Tasers and the killing of Quilem Registre

October 24, 2007
Dan Delmar, The Suburban (St. Laurent, Quebec)

Two deaths in the past week at the hands of Canadian police forces are highlighting the dangers of taser use.

Quilem Registre, 38, died at Sacré-Coeur Hospital early Thursday after being electrocuted as many as six times by Montreal police officers who were trying to subdue him. He was stopped for suspicion of driving under the influence after smashing into three parked cars in St. Michel. A spokesperson for the coroner’s office later confirmed Registre had cocaine in his system.

“It’s as if he was hit by lightning,” a member of the Registre family told the press last week.

Sixteen people have died after being tasered in Canada since 2003; more than 150 in the U.S. since 2001. A Polish immigrant who witnesses said was drunk died within minutes of being zapped by Vancouver police last week as well.

The deaths in both Canada and the U.S. were immediately followed with reassurance from police and Taser International, the weapon’s manufacturer, that they are a safe alternative to deadly force. There haven’t been any deaths attributed directly to taser use as of yet.

“We’re 59-0 in court. That’s a great record because we can get rid of the junk science in a courtroom setting,” said Steve Tuttle, the vice-president of Taser International. “It’s the safer alternative compared to a baton, canine bite, beanbag round or even kicking someone to the ground with a tackle.”

But “all the evidence is not in,” said Dr. Corey Slovis, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University Medical Centre. “Anyone who is completely sure about the safety of tasers is being intellectually dishonest.”

Slovis sent The Suburban extensive research that shows less than one percent of suspects tasered suffer significant injuries. But American police officers whose actions on which the results are based delivered, on average, one or two 50,000-volt shocks to each suspect, compared to the six Registre reportedly suffered at the hands of Montreal police.

“The more discharges that occur, the more likely of an adverse outcome,” Slovis said. “And when you look at taser deaths from excited delirium, often cocaine, alcohol and other drugs are involved.”

“Excited delirium” is not a medical condition, but rather a term police typically use to describe suspects who are hopped up on stimulants and out of control. Registre would have fallen into that category, as would Robert Bagnell, Roman Andreichikov and Clayton Alvin Willey, to name a few. They are all Canadians who have died in the last five years after snorting cocaine and subsequently being tasered by police.

Slovis points to a recent study that tested the weapons on 13 pigs and found that their heart rates soared to 300 beats per minute. All were found to later have cardiac arrhythmia and one died. Since cocaine and some other drugs also cause a person’s heart rate to skyrocket, it’s possible, Slovis says, that the combination could be lethal for some and more research on a possible link is needed.

“Tasers are safe when used appropriately, but when you use them there is an inherent danger that you have to be prepared for,” Slovis said. “We make sure that we have emergency responders available as soon as someone is tased. We make sure that if we see someone with excited delirium, that we treat them as a suspect under arrest, but also a patient who needs medical care.”

Instead of reaching for the taser immediately when dealing with suspects high on stimulants, Slovis suggests officers wait for backup and swarm the person once enough officers and first responders are on site. They can then restrain and medically sedate suspects with tranquilizers like Atavan and safely take them into custody.

With more evidence suggesting the weapons are not as flawless as they are made out to be, heavy-handed police officers may have to revert to pre-taser conflict resolution tactics, like dialogue and negotiation.

University of Florida student Andrew Meyer, presumably clean and sober, was recently zapped by police after he asked Senator John Kerry a couple of tough questions about the 2004 election at a school conference. The entire incident was filmed and Meyer became a celebrity on YouTube, a video-sharing website.

The death of public discourse at one school campus, however, pales in comparison to the death of a loved one. Registre’s family is taking Montreal police to court. After his death, the Quebec chapter of Amnesty International also called for the complete banning of taser guns. The Sûreté du Québec has taken over the investigation and is not commenting on the case.

