Can you please explain why Taser sues medical examiners who cite tasers as a cause of death? And why they push junk science “excited delirium” (a once-obscure medically-unsupported cause of death that, though it predates Taser, has been heavily pushed by the company) explanations rather than the obvious (being electrocuted to death)?
Great question.
First, there is a misperception that TASER sued medical examiners personally—that somehow we’d get monetary damages from them. This could not be further from the truth. The case you are referring to happened in Ohio, where a medical examiner listed the TASER as a cause of death in two different cases. As a result of that ruling, several officers were charged criminally, and many were sued in civil court.
Here’s the problem: there was no supporting evidence that the TASER caused these deaths, and there was ample evidence of other causes of death. In Ohio, the procedure for challenging a medical opinion is to file a challenge in the court—which is exactly what we did. Far from being a spurious claim, we prevailed in court. The judge ruled that the medical examiner had no scientific evidence to support their findings, and the court ordered the TASER be stricken from the cause of death.
I want to be crystal clear: there was never any risk of that medical examiner, or any other, having to pay us a dime. What we wanted was a court to assess the truth of their findings—and that’s what happened. Medical examiners are public officials, and as with any public official, medical examiners have to be able to support their findings with scientific evidence, not personal or political beliefs. We stood up to help defend the officers involved in those incidents and to ensure that medical findings are accurate and supported by science.
Regarding your assertion that electrocution via a TASER is “obvious,” this is not accurate. Electrocution refers to when an electric current passes across the heart and causes it to go into ventricular fibrillation. This is an immediate phenomenon, and the person will lose consciousness within a few seconds. In most cases where there is a death in custody, electrocution can be ruled out by two facts: first, the electrical pathway would need to have the darts in the chest with a current pathway across the heart, and second, the collapse would be immediate. In the vast majority of cases, electrocution can be ruled out because these factors are not present.
We then need to look at other factors involved in these cases. Each year, over 325,000 people die of sudden cardiac death in the U.S. (the #1 cause of death), and another 70,000 people die of drug overdoses. A top trigger for sudden cardiac death is physical exertion and stress (one reason why you see cardiac defibrillators in health clubs). It is hard to imagine a more extreme physical stress and exertion than fighting with the police—and in many cases, people are also under the stress of toxic doses of stimulants like methamphetamines, PCP, or cocaine.
Of course, we continue to do extensive research into how to maximize both the safety and effectiveness of TASER devices. But we also will challenge unsupported claims to ensure the public record is based upon solid science.
Is it really reasonable to suggest that in all 33 wrongful death cases, the person still would have died if they hadn’t been tased?
Yes, there have been cases where the effects of the TASER directly caused a death. There have been a number of fatal injuries related to falls (approximately 15-20) and a number of cases where the energy from a TASER discharge caused combustion of a flammable fluid (approximately 5 cases). So, I do not dispute that TASER weapons have caused deaths.
That said, much of the speculation about direct cardiac risks are not accurate. Our intuitions tend to make us believe that electricity is dangerous. So it’s very difficult to believe that a TASER weapon didn’t cause a death when it happens in an incident where one was used.
However, if you look at the timeline and fact patterns in cases where a subject dies in police custody and there was no TASER used, they tend to follow a similar pattern to the ones in which TASERs are used. In most cases, the fact patterns can rule out a direct cardiac stimulation of VF (see my other answer for details). We then need to look at how much the stress of the TASER contributed to the overall physiologic stress on the individual. We have done several studies in this space, measuring stress either by cortisol levels or by measuring the generation of lactic acid in the bloodstream.
In both cases, the level of physiologic stress caused by a TASER exposure was similar to or less than the pain and stress from pepper spray or physical exertion (such as running or wrestling). It is simply not possible to say that the TASER weapon had no impact, or that the situation would have ended differently if the TASER had not been used. But we can say that, based upon every measure of stress or injury I have seen to date, the risks associated with TASER weapon use are lower than just about every other use-of-force option available today.
I have been hit with a TASER seven times myself, and millions of police officers have been exposed to TASER hits in training with only limited reports of injuries, mostly related to falls. So, while I cannot assure that the TASER weapon is 100 percent safe, I can say I believe it is the safest force option available. And, if the police are ever called to an incident involving one of my family members who becomes violent, I hope they would use the TASER rather than any other force option (once force becomes necessary).
Have you tested the effects of Tasers on people with cardiac abnormalities or other health issues, which may magnify the effects of being hit by a Taser?
