janelane wrote:

Catonic wrote:
Tasers aren't supposed to kill...

On the one hand, the cop tasers the kid and he might die.

On the other hand, the cop shoots the kid and he might die as well.

On the other other hand, the cop does nothing and might get himself killed.

On the *other* other other hand, killing a couple drunken-disorderlies is a little out of line with our judicial system.

There's just not enough data to pick a hand. Also, I'm getting an eerie Diebold vibe from all this.

-janelane, two-handedly

Well, I've had to look at this issue in-depth in the last year (unfortunately), and to me it appears there's really only a few core issues involved.

1. Being tased is better than being shot.
2. People with unstable mental conditions (particularly psychoactive drugs, or just crazies) tend to collapse like a house of cards when tased. Something about the sudden surge of juice makes people's HD50 levels for everything drop to the floor.
3. Taser International, bless theie greedy little hearts, have definitely been trying to put better spin on this, but the fact of the matter is that they've been touting these devices to law enforcement agencies as a completely safe way to take down someone who would otherwise be behaving in a completely unreasonable and dangerous manner... which is problematic because that would be number 2 above.

Still, I think the survivability of a tasing is still higher than being shot, and the recovery time if you don't die is about a half hour (small red burn notwithstanding).

RE: Man killed after shot with Taser twice