Healthy 29 Year Old Man Suffers Taser Death In Minnesota

Mark Backlund, a 29 year old man, reported by his family to be in good health, has died after being tasered by Minnesota police for failing to cooperate after crashing his vehicle. The official line is that "more study" is needed to determine the cause of death. No word on whether officials will consider the remote possibility that the taser blast might have had something to do with it.

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Hearing Impaired Man Tasered In His Own Bathroom

The focus of this blog is autism but I have for some time expressed my concerns about the use of Tasers. One reason for my concern is that some people die after being Tasered. Another is that, despite the fact the very real danger faced by policer officers every day they are on duty, many Taser victims are stunned simply because they were "non-compliant" with verbal commands. In the Vancouver tragedy the gentleman who was non-compliant, (if he was, the video doesn't even clearly show non-compliance), did not understand English. Some autistic persons, with limited communication skills and behavioral deficits have also been Tasered. A recent episode involving a hearing impaired man in Wichita, Kansas again illustrates the tendency of police forces to Taser citizens for non-compliance.

KWCH reports that Donnell Williams, a hearing impaired gentleman in Wichita, Kansas had just gotten out of his bathtub and was wearing only a towel around his waist when he saw police pointing Tasers at him. Williams, getting out of the tub, was not wearing his hearing aid without which he is essentially deaf. The police were responding to a false shooting call and were allegedly worried for their own safety when the towel wearing man refused to obey their commands to show his hands. Williams said ""I ain't never been so scared, I kept going to my ear yelling that I was scared. I can't hear! I can't hear!"

The officers who Tasered the hearing impaired gentleman in his own bathroom have apparently apologized.

autism

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Knipstrom Death - POSSIBILITY That Police Use of Force Could Have Been A Factor

When did Canada become a country in which police forces killed so many of its citizens and visitors? And when did the police in this country depart from the common sense and plain language which forms the currency of every day life in this country?

Canada.com reports in RCMP to probe death of B.C. man days after Taser arrest that RCMP in British Columbia will probe the death this morning of Robert Thurston Knipstrom, 36, four days after he was pepper-sprayed, Tasered and hit with a baton in an altercation with police.

A police release announcing the probe stated that ""Because of the possibility that the police use of force could have been a factor in the individual's medical injuries, the RCMP began the in-custody-related investigative protocols from the very beginning,"

A 36 year old man dies 4 days after being pepper-sprayed, Tasered and hit with a baton in an altercation with police and the official police statement talks about the possibility that police use of force could have been a factor in his injuries? No kidding.

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UN Declares Tasers A Form Of Torture

The Ottawa Citizen and 24.com have reported yesterday's announcement by the United Nations Committee Against Torture that Tasers constitute a form of torture AND that Taser's, notwithstanding Taser company statements and police authority assurances to the contrary, do in fact kill. The UN Committee Against Torture comments are contained in its response to Portugal:

Portugal

Following its consideration of the fourth periodic report of Portugal ... The Committee was worried that the use of TaserX26 weapons, provoking extreme pain, constituted a form of torture, and that in certain cases it could also cause death, as shown by several reliable studies and by certain cases that had happened after practical use.

The Citizen article states that about 275 people in the United States have died after being Tasered and cites information from Amnesty International that coroners have listed the Taser jolt as a contributing factor in more than 30 of those deaths.

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And Still ANOTHER TASER Death

Amnesty International is again calling for a moratorium on police TASER use after the second death by a victim of a TASER jolt in Canada in the past week.

I wonder if an official investigation will conclude THIS TIME that the TASER jolt which immediately preceded the man's death might have contributed to that death?

Nah. It can't be anything that obvious. There must be another explanation.

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