Not in people… but in various animal models.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16904553
http://www.aele.org/uk_taser_eval_2006.pdf
It was great, except it neatly sidestepped being shocked as a contributor to cardiovascular stress. Fighting with police and pcp will contribute but I’d imagine every muscle in your body seizing uncontrollably isn’t exactly a non factor.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/236947.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19019594
“Conducted electrical weapons were not more activating of the human stress response than other uses of force.”
Net: they do cause stress, but the studies so far suggest the level of stress is similar or lower than other force options such as physical force
Any comment on a recent NPR study that says the police find the taser less effective than the company claims?
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/27/729922975/despite-widespread-use-police-rate-tasers-as-less-effective-than-believed
Thanks for the question. I think the point of my book “The End of Killing” is, in some ways, this exact point: TASER weapons are not yet as reliable as firearms. That’s the moonshot for the next 10 years. However, today they are already the most effective and reliable non/less-lethal weapons available.
I believe we are very transparent about their effectiveness and limitations. We have entire segments of our training focused on what can go wrong and how to reduce ineffective uses. That said, I want to address your question specifically, and for simplicity and speed, I am going to do something we never get to do: publish exactly what we sent to NPR in our response to their questions. Unfortunately, I don’t think most of this made it into the final story, but without further ado:
The “effectiveness” of TASER® Conducted Energy Weapons (CEWs) cannot be discussed without first defining relative parameters. When reviewing the “effectiveness” of TASER CEWs at a particular agency, one must ask how the agency is defining effectiveness, how the agency is tracking CEW use, whether the agency is including subject compliance with no deployment (display, LASER or arc only), and in probe deployments, whether the agency is documenting the reason why the deployment is classified as ineffective (missed probe, no completed circuit, etc.). Unfortunately, the answers to these questions vary from agency to agency, as does tracking of CEW deployments, resulting in varying and inaccurate “effectiveness” rates.
At the very least, effectiveness should be defined in a manner that encompasses all possible uses of a TASER CEW: probe deployments, drive stuns and display only (to include LASER and arc display). For example, full neuro-muscular incapacitation (NMI) would not apply if a CEW is only displayed and not deployed. A broader definition which accounts for the intended purpose of CEWs in any mode – to gain the subject’s compliance or control – is more appropriate.
The use of CEWs must also be consistently reported to produce reliable results. For example, very few U.S. agencies consider the mere display of a CEW to be a “use of force” even though that display may result in the subject’s compliance. As a result, those display only CEW uses are not reported and are not included in an agency’s CEW effectiveness numbers. Agencies in other countries, on the other hand, often do include “display only” CEW uses in their use of force reports and report very high compliance rates for those uses. As one example, England and Wales reported that between April 2017 and March 2018, 85% of CEWs uses were “display only” and did not require probe deployment or drive stun.
CEW reporting should also take into account the conditions that must be met for probe deployments to have the potential to cause NMI. These required conditions include a completed circuit and sufficient muscle mass (probe spread). If there is no completed circuit (one or two missed probes), there is no potential for NMI without taking additional steps. All users are trained on these required conditions as well as potential causes of not achieving NMI. By including the reasons a deployment did not achieve NMI, an agency can determine if it was caused by environmental or situational factors versus a weapon error, which can guide what action is needed to increase the chance of obtaining NMI (additional officer training or weapon service).
TASER 7, X2 and X26P CEWs
TASER CEWs are the most studied less lethal tool on an officer’s belt with more than 800 reports, abstracts and studies on the safety and effectiveness of TASER weapons. These studies, along with nearly 4 million field deployments over 25 years, establish they are the most safe and effective less-lethal use of force tool available to law enforcement. In fact, it is estimated that TASER CEWs have saved more than 200,000 lives. This figure is derived from Dr. Alexander Eastman’s 2008 research wherein he concluded that 5.4% of the CEW deployments included in his study clearly prevented the use of lethal force, as well as the known number of TASER deployments over the course of the company’s history.
Notwithstanding this wealth of research confirming the safety and effectiveness of TASER CEWs, Axon remains committed to continuous product development that keeps the needs of our customers and the communities they serve top-of-mind. Through extensive voice-of-customer sessions, including police ride-alongs to experience the realities of their jobs firsthand, Axon employees gain insight into customer needs, as well as opportunities for improvement and pain points. Axon engineers are also constantly striving to improve our products with new inventions and developments that may not have been possible just a few years ago. As technology improves, so do our products.
