could be a bad day for TASR tomorrow
of course along with everything else in the market...
As Police Use of Tasers Rises, Questions Over Safety Increase
July 18, 2004
By ALEX BERENSON
NAZARETH, Pa. - As the sun set on June 24, something
snapped in Kris J. Lieberman, an unemployed landscaper who
lived a few miles from this quiet town. For 45 minutes, he
crawled deliriously around a pasture here, moaning and
pounding his head against the weedy ground.
Eventually the police arrived, carrying a Taser M26, an
electric gun increasingly popular with law enforcement
officers nationwide. The gun fires electrified barbs up to
21 feet, hitting suspects with a disabling charge.
The officers told Mr. Lieberman, 32, to calm down. He
lunged at them instead. They fired their Taser twice. He
fought briefly, collapsed and died.
Mr. Lieberman joined a growing number of people, now at
least 50, including 6 in June alone, who have died since
2001 after being shocked. Taser International, which makes
several versions of the guns, says its weapons are not
lethal, even for people with heart conditions or
pacemakers. The deaths resulted from drug overdoses or
other factors and would have occurred anyway, the company
says.
But Taser has scant evidence for that claim. The company's
primary safety studies on the M26, which is far more
powerful than other stun guns, consist of tests on a single
pig in 1996 and on five dogs in 1999. Company-paid
researchers, not independent scientists, conducted the
studies, which were never published in a peer-reviewed
journal. Taser has no full-time medical director and has
never created computer models to simulate the effect of its
shocks, which are difficult to test in human clinical
trials for ethical reasons.
What is more, aside from a continuing Defense Department
study, the results of which have not been released, no
federal or state agencies have studied the safety, or
effectiveness, of Tasers, which fall between two federal
agencies and are essentially unregulated. Nor has any
federal agency studied the deaths to determine what caused
them. In at least two cases, local medical examiners have
said Tasers were partly responsible. In many cases,
autopsies are continuing or reports are unavailable.
The few independent studies that have examined the Taser
have found that the weapon's safety is unproven at best.
The most comprehensive report, by the British government in
2002, concluded "the high-power Tasers cannot be classed,
in the vernacular, as `safe.' " Britain has not approved
Tasers for general police use.
A 1989 Canadian study found that stun guns induced heart
attacks in pigs with pacemakers. A 1999 study by the
Department of Justice on an electrical weapon much weaker
than the Taser found that it might cause cardiac arrest in
people with heart conditions. In reviewing other electrical
devices, the Food and Drug Administration has found that a
charge half as large as that of the M26 can be dangerous to
the heart.
While Taser says that the M26 is not dangerous, it now
devotes most of its marketing efforts to the X26, a less
powerful weapon it introduced last year. Both weapons are
selling briskly. About 100,000 officers nationally now have
Tasers, 20 times the number in 2000, and most carry the
M26. Taser, whose guns are legal for civilian use in most
states, hopes to expand its potential market with a new
consumer version of the X26 later this summer.
For Taser, which owns the weapon's trademark and is the
only company now making the guns, the growth has been a
bonanza. Its stock has soared. Its executives and
directors, including a former New York police commissioner,
Bernard B. Kerik, have taken advantage, selling $60 million
in shares since November.
Patrick Smith, Taser's chief executive, said the guns are
safe. "We tell people that this has never caused a death,
and in my heart and soul I believe that's true," Mr. Smith
said.
Taser did not need to disclose the British results to
American police departments, he said. "The Brits are
extremely conservative," he said. "To me, this is sort of
boilerplate, the fine print." In addition to Taser's animal
trials, thousands of police volunteers have received shocks
without harm, Mr. Smith said.
But the hits that police officers receive from the M26 in
their Taser training have little in common with the shocks
given to suspects. In training, volunteers usually receive
a single shock of a half-second or less. In the field,
Tasers automatically fire for five seconds. If an officer
holds down the trigger, a Taser will discharge longer. And
suspects are often hit repeatedly.
Over all, Taser has significantly overstated the weapon's
safety, say biomedical engineers who separately examined
the company's research at the request of The New York
Times. None of the engineers have any financial stake in
the company or any connection with Taser; The Times did not
pay them. |
