminating in him grabbing a propane tank and throwing it through a window of the apartment. Police -- who arrived on the scene after residents called 911 -- proceeded to use a Taser on him after they say he resisted arrest. He died soon thereafter. An initial autopsy was inconclusive, though whatever pre-existing conditions police might ultimately point to, it's pretty clear the jolts of electricity that stopped his breathing are what killed him.

Again: he was not someone you'd necessarily want to bring home to Mom or Dad. But while his actions certainly weren't likely to get him nominated for any Kiwanis Club awards, did he really deserve capital punishment? Though the police may not have set out to do so, that's effectively what they administered -- Hoover just one of more than 350 people in the U.S. to suffer such a fate at the hands of Taser-wielding cops, according to Amnesty International. Including Hoover, four men have died in Washington state alone from the "non-lethal" device since April 2005, the Tacoma-based News Tribune reports.

While Hoover's case isn't necessarily one of out-of-control cops-gone-wild, it illustrates just how lethal the purportedly non-lethal Taser can be -- and how the oft-repeated claims of the device's safety only lowers the bar to its use, with officers deploying it not as the potentially deadly weapon that it is, but as just a stronger, more painful form of pepper spray.

Take the recent ordeal suffered by Peter McFarland. Late last month the 64-year Californian fell down the steps at his Marin County home, leading his wife to call paramedics. While in the midst of tremendous pain, McFarland apparently declared he would rather "shoot himself in the head" than suffer more, a statement he later chalked up to "hyperbole," reports the local ABC affiliate. His bad day then got worse. As video obtained by the station shows, two deputies soon entered his home and ordered him off his couch, demanding he be evaluated at the hospital, apparently having been tipped off about the offhand remark. When McFarland refused, the officers, well . . . they deployed their Taser on him, not once -- not twice -- but three times. The local sheriff stands by his men.

But if a Taser can kill a 27-year-old man with just one shot, surely three shots could have killed a man more than twice his age who had just suffered a medical emergency. If police are to continue using these electroshock weapons -- and there's no sign they'll be giving up their new toys, unfortunately -- it must be clear that they are only to be used in truly life-threatening situations, not just when citizens are defiant and/or annoying. Since the device itself is life-threatening, those officers who unnecessarily deploy it should be punished, preferably with more than just a paid vacation.

Beyond just better training and stricter discipline, though, Allison Kilkenny suggests that maybe police officers ought "to attend comedy clubs once a week so they can recognize a joke – even a bad one – before they immediately jump to electrocuting a citizen in order to 'save' him by nearly exploding his heart." It couldn't hurt.

Photo Credit: Sarah Caufield