The TASER 7 is the result of Axon’s commitment to develop new, innovative products and improve its existing products. Some of those developments sought to address common reasons why a CEW may not cause NMI, including missed probes, clothing disconnects and insufficient probe spreads. The TASER 7 provides significant changes to range deployments by offering two re-designed cartridge options: the Close Quarters Cartridge with a 12-degree probe spread is optimized to be deployed at a distance of 4 to 12 feet, and the Standoff Cartridge with an 3.5-degree probe spread is optimized to be deployed between 11.5 and 22 feet. The redesigned cartridge also has an improved probe design and increased kinetic energy to provide better connection to the target at angles and through thick clothing.
Assuming all conditions are met, a TASER CEW’s ability to cause NMI in probe mode is determined by its waveform, which is described using three main parameters: pulses per second, pulse duration and charge. All three parameters contribute to a CEW’s ability to cause NMI, and must be considered together. Generally speaking, increasing the pulses per second and charge, and decreasing pulse duration, increases the ability to cause NMI.
When testing its CEWs for effectiveness, Axon uses the human motivation protocol which is published and peer-reviewed. That testing includes a panel of law enforcement and medical experts evaluating whether and to what extent the volunteer experiences NMI, which helps the company determine the effectiveness of a particular CEW model or waveform. All testing completed by Axon indicates the X2 and X26P reliably produce NMI when all conditions are met and, in fact, provide increased effectiveness through charge metering. The X2 also increases the potential for achieving NMI by providing a second shot in the event the first deployment is unsuccessful.
Have you ever felt that police over-use their Taser specifically because it is non-lethal?
This is certainly a concern. It’s one of the reasons we built a recording device called the “dataport” into the original TASER M26 in 1999 and every model since then. The dataport records every trigger pull, so we can determine how many times an officer used a TASER weapon and allow agencies to monitor for overuse. It’s also why we developed the TASERCam (a camera mounted on the TASER), and ultimately why we developed body cameras.
Because a TASER weapon causes far less injury than a firearm, it is certainly more likely to be used. In most cases, this is a good thing, because the risk of injury from a TASER is about 3 injuries per 1,000 uses—which is far less than for other force options such as batons (about 780 injuries per 1,000 uses). So, generally speaking, if officers are using a TASER instead of a firearm, baton, punch, or other physical force, it’s a move in the right direction because it reduces risk of injuries.
The risk is that officers use the TASER instead of patience and verbal skills. This is a phenomenon some call “TASER dependence,” where officers over-rely on the TASER weapon and escalate to use force when they shouldn’t. I believe this is where body cameras can play a huge role in ensuring that agencies can review the specifics of every TASER weapon use and deter overuse. It’s also why we’re using VR technology to build trainings specifically designed to help officers de-escalate tough situations.
Nothing is truly “non-lethal”. At best it’s “less-lethal”.
This one’s worth diving into, and again, forgive the length. Usually I bore my family with these discussions, so it’s actually a treat to nerd out about it at length on Reddit.
Here’s what I think: the terms “non-lethal,” “less-lethal,” and “less-than-lethal” are all terms for the exact same thing—weapons that are designed to deter or stop a threat without killing the target. Sometimes people think these terms describe varying levels of danger, when they don’t—as if a less-lethal weapon was a more dangerous category than a non-lethal weapon. This is a false dichotomy.
These terms are fundamentally synonyms used to describe one concept: weapons that are designed to achieve their effects without causing fatalities as an intended effect. Less-lethal is the term used in policing. I often use non-lethal in writing and in public, since it is the simplest, most widespread label. It remains the term of choice in both academia and the military. The term “non-lethal” describes the intent of weapons that are designed to achieve their effects with a low probability of death or serious damage. However, given the very nature of weaponry and the context in which it’s being used, this risk can never become zero.
As non-lethal weapons became widely adopted by law enforcement, the language used to describe them came under much more intensive legal scrutiny, especially in cases in which police departments were sued for the alleged misuse of those weapons. While the phrase “non-lethal” might get the point across in plain English, it can be a troubling term in a court of law. If one interprets “non-lethal weapon” to mean a weapon that will never cause death, it sets a very high bar. That led to the adoption of different terminology, such as “less-lethal” or “less-than-lethal.”
