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Listen to the recording on KUOW:- Taser safety 3

Steve Share talking to Steve Tuttle

Conducted energy devices are designed to induce voluntary muscle contractions, causing the subject to be temporarily incapacitated.  These devices include traditional stun-guns; projectile weapons, sold under the name Tasers and Stinger hand-held projectile stun guns.  The technology is sometimes called the electro muscular disruption.  That's from the National Institute of Justice web-page, the research development and evaluation Agency of the US Department of Justice, they're looking at the impact use of these conducted energy devices.  So are we this hour on Weekday.

Steve Tuttle is one of the founders of Taser International. He's a company spokesperson, an expert on the Tasers' technology, he joins us on the phone.  Steve Tuttle thank you for talking to us. 

Good to be here, thank you.

And Monica Dina is Amnesty International's Western regional director.  Thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

Steve Tuttle first I read that you've been tased any number of times, we heard - Clark Kimerer talk about being tased, describe the the the sensation.

Well for me it's somewhat similar to having your funny-bone hit throughout your body, about eighteen times per second.  So it's not real painful to me, it's just very disconcerting, coz you can't control yourself during that five second application.  When someone goes back and tries to describe the pain, I try and tell them, was it you know burning, was it like a hammer, what did it feel like, and when someone really when push comes to shove have a hard time really describing as - what the pain feels like, to me it felt really really similar to a funny-bone, which to me is - doesn't feel great,  but eighteen times per second throughout the entire body,  and I've done this with every product that's been on the street, and I was involved with a lot of medical testing early on in the nineteen nineties.

I read that  in an interview that you said that they can be adjusted, they can tickle all the way up to being very painful.

Well that's - that's when you're changing the waveform.  You can't adjust these in the field, this was the medical testing that I went through, to try and find the right waveform that would cause the most incapacitation.  You can actually go back to the 1970s when the Tasers first came to market, and they worked about eighty-six percent of the time, and the reason they didn't work the other times is that someone who was motivated could actually fight through the pain.  So it was more of a pain compliance tool back then.  We've moved away from the pain compliance side because if you can fight through pain you don't really have an effective weapon. 

So, what we did was, when we went back to the medical experiments, we tried to dial in what felt, in terms of what was the best incapacitation rate and we think we've found that with the X26, we've really maximised that that electrical wave form to be very efficient, safe, but cause incapacitation  for about five seconds, and you do recover instantly from that.

With no after effects?

No after effects really, other than that you may be dazed, I mean if obviously if you didn't know this was coming it would be rather disconcerting to you.  Most of the people here in the company, the five hundred and fifty, I don't, I know very few people that haven't done it.  The entire executive management's done it, multiple times.  My wife has even gone through it, a lot of spouses have done it.  Even the vendors that we work for, or that work for us.  The people selling us the electronics, will actually go through the experience, because they know, they have to know that the electronics they're providing, may have to save a life.

This isn't something that you can take back to Best Buy and say, well this didn't work, I want to get my money back.  This has to save a police officer's life and potentially a suspect's life.   So, they'll come in here to really appreciate what the effects are, and they'll take an application themselves.  Not to mention we have over six hundred thousand volunteer exposures from all types of law enforcement officers; from cadets that are very healthy, all the way up to the ages of fifties and sixties that are not very healthy quite frankly, so we've seen the whole gamut of what it looks like in terms of an application.

You said that some people can work through the pain, though I know you don't know about a specific incidence, but explain something in terms of the - of what's going on.  We just had an incident yesterday, where a man was on the highway, swinging his belt, tearing off his clothes, an officer tasered him, he didn't stop and in the end the officer was - got free from the man, and then shot him.  What, what's happening that somebody can be tasered and yet not be stopped by it?

Well let's go backwards here.  What I was talking about with pain is the original tasers back in the seventies. 

Right.

And you can fight through the painful effects like you can through a baton strike, you can, like through cans of pepper spray.  We haven't met Superman yet that can fight through the taser yet, it's not a magic bullet.  Some of the things that can go awry, in terms of ineffective use, the clothing may have been too thick, the energy can only go through 2 inches of clothing, so if you've got a thick jacket on during cold weather, that might defeat the Taser.   You may have only one of the two probes actually hit the subject, which means you can't complete the electrical circuit,  and you'll do nothing to that person.  It's an all or nothing thing.  If it's not working on somebody, there's a reason why it's ineffective.   It could be a miss, could be the clothing, and things like that.  So again, we have not met Superman, that can take a full application and fight through that.

