Lethal weapons: Ban Tasers now!

The 39-year-old man from Brandon, south of Townsville, was “tasered” up to 28 times. The police originally said the Taser was used no more than three times, but data stored in the Taser told a very different story.

The man allegedly confronted police on the morning of June 12, after arming himself with a knife. Police claim that efforts to resuscitate the man while waiting for an ambulance failed. The incident is being treated as a death in custody and an investigation has been launched.

Earlier in the week, he had been assessed, but not admitted, as a mental health patient at the Townsville Hospital, according to the June 12 Brisbane Times.

Police have tried to pass off the incident as self-defence. They defend the use of Tasers as a less harmful way to subdue someone than to use a gun.

But the June 19 Brisbane Courier Mail said a witness, Sandra Wynne, said: “[The police] were electrocuting him. He was screaming in pain. It looked like someone had a bolt of lightning hitting him and taking every last bit of life out of him.”

Terry O’Gorman from the Australian Council for Civil Liberties told ABC Radio National’s AM on June 13: “It explodes the myth that the Queensland Police Service has put out there for the last couple of years that Tasers are harmless.”

But Qld’s police commissioner Bob Atkinson told AM: “We think and still absolutely believe that the Taser is a valid and very effective use of force option that prevents an officer from having to use a firearm.”

But, while a $14 million rollout of Tasers across Queensland has been temporarily halted pending a four-week review, police who already have them may continue to use them.

Meanwhile, the NSW state government has announced a plan to put a Taser in the holster of every police officer within 18 months. This was just part of Premier Nathan Rees’s record $2.6 billion police budget announced on June 16.

The June 14 Sydney Morning Herald said Rees gloated: “The [police] Commissioner has advised that, after a successful trial period, Tasers should be deployed to all frontline officers — and the NSW Government has delivered.”

The decision follows a pro-Taser campaign from police unions. In NSW, the union has attempted to tie the Taser rollout to its “Keep Our Cops” pay and conditions campaign.

The Queensland death follows a troubled history of Taser deaths. Last month, an Alice Springs man died after being Tasered. In May 2002, a NSW man died of a heart attack two weeks after being “stunned” with a Taser after allegedly threatening police with a frying pan.

The NSW rollout plan also comes at a time when newly released CCTV footage appears to expose police brutality in the “tasering” of a Sydney man in March, said the June 10 Daily Telegraph. An earlier police report had cleared the police officers involved of any wrongdoing.

Tasers fire two barbs with tiny hooks that either grab clothing or just penetrate the skin. They emit a 50,000-volt current over five seconds, to supposedly subdue the target.

On June 19, ABC Online reported Amnesty International had linked Tasers to more than 300 deaths in the US.

Police authorities say officers will receive just eight hours’ training, updated annually, in Taser use.

But, through their own practices and statements, they display a failure to understand the potentially devastating effects of the weapon.

For example, in a FAQ sent to staff, the Police Federation of Australia explained that a Taser “is generally classed on the same level as capsicum spray on the force continuum”.

Furthermore, the Australian said: “Queensland police guidelines do not prevent or warn against the multiple use of the stun gun, issued to general duty officers in January.”

But Australia’s Taser distributor, George Hateley, told the Australian he has warned police authorities not to shoot Tasers more than once. Hately was personally involved in training Australian police in the use of the weapon.

Tasers are also disproportionately used against people with mental health problems. During Taser trials in New Zealand, Tasers were used in 50% of mental health callouts, according to an analysis by the NZ College of Mental Health Nurses.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists has urged wider consultation with the mental health sector before the introduction of Tasers.

NZ Mental Health Foundation chief executive Judi Clements told the NZ Herald in August 2008: “The risks posed to people taking prescribed medication for mental illness are unknown, as are the long-term effects of Taser use.

“The use of Tasers in mental health emergencies needs to be fully investigated before this weapon is sanctioned for use on the general public.”

In response to the growing community outrage against Tasers around the world, Taser International has launched a vicious campaign of intimidation against those who speak out against its products.

In the US, this has included lawsuits to reverse or prevent medical reports that claim Taser use was involved in a person’s death.

In May 2008, the Arizona Republic reported how an intimidation case “helped lead an Ohio judge’s order to remove Taser’s name from three Summit County Medical Examiner autopsies that had ruled the stun gun contributed to three men’s deaths”.

“We will hold people accountable and responsible for untrue statements”, said Taser’s Steve Tuttle in the article. “If that includes medical examiners, it includes medical examiners.”

Jeff Jentzen president of the National Association of Medical Examiners said in the article: “It is dangerously close to intimidation. At this point, we adamantly reject the fact that people can be sued for medical opinions that they make.”

Medical officials claimed that the decision was likely to have a “chilling” effect on their work, leading to doctors ignoring evidence.

Taser International claims Tasers are not dangerous, and says medical examiners who are not trained in the use of the weapon have no right to judge its role in someone’s death.

Company representatives, doctors and medical examiners paid by the firm often head up the defence in these court cases.

Taser International has even gone so far as inventing a medical condition it calls “excited delirium”. It won’t be found in any medical manual, but Taser International describes it as a condition in which the body is agitated by drugs, psychosis or poor health, and may shut down during struggles with police.

The Arizona Republic article quoted Mark Schlosberg, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California who has worked on several Taser cases. He said: “There are plenty of medical examiners who are very skeptical of excited delirium. But that is not what Taser is promoting … They attribute almost all of the deaths following a Taser strike to excited delirium.”

The recent Queensland tragedy did not occur because the Taser was fired 28 times. Once is enough to kill someone. It didn’t occur because the police guidelines aren’t strong enough, or because the Taser training isn’t sufficiently thorough. It happened because the police had Tasers in the first place.

Reports have indicated that, on the whole, police don’t use Tasers in self-defence, but as punishment for not complying with police requests.

Imprisonment statistics illustrate that police disproportionately target Indigenous people and other oppressed groups in society. We can only assume such groups will also disproportionately suffer from Taser attacks.

The only way to ensure an end to police brutality is to stop supplying them with such brutal weapons.