But as I just noted at the beginning, these terms don’t correspond to any meaningful differences between weapons. In this case, I believe that the clearest distinction is also the most meaningful: the one between lethal weapons (those specifically designed to kill as an intended effect) and non-lethal weapons (those designed to avoid killing, which nevertheless carry some level of risk). That’s the distinction I use, and I find it’s the simplest one.
What’s your opinion about police using tasers as compliance weapons? I’m not talking about drive stun — I’m talking about repeated discharging of the weapon on someone who was already tasered once. I’ve seen quite a few videos where police say, “Roll over (or do X) or else you’re gonna get it again!” after the suspect has been shot once and is already on the ground.
I understand that for a rural officer dealing with an armed man, this is probably warranted and preferable to shooting him. But so many times, I see people who are unarmed and are merely non-compliant (for example, they’re already on the ground but just not rolling over). Taser is meant to incapacitate, and the suspects are already incapacitated — and yet the officer applies it again and again as a compliance tool. Is this how taser should be used? Is this how officers are trained?
This one is, indeed, complicated, as it depends a lot on the circumstances and level of threat perceived. In general, we train that officers should move quickly to rapidly disarm and restrain the subject and to minimize the number of TASER applications. Each subsequent application of a TASER discharge is its own use of force and needs to be justifiable based on the facts and circumstances of each case at the moment the decision was made to apply another discharge. There certainly have been cases where the first TASER discharge was found justifiable, but continued discharges were found unjustifiable.
I’m a current LEO and our department is the only one in the county (on top of being the largest in the county) who dont carry and use tasers. We usually hear the same talk of them being too expensive, too aggressive looking, and them possibly being abused if we got them. I think the town manager is currently for them, but our chief seems to be very much against them. I think we might get body cameras before we actually get tasers.
What are some things we could say to change their minds?
Here are some stats that might help you make your case: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/232215.pdf. But sometimes stories are more powerful than statistics. Here’s a true story, which, full disclosure, I’m cribbing from my book (hence the italics), but which I think could help:
A highway patrolman is cruising on the interstate when an urgent call comes over his car radio: there’s a disturbance at a residence involving a woman who’s belligerent, possibly intoxicated, and armed. The address is a five-minute drive away, so the officer radios back that he’s en route. He puts on his sirens and speeds to the destination.
When he arrives, two other officers are already at the scene, a darkened, one-story house. The other officers are posted at either side of the screen door, their handguns drawn at their sides. The highway patrolman draws his handgun, edges up to a safe distance, and tries to communicate with the woman through the screen. From the radio dispatcher, the two officers already on the scene, and his communication with the woman, he’s able to piece together the story: she’s recently had two children removed from her care by the Florida Department of Children and Families, she’s deeply distraught, and she’s talking about hurting herself.
In the moment, the cop makes a judgment. He looks at the house, hears the grief in the woman’s voice, and realizes that she isn’t homicidal—she’s suicidal. She is attempting what is known as suicide by cop. She would leave the police no choice but to shoot her. Sensing this, the patrolman holsters his handgun and reaches for his TASER instead.
Seconds later, the woman kicks open the screen door, brandishing butcher knives in each hand. The patrolman fires his TASER device, hitting the woman in the chest and rendering her immobile on the ground. He and the two other officers are able to remove the knives from her clenched hands and to handcuff her without resistance. As they walked her to a waiting police car, one of the officers hears her mumble, “I’m sorry.”
Soon after, the woman’s family members arrive on the scene. Seeing the police cars with their lights flashing and an ambulance that has been called to perform a medical evaluation, they think that the woman has been shot dead. In statements given to the police, they confirm that the woman had discussed her plans to provoke a police officer into shooting her. They aren’t surprised that she has gone through with it; they are surprised that she is still alive.
The story has a postscript, and it takes place several years later. The patrolman who fired the TASER weapon is eating at a local restaurant, when he recognizes one of the servers: it is the woman whose attempt at suicide by cop had failed on that April night, because one of the responding officers was equipped with a non-lethal weapon. The woman recognizes the patrolman, too. She points him out to another employee and says, “See that guy? He saved my life.”