You have had some people who have sued Taser International, saying that they had been, there had been wrongful deaths or injured, and you folks have - respond in kind with pretty strong litigation.  Why are you doing that?

Well, one we're a publicly traded company.  We have a fiduciary to protect the company.  Number two, the science is on our side.  There's a lot of junk science out there, and the nice thing about going to court, there is some benefit(s) to that, you can kick the junk scientists and you can get rid of them.  And you let the medical research and the findings speak for themselves in court. And that's why we have that sixty-one to no record in terms of dismissals and turned even jury trials in our favour, when it comes to product liability cases.  And I think that speaks volumes in terms of the safety and in terms of what we've done in the past, in terms of the research. both that we've paid for, as well as independently verified

You also have a former employee, who's who's suing Taser, saying that she's been intimidated by Taser.  I don't know if you can - you're going to tell me that you can't comment on ongoing litigation but -

Yes, I won't comment on that one.  I can say that we don't intimidate people.

It was in the Toronto Star I think - had an article about - about her - her concerns.  What are you - what are your responses to what Canada is now saying? That following the - the death in Vancouver they're reassessing the use of the Taser.  They want to maybe come up with new rules.  Did you, have you looked at their rules before and seen what they were doing?

Yeah in fact I was the one that was involved in legalising that product in Canada many moons ago, and the RCMP did the initial research with Victoria PD and the Ottowa police services.   When we went to Canada we had some explosive growth, and there were a lot of controversies occurred, and back in August of 2005 the Canadian police research centre came up with a study regarding excited delirium cases in custody deaths, and that really put to bed the safety issues for there for quite some time, and with the deaths that occurred tragically up in Vancouver that has reignited kind of a media hysteria up there, in terms of really blaming the Taser, when medical examiners have not ruled on the cause of death in those three cases that have really ignited things up there.

But you have to take a step backwards, and not one medical examiner in Canada, has ruled a Taser as a contributing factor or a cause of death, and that's generally the case in the United States in the vast majority of  cases.  So what's happening now, is something similar that happened  to us in the United Sates in 2005, and we're in an ongoing controversy, and that debate is healthy.  It's - it's something that Canada needs to have, because it's reached this - this high level of controversy, they need to have this, they need to flush out and find agencies that maybe have weak policies, or different training, coz Taser International will support strong policies and good training, they go hand in hand.  And that's why we've been so out there with the accountability measures, with our Dataport recorder, our Taser Cam.  Those things all come into play, and many of these agencies do exactly what Seattle does, they review every single Taser case, because it is controversial,  they want to make sure that the learning curve isn't as steep as it can be. 

We're revolutionising law enforcement, I think people kind of forget that we've really revolutionized what police officers put on their belt today.  We're the first addition to the belt in a long time, and there was no more room on that belt for a Taser, and yet four thousand police departments put one on every single patrol officer out there, out of the twelve thousand agencies that deploy Tasers.   So there is a bit of a revolution going on.  Revolutions come with pain,  they come with learning curves, and we are, we're certainly looking at some of these instances in terms of policies and training, and we want to be out there in the forefront helping out.

Tasers save lives.

There is absolutely no doubt, absolutely these products save lives.  They have saved countless injuries, and I think that's another issue that's really forgotten here is that police officers aren't paid to get hurt.  And when they use batons, when they use fists and kicks they are likely to get hurt themselves, and again, they're not paid to get hurt.  So, we've found a tool here, that's kind of been the missing tool in the tool box.  Again, it's not the magic bullet.  You'll never see us say that this is risk free, use of force is dangerous, we acknowledge that, and there are things that can go awry with Tasers, you can hit someone in the eye with this product, that would be very dangerous for the cornea, but that being said, you have to take a look at what tools the police have.  If they want to use fists and kicks, people are going to get hurt.   When they use batons, I don't think anybody here that has a child would like to have their child hit with a baton strike.  It's pretty bad.  I have been hit by a baton, it's miserable.  I've gone through pepper spray, that's a miserable experience.  The Taser is very - it's not a fun five seconds, let me tell you that first and foremost, but for the five seconds, when you compare that to a pepper spray - pepper spray experience of forty minutes, to a baton strike or a bean bag round or a canine bite that will last for weeks, hands down, this is the safer alternative, for use of force, and we know we're saving lives.

Steve Tuttle is one of the founders of tater - Taser International.  Taser International, he's a company spokesperson, expert on the Tasers' technology

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About the transcript: (E&OE) This transcript was created by Inhand.de for the Learn English Network. It has been published here with the permission of KUOW who own all copyright.

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