BLM Baton Rouge police fatally shot man

[The Merg]

It calls into question the honesty of the department who apparently claimed that the tazer wasn't used. You're right that it doesn't change what happened much. I honestly don't care if it was used or not. I care very much if they get their shit straight before releasing statements that are easy to verify or disprove.

I don't doubt that releases now will have errors and mistakes in them. People are demanding more and more for information to be released as soon as possible. With that, I understand that there are definitely going to be mistakes in the information that is released.

If you're going to get snarky, can you at least be correct? Although certainly less lethal than guns, how would "non-lethal" be an accurate description of devices that have killed 600+ people over the last 15 years?

Tasers were generally considered to be "non-lethal". Many departments have changed it to "less lethal" now and that is due to the fact that if used incorrectly it can cause severe injury or even death.

As for the statement that it has caused 600+ deaths in the last 15 years, that is not exactly accurate. Police Tasers are set for 5 second bursts. If used correctly, it will not lead to someone's death. Obviously, if you hold the trigger down to bypass the 5 second bursts or just keep repeatedly doing 5 second bursts, you are going to have issues.

With regard to the deaths, in a vast majority of them, the subjects that have died after being tased have suffered from some sort of drug psychosis, such as cocaine psychosis. It's been shown that in most cases, the subjects would probably have died anyways even if they had not been tased. Tasers just seem to be associated with this due to the fact that cops will normally use the Taser in situations where they are dealing with a subject hyped up on drugs and is not controllable.

- Merg