The story of a patrolman who avoided suicide by cop is real. It happened and the police officer shared it with me. Suicide by cop (SBC) is a real phenomenon—and it illustrates just how perverse incentives and behaviors can become when police officers have the ability to take a life. The term goes back to the 1950s, and by one estimate, almost 10 percent of the police shootings that happen every year are attempts at suicide by cop. Dr. Laurence Miller, a clinical and police psychologist, notes that while some incidents evolve in the moment into suicide by cop shootings, many are planned: “While some SBC incidents arise spontaneously out of the anger and panic of these situations, a good number of them appear to be planned, as shown by the fact that in nearly a third of SBC cases investigators find a suicide note that apologizes to the police for deliberately drawing their fire.”
I’ve read some opinions/studies that claim less than lethal weapons increase escalation and police use it instead of de-escalating with words or physical force and not instead of using their gun. Since a taser, or most less lethal weapons, can kill this is obviously not a good thing.
I for one am quite glad the police here don’t carry tasers and most if not all less lethal weapons are illegal for the general public. But on the other hand we don’t have the same issue with gun violence that the US has.
What’s your view of this?
While there is some risk that having less dangerous weapons might lead to more frequent usage, this argument taken to the extreme would conclude that we should only give police officers guns and nothing else. But we give police pepper spray and batons, because even if they are more likely to be used, we believe that they are preferable to firing a gun. We want police to have options—not just to depend on the firearm as their instrument of first and only resort.
Even compared to traditional force tactics like punches, baton strikes, etc., the TASER weapon has a far lower injury rate. (See this study from the Department of Justice. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/232215.pdf.) If your local police do not have the TASER weapon as an option, the risk of them injuring someone is significantly higher. That’s one reason that every constabulary in the United Kingdom now uses TASER weapons—and the UK is probably at the far end of the spectrum in terms of gun violence compared to the U.S.
Didn’t Axon Enterprises created facial recognition software for use by the police? Did the project really stop, or is it on pause for the moment? Would greater transparency around the process help the public understand the dangers to law enforcement’s use of such technology, particularly given its various constraints and its racist applications? Could you speak to the use of FRT (facial rec technology) by police and why Axon started created the software to be deployed in things like body-worn cameras in the first place? Did no one at Axon notice that they were potentially creating a mass surveillance system?
I really appreciate the question. We specifically have not developed facial recognition software to run on a body camera.
Simply put, the accuracy of the technology—particularly disparities in accuracy across different ethnicities—is highly questionable today. Ultimately, I think the bias problems will be solved, at which point in time we will need to think hard about the appropriateness and constitutionality of using facial recognition on body cameras. We’ll need to decide as a society whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Today, my view is that the benefits do not outweigh the costs.
That said, we are continuing to monitor developments in the facial recognition space, because there’s real potential there to help improve public safety. We’re also working together with an AI ethics advisory board we created before deploying any solutions in this space. Happy to say more if have follow-up questions, but if you want to learn more about all that, you can go here: https://www.axon.com/company/news/responsible-ai. And for something more recent, here: https://www.axon.com/company/news/ai-ethics-board-report.
I appreciate tasers in principle as less-lethal options but I worry about head injuries when I see tasered subjects fall. Has there been any research done in that area?
That’s a meaningful question as injuries from falls are likely the greatest risk. I currently estimate the risk on the order of about 1 fatal fall injury per 200,000 uses (i.e., 20 cases in 4 million field uses). The primary way to reduce the risk is through training—to avoid using a TASER weapon on people at elevated risk from falls. This includes people running, people who are at elevated heights, or who are operating a vehicle of some type. Unfortunately, the act of incapacitation itself does carry the risk of an uncontrolled fall, and while we try to mitigate that risk as best we can, it’s something we can reduce but not eliminate entirely.
Rick, I have read that tasers made for Police use have a setting called drive stun, which is designed to inflict pain in order to Force compliance. this sounds an awful lot like a torture device to me, what sorts of precautions are you considering to keep this from being abused?
From Wikipedia: A Las Vegas police document says “The Drive Stun causes significant localized pain in the area touched by the Taser, but does not have a significant effect on the central nervous system. The Drive Stun does not incapacitate a subject but may assist in taking a subject into custody.”[22] The UCLA Taser incident[23] and the University of Florida Taser incident[24] involved university police officers using their Taser’s “Drive Stun” capability (referred to as a “contact tase” in the University of Florida Offense Report).
Great question. One of the key limitations of today’s TASER weapons is that they only have 1 or 2 shots. So, if the officer deploys the weapon and misses the target and the subject attacks the officer, the officer can press the front of the weapon directly against the body of the subject and it will deliver an electric jolt from the front of the device. This is called a “Drive Stun” as the user must physically push the front of the weapon against the subject.
