A Canadian anesthesiologist has attempted to revive the controversy about alleged risks associated with the prone positioning of arrestees, only to draw an emphatic rebuke from a team of experts on the subject. The physician is Alain Michaud, affiliated with a hospital in Roberval, Quebec. In published correspondence to the Journal of Forensic and Legal...Read More
In a new study that carries important caveats, a research team of criminologists has found that agencies with the most permissive CEW policies–allowing deployment against even passive resisters–have significantly lower rates of fatal officer-involved shootings than agencies with highly restrictive policies. “As the researchers themselves point out, this study does not necessarily prove that a...Read More
A man in England doused himself with gasoline in his apartment and then ignited the “petrol vapours” with a cigarette lighter and burned himself to death in a ball of fire. Two police officers armed with TASER Conducted Energy Weapons had been called to the scene by paramedics, but they were unable to deploy these...Read More
When allegations of excessive force involve use of a CEW, plaintiffs’ attorneys or their hired experts may raise a couple of stock arguments: The suspect was not able to comply with the officer’s commands because he could not recover promptly enough from the electronic “stunning”; When the suspect has died and an autopsy fails to...Read More
When a suspect tried to rabbit on foot from a drug interdiction stop in Louisiana and then refused to follow commands after officers caught him, he was zapped with a TASER three times before being successfully handcuffed–once via a probe to the arm and twice in drive-stun mode to the leg, for a total of...Read More
A blue ribbon panel of experts assigned to determine “what is known and not known about the physiological and health effects associated with CEW use” has presented five “key findings” in a recently issued report: “[W]hile fatal complications [from CEW deployment] are biologically plausible, they would be extremely rare.” When a sudden in-custody death does...Read More
For the first time, a research study of a “very large sample size of real-world subjects” who actually underwent police use of force has determined with precision how often deaths occur in conjunction with forceful encounters. The frequency, in contrast to the impression often conveyed by the media and activist “watchdog” organizations, is extremely minimal,...Read More
Another recent study led by Dr. Jeffrey Ho may be useful to police attorneys in getting civilian jurors to understand the true level of physiological stress inflicted on a subject by CEW broad-spread probe deployment. The stress impact of Tasing often becomes the alleged culprit in arrest-related death litigation and can easily be exaggerated in...Read More
A new study reported recently at an international emergency medical conference concludes that a variety of control measures, including Tasing and physical restraint, will not affect a suspect’s ability to accurately perform a standardized field sobriety test. The issue arose from litigation in New York State involving a suspected drunk driver who ran from police...Read More
