Tasers: lethal weapons

We have seen the appalling and shocking footage this week of a man being tasered in Nottingham. And last Friday a man in Australia died after being tasered. The taser used on Antonio Galeano was fired 28 times! He died 15 minutes later. And frankly I cannot imagine the agony the man experienced having something like 50,ooo volts fired into him….

Recently, an estimated $10million  was allocated for taser guns in New South Wales. And activists have called for the ban in light of this recent death. They are lethal weapons. Globally, cops are showing themselves (again) as brutal violent bullies enforcing their brand of thuggery and abuse. The violence displayed by the cops dished out against people who are on the margins of society and  who experience great oppression reflects the cops reactionary political agenda.

In addition to being dangerous, Tasers will be used disproportionately on the already marginalised. Last year’s review of Tasers by NSW Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, found that the weapon has most commonly been used against people with mental health issues. “What a disgrace given the inadequate funding for mental health in this country”, said Chris Williams, Socialist Alliance convener in Wollongong.

‘Research by Amnesty International shows that Tasers have been used by police officers against children, the mentally ill and the physically disabled. They have been used against people who are restrained. This money should be spent on services to assist the mentally and physically disabled, not on potentially lethal weapon that has been proven to be used on them.

There is no independent research showing that Tasers are safe but there is a lot of hard evidence that they kill. How many people will have to die before Tasers are banned? They must be stopped from being used!’Jess Moore, Resistance organiser in Wollongong concluded.

Another example of tasers being used for thuggery comes from the USA. Recently a 15 year old teenager from Michigan, Brett Elder, died after being tasered.

Elders’s aunt, Cindy Hender, witnessed the police taser attack. According to AFP she said Elder “was flopping around and looked like a fish out of water … His whole body was bent over.”

According to Amnesty International, Elder’s death is the second death of a minor from taser use in 2009. A total of 351 people have died after being tasered in the US since its introduction in June 2001. Amnesty International’s Angela Wright told AFP, “Taser guns are not the safe weapons they are portrayed to be”.

Tasers are described as a ’less lethal weapon’ along with plastic bullets (well, tell that to the nationalist community in the north of Ireland who experienced only too well the so-called ‘less lethal weapon’ … symbolic of bloody brutal repression under British occupation!)

Campaign groups have amassed a wealth of evidence on Taser-related deaths. Amnesty International highlighted the fact that 346 people in the US had died since 2001 after being Tasered by police.

Despite this, the weapons were passed for use by all British police forces in December.

Since then the use of the potentially lethal devices has largely been investigated by the forces themselves, with only instances of death or serious injury being passed to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

The IPCC has now stated that it will automatically handle all instances of complaints deriving from Taser use.

So it will be a case of not if but when some thuggish violent cop(s) tasers to death someone in this country…

Advertisement