When we originally designed the device, this was a fall-back defensive measure. However, some agencies had policies where they would remove the cartridge from the front of the weapon and only use the front of the device to deliver a “drive stun.” Because it did not involve firing the darts, some agencies felt this was a lower use-of-force than firing the darts.
What we have seen in the field is that the use of the weapon in drive stun does not cause incapacitation, but rather only pain. So, most agencies have moved away from using the drive stun as a stand-alone capability. In our training guidelines, we recommend against using the drive stun as a primary use case because it is less effective than using the darts.
One powerful positive aspect of the drive stun: our newer weapons (X2 and TASER 7) allow the operator to display a warning arc across the front of the weapon without unloading the cartridges. In the UK, agencies have seen over 80% of situations resolved only by showing the arc display—which means they avoided the need to fire the darts or use any force other than the display of the electric arc.
Much of our training now focuses on how to de-escalate any situation, either through verbal skills or through the display of the arc in attempts to attain cooperation without deploying force. We have also recently deployed VR based training to teach officers better empathy for persons suffering from mental health issues such as autism or schizophrenia. (To see more about this, check out: https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/virtual-reality-training-tech-takes-cops-directly-minds/story?id=63125741)
On the topic of avoiding abuse, this was the primary driver for us to create body cameras—to record how police officers were using TASER weapons precisely to deter abuse, and hold officers accountable for their use. I’ll say more about that shortly!
What’s your view on Tranq darts as they seem to be your prime competitor?
Okay, I have to go long on this, because it’s a subject I’ve spent a lot of time on. So my TLDR response, for those who don’t want all the shop talk: I haven’t seen tranquilizer darts deployed by police or military anywhere in the world to date. They get a lot of play in Hollywood movies, but in the real world, I have only seen them used on animals.
The longer answer: If you want to stop someone without requiring physical injury, the best way to do it is to interfere with their command and control system—their nervous system. For all its complexity, the motor nervous system functions via two general mechanisms: electrical and chemical.
On the chemical front, we can think of nerve cells a bit like biological transistors. They switch on and off, passing information around the body. Where two nerve cells meet, the junction is called a synapse. At the synapse, chemicals are released from one nerve cell, and those chemicals stimulate the nerve cell on the other side. We can influence the nervous system through various chemicals, such as anesthetics or paralytic agents. If you have ever had surgery, you have experienced a chemical influence that shut down consciousness across your central nervous system.
There are a wide number of chemical agents we could use to impair someone’s nervous system, but there are only a few ways you could deploy them: primarily through injection or inhalation (or perhaps through skin contact or ingestion). For injection, we have tranquilizer darts, as you asked about, and they are used frequently for subduing wild animals, or large animals in zoos. Darts can inject a tranquilizing drug into the subject, usually using an intra-muscular pathway. But injecting a drug into the muscles is a slower pathway to effectiveness than injecting it directly into the veins — because it takes some time to absorb, which is why if you’ve seen lions on a nature documentary get hit with a dart, they can keep running around for a while before they collapsed. Of course, it’s essentially impossible to hit a moving target in their vein, meaning that instant incapacitation is out. It’s also difficult to control the dosage relative to body size and to predict allergic and other reactions. In fact, in conversations with animal control specialists, we have heard anecdotally that tranquilizer darts have a reasonably high fatality rate, on the order of 10%-20%.
For inhalation, there are nerve agents like nerve gases. Some can be combined with chemical formulations that may allow them to transmit transdermally (through the skin). Most nerve agents that have been created as weapons have been intended for lethal use. Nerve agents typically disrupt the motor nerves at the synapses by preventing the nerve cells from functioning properly. In theory, inhalants could be developed for the intended use of delivering a non-lethal effect. In 2002, Russian special forces tried this. They actually attempted to rescue 850 hostages from 40-50 armed Chechen rebels who had seized control of a Moscow theater in 2002. On the fourth day of the siege, Russian special forces pumped an aerosol anesthetic into the theater. The effects were neither immediate nor entirely safe. It killed a number of hostages and failed to incapacitate many terrorist fighters (apparently some had gas masks). In all, about 200 people died in the raid. (https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/29/world/hostage-drama-in-moscow-the-toxic-agent-us-suspects-opiate-in-gas-in-russia-raid.html)
So where does that leave us? Well, it brings us back to electricity. As I said, nerve cells are like transistors. While chemistry rules the day at the connections between nerve cells, it is electricity that transmits the signals along nerve fibers. We can impair the command and control systems of the human body by electrical means that stimulate motor nerves using the same mechanism of their normal function. And electricity has some real advantages. Its effects are immediate—there is no waiting for it to take effect. Dosing can be controlled electronically, allowing precise measurement and adjustment. Electricity also has a very large safety margin. The difference between the effective dose and a potentially lethal dose is more than 10-fold, meaning that we should be able to design a weapon that has enough electrical charge to be highly effective while maintaining a significant margin of safety to avoid dangerous unintended effects.
