Knowingly Lethal

by digby

Another person dies of “excited delirium,” the disease that only hits people in police custody. This time it was a man booked on suspicion of using methamphetamines who got into s struggle at the police station.

Interestingly, this happened in a police department which seems to be fairly sensitive to the potential lethality of taser shock:

Officers have used Tasers on other suspects, and the department tracks those incidents, Doane said. Statistics weren’t immediately available.

Doane said officers are careful to monitor anyone they shock with a Taser for possible medical problems. After a strenuous fight, there’s a lot of adrenaline shooting through the body, he said. Officers are trained to look for changes in breathing or any type of distress. Anyone who has been shot with a Taser must be medically cleared after the incident, he added.

It’s good to know they are aware that using tasers are dangerous. Perhaps that makes this police department less likely to use them capriciously as we see so many other departments do. Unfortunately, this drug user got the death penalty before he got a trial, but that seems to be the risk citizens take these days with this awesome new non-lethal weapon.

Meanwhile, here’s a typical comment from one of the readers of this article:

So, when officers shoot a man people say “why didn’t they just use non-lethal force, like a tazer?” So, here they tazer the guy who is obviously out of control and a danger to the officers and himself. FIVE officers couldn’t hold him down because of his adrenaline level- the officers have no idea how much meth he was on at that point – what would you have them do? It’s not like they carry a dart gun loaded with a peaceful tranqulizer. Instead of the officers needing to be “aware that tazing a guy on a tweek is probably not a good idea” – how about the tweekers start hearing that if you resist an officer while tweeking you’ll get a jolt -you’re heart might give out. Why do we need to coddle the tweekers that are ruining the law abiding citizens’ qualtiy of life (crimes in neighborhoods to support their habit), driving around tweeked (could’ve killed someone) and costing state and counties countless dollars (that would be our taxes…) Sorry, I just have no sympathy for these people.

I suspect that many people would be for just allowing police to shoot suspects dead on the spot if it weren’t for the cost of the bullet and bloody mess it makes. Unless it was them or someone they knew, of course.

The Taser organization may be biting off its nose to spite its face by advancing this “excited delirium” theory. Police are clearly becoming aware that tasing people who are in a state of agitation and under the influence of a spike of adrenaline (as are most people in an altercation with authorities) will possibly subject them death or medical complications. And if authorities know they are using lethal force and are using it in situations in which lethal force cannot be justified, juries are eventually going to find them culpable.

You can’t argue both that the use of tasers so benign they can be used without reservation on grandmothers, children and protesters and yet admit you are aware that they kill people. It’s either one or the other.

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