Have you ever noticed when you buy a new car, or hat, or bike, that you begin to notice it everywhere. Sometimes you see it in the media. Like I remember a whole rash of “pitbull” stories. You know the sort, “Child horribly maulled by vicious dog” etc, etc. The media tends to get on these topics and then rides them for all they are worth. So it is with tasers.
CBC just reported that a man dies in a Dartmouth jail after being tasered by corrections officers. There is no word yet as to why they zapped him, or who he is, what he is in jail for, just that they killed him.
Two things strike me as bothersome about this event. The first is that they are getting the RCMP to investigate. To me that is like getting the fox to investigate the hen house. There should be an absolutely independent investigator anytime something like this happens with any sort of law enforcement.
Second is that the coroner will determine if there are any pre-existing conditions that contributed to his death. That is like asking if the guy who got drunk, got behind the wheel and wrapped his car around a tree had an eye condition that contributed to the accident. This is a blatant attempt to shift the blame. “Well if he didn’t have that heart condition he wouldn’t have died when we tasered him!”