So for those reasons, I’m not particularly worried about tranquilizer darts, and I’m much more sanguine on electricity as the backbone of nonlethal weapons. Forgive the length, but this is something I’ve thought about a lot!
How would you go about transitioning away from lethal weapons for domestic law enforcement when criminals have access to similar weapons but don’t adhere to any principles?
The only way this will happen is if the non-lethal weapons reach a point where they are more effective at stopping the threat than a police pistol. At first, this might sound crazy: “What could be more effective than making somebody dead?” But the truth is that pistols don’t stop people immediately, every time. A bullet from a handgun causes traumatic tissue damage, and 30-50% of the time eventual death. However, an FBI analysis found that a lethal shot directly to the heart may not even stop someone from firing back for up to 14 seconds (the period of time it takes for the brain to shut down from lack of blood flow). During the adrenaline surge of a life-and-death fight, many people don’t even realize they have been shot until it’s over. The only way a bullet from a pistol causes and immediate incapacitation is a hit to the brain or upper spinal cord, which is pretty hard to do under stress.
An upside of electrical weapons is that they can provide a higher degree of incapacitation even if the hit is to a remote portion of the body. The downside is that, today, the ability to put two electrified darts onto the target and through the clothing is less reliable than using a traditional bullet from a police pistol that gives you 17 shots. But these are engineering problems—and I believe we can engineer solutions. Electric effects are more profound and immediate than bullet wounds outside of the central nervous system. We just need to meet or exceed the reliability levels of getting the effect delivered to the target.
Let me say one more thing about this: police officers don’t sign up to become police officers in order to take lives, and you’d be surprised at the negative after-effects of a shooting death on a police officer. There’s an assumption that just because they’re trained to use a firearm professionally that somehow the pain and trauma of taking a life disappears. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Most officers involved in a lethal force incident eventually leave policing, citing the lethal force incident as one of the key reasons–if not the key reason–why they left.
We need better nonlethal weapons, period. Even police were skeptical of our weapons in the early days—based, at least in part, on the principle behind your question–but now they tell us they want the best non-lethal options they can get. If they can deal with a situation without taking someone’s life, that’s the best-case scenario for everyone involved.
As an entrepreneur in the weapons industry, how hard did you have to search to get funding for your ideas? Or did you just fund it entirely yourself?
I’m running into this challenge myself, it seems there’s no clear path to find funding for a product when it involves weapons or firearms. Crowdfunding seems like the obvious answer in my mind but firearms and weapons products are banned on every major crowdfunding platform. I’ve dumped a lot of my own money into my own R&D but taking the product to market is the big leap I can’t afford.
We had to fund TASER entirely via friends and family. Venture capital was allergic to this space, partially because it didn’t easily fit into existing focus areas (such as the internet or health care), and partially because it is inherently controversial.
I believe this is a real problem, and why I challenge the tech industry to rethink their ban on supporting work or even advertising in this space. If we are going to solve the hardest problems facing our society, we need our brightest minds working on these problems, and investors supporting that work. It was a brutal process in creating TASER, and we drove my parents to the brink of financial ruin before turning the corner in 1999. The first outside capital we ever raised was in an IPO in 2001 – after we had already proven the business a success. I wish I had a better answer for you, but raising money in this space is insanely hard. Your best bet is to find angels who believe in your mission.
What are the plans for extending distance and accuracy for future models?
One of the ideas for long-range is to use drones to carry a TASER payload. See https://www.flipsnack.com/endofkillingcomic/the-end-of-killing/full-view.html for an online graphic novel depicting some of those scenarios. To be clear, the drone idea is still a concept, not a product. I put it in the book to get feedback about the idea, the risks, and the possible use cases. Would love your thoughts!
It’s a pretty well-known fact that the taser is named after the book Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle, which featured — at least, according to Wikipedia — Jack Cover’s ‘childhood hero’ Tom Swift.
