Reply #45: That's nice but... [View All]

My point was that the Taser and deaths related (not necessarily caused by, but played a factor in) to it are a miniscule number. As for excessive force, well:

In 1991 (latest stats I could find; these are all per 1000 officers):

Handcuff/Leg Restraints: 490.4
Chemical Agents (Mace or Cap-Stun): 36.2
Electrical Devices (TASER): 5.4

I realize this doesn't really answer your question re: the replacement of chemical agents (do to the age of the data). It does show that Tasers have been in use for at least 14 years, so that 0.02% I calculated is almost certainly significantly HIGHER than the real fatality rate of TASERS. (I didn't bother calculating it; the use of Tasers has grown, so a straight-line average is probably introducing as much error as it would eliminate at this point. Doing so would also the number in favor of my position.)

Back to your point: The rate (again, this data is 14 years old, I know) of complaints for excessive force was, "a rate of 11.3 complaints per 100,000 population". Furthermore, of the age 16+ population of the US in 1999 (209,350,600), 43,827,400 had contact with the police. Of these 43.8 million contacts, 421,700 resulted in the use of force, or ~1% of all police encounters result in the use of any force. So while I certainly would never condone the use of excessive force, you need to keep it in perspective here--you're looking at a slice of 1% of all police encounters. Granted, that can still add up; if--total guess here!--5% of all forceful encounters result in excessive force, that would still be 21,000 incidents. Correspondingly, 1% would be 4,200 incidents.

"The three numbers would prove or disprove this."

How? What do guns have to do with non-lethal force? Non-lethal weapons are a bridge between the use of melee weapons (hand-to-hand, baton, etc.) and deadly force. I don't believe they're supposed to replace either and have seen nothing to suggest they are being used as such.

"I'll bet the city would not put up with that many cops discharging weapons"

I assume by "weapons" you mean guns. And no, they wouldn't because guns tend to kill people much more frequently than tasers. Justifying the use of a TASER and a gun are two different arguments, thus rendering the comparison here of "abuse" rather difficult to make.

All data came from the Bureau of Justice Statistics:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ndcopuof.pdf

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cpp99.pdf

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ph98.pdf (I didn't use this one here, but you might find it interesting; it covers justifiable homicides by law enforcement .)