Be honest: were you and the other early developers all on board with that as a name? Or did you think it was a bit of a strange choice to name it after a children’s book? How did that pitch go?
The name TASER was selected in the late 1960s. I was born in 1970, so the name was set well before I had any input. I would say, though, that when I first started to research the non-lethal weapons space, I thought the name TASER was an amazing brand name. It is powerful in connoting what the device is and does, and honestly, I was surprised when I learned it was an acronym.
Let me also add: Tom Swift was a huge inspiration for a lot of innovators and futurists, including, among others, Ray Kurzweil.
As much as I love it, what concerns me about the product is its high rate of failure. From memory I believe my force cites a 43% success rate upon firing.
43% sounds really low to me. I just saw statics out of the UK showing the success rate of the X2 is 96% when both darts make skin contact with a spread of 30 cm or greater. That number drops to 50% if one dart is in clothing only and the spread is less than 23 cm. So, it’s all about penetrating the clothing and getting good spread conditions. The new TASER 7 is in review for approval in the UK, and we believe it will significantly improve both accuracy and clothing penetration.
Has anyone ever tried to calculate how many lives have been spared already because tasers were used instead of bullets? What’s the next big leap in non-lethal alternatives to guns?
Our estimates put it at over 218,000 instances where TASER weapon was used when police were legally justified to use lethal force. This is based on a study out of Dallas that found in about 5.4% of TASER deployments, police were legally justified to use lethal force. We then multiply that rate by the estimated number of TASER uses in the field (now over 4 million) to get to an estimate.
O course, there is no way of knowing how many of those people would have been shot and either killed or seriously injured, but it’s a pretty good rough-order-of-magnitude estimate of the number of very high-risk situations resolved with a TASER weapon. (For more details on the estimates and the studies: https://www.axon.com/how-safe-are-taser-weapons)
Our Chief recently made the statement in a training that “if it’s not on camera, it didn’t happen.” Cameras can be very helpful in some cases but I feel that they also contribute to an erosion of public trust. No video can show the full picture of an incident and it allows for “armchair quarterbacking.” Graham v Conor specifically states that “a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” How do you feel about body cameras being used in direct conflict of that principle?
From my perspective, I think body cameras are really helping rebuild the public trust in police. Without them, all we would have are videos from third-party observers, who only tend to record the end of a confrontation without all of the context leading up to it.
Consider, for instance, the anger and emotion around the Michael Brown incident in Ferguson, Missouri. People formed very strong opinions very quickly, and many people assumed the cop executed an innocent man. The subsequent investigation largely supported the officers’ testimony that he was in the midst of a violent assault. (See this story for the details: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/03/16/lesson-learned-from-the-shooting-of-michael-brown/?utm_term=.8df35a2aaffd)
If Officer Wilson had been wearing a body camera, I think the facts of the case would have come to light much more quickly, and perhaps we would have seen less anger and distrust toward police. While a body camera cannot capture the exact perceptions happening in the mind of a police officer under stress, the impartial events captured on the camera can help us all get to the truth of the situation faster.
As an aside, I have experienced that most officers don’t want to wear a body camera when it is first proposed. After about 90 days in the field, most refuse to go on patrol without it—because they have already captured an incident that will protect them from a potential complaint.
Is there some level of electricity that would even bring a really strong/big crazy person on a ton of drugs down? Or would it have to be so high it would most likely kill most other people that are smaller or not on such drugs?
Thanks for the question! One advantage of electricity is that it has a large margin between the level we need for an effective dose and a potentially lethal dose. I believe that the output of the TASER 7 is optimized for maximum effect with maximum safety. Namely, we have looked at whether it would make sense to have multiple settings for the electrical output, and the answer is “no.” It would add one more level of confusion for the operator, and I don’t believe it would improve safety.
When TASER weapons fail to subdue a subject, it is almost always due to some circumstance such as a missed probe, a clothing disconnect that breaks the circuit, or a close spread of the darts that does not stimulate enough body mass. We are focusing on improving performance against these areas to ensure an even higher degree of effectiveness in the field.
I have seen many videos where a good TASER weapon connection incapacitates even the most violent offenders, whether they are on drugs or not. Here’s one example of a violent subject on meth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVKLulFG5hg
So, the real challenge is solving for effective reliable connection to the target more so than giving the user the ability to adjust electrical output.