The use of taser guns is being reviewed by both the RCMP and the Ministère de la Sécurité Publique, who commissioned an expert panel that concluded an outright ban was unnecessary. On Monday, they convened the media at the Police Academy in Nicolet where a demonstration of the taser was carried out in front of cameras. In similar demonstrations shown on television newscasts across North America, the volunteers being tasered were seemingly healthy and certainly not under the influence of stimulants like cocaine, nor were they in an agitated state — a far cry from many of the suspects on whom the weapon will actually be used.

Tasers safe? New study sparks more debate

October 8, 2007
ABC News

Dr. Corey Slovis, professor and chairman of emergency medicine at Vanderbilt University, says other recent research suggests that the weapons may be dangerous for some.

"I think that Tasers in normal subjects are safe," he says, "but I am concerned that emerging evidence may show that they may change the underlying heart rhythm of individuals who do not have a normal conduction system -- such as those using cocaine, those who are dehydrated, agitated, hypoxic or those taking anti-psychotics."

While Slovis says he once concurred with the conclusions presented in the current research regarding Taser safety, he now harbors some concerns, many of which stem from recent research on pigs.

In the research Slovis cites, the heart activity of the pigs was studied as they were being zapped with a Taser. What this study showed was that the heart rates of the animals jumped to more than 130 beats per minute at the time they were shocked -- a finding that leads Slovis to wonder whether the same kind of dangerous, racing rhythm occurs in human hearts as well.

"Tasers save lives, but Tasers are not perfectly safe," he says. "A Taser should not be used unless force is absolutely necessary. I am no longer convinced that Tasers are blameless."

If there is any point on which all agree, it is that Tasers are weapons -- ones that should be used only in appropriate situations. "These are not 100 percent safe," study investigator Dr. William Bozeman says. "These are weapons and must be treated as such."

Tasers can be safe, but oversight is crucial

February 19, 2006
By Robert Davis, USA TODAY

Tasers, the controversial stun guns used by police to subdue suspects, are safe when used with restraint, a coalition of emergency-medicine doctors says.

But even so, the doctors, who are tackling this issue for the first time, said in a consensus statement Saturday that oversight programs are needed to ensure that Tasers are used properly.

Tasers, and similar devices known as conductive energy devices, incapacitate by delivering a five-second jolt of electricity. They have been under fire because people have died after being subdued.

Amnesty International USA, which monitors Taser deaths, said last year that 103 people in the United States and Canada died between June 2001 and March 2005 after contact with a Taser. The organization charged that there is widespread abuse, that in some cases, Taser use is torture.

But the Metropolitan Municipalities EMS Medical Directors Consortium, doctors who oversee emergency medical services in 30 major cities, said the devices, if used appropriately, are low risk compared with other options, such as guns and batons or police dogs.

Proper use, the doctors say, is delivering as few shocks as possible, and only when the officer or anyone else present is at risk of injury. The consortium based its findings on a review of medical literature, autopsy reports and police practices. "We don't want people to get hurt or have cardiac arrest," says Paul Pepe, Dallas' EMS medical director, who heads the consortium.

The group says it hopes every community using Tasers will follow the recommendations.

More than 8,500 U.S. law enforcement agencies use Tasers, says spokesman Steve Tuttle of manufacturer Taser International Inc.

The doctors are concerned because Tasers are used differently in every city. Some police departments stun a few people a month; others 20 to 30 people a day. "Some cities are more liberal with their use, and the devices are considered more of a behavior-modification tool," says Gary Vilke, San Diego County EMS medical director.

The group says every city should create a registry to track and scrutinize Taser use. "If you are not recording Taser discharges, you are not requiring responsibility," says Corey Slovis, Nashville's EMS medical director. This step will encourage officers to think more before they zap, he says.

Usually, delivering a single, five-second shock is enough to get somebody's full attention and compliance, Vilke says.

But some of the people most likely to be shocked more than once — those so unruly that they're dangerous to themselves and others — may also be suffering from a condition called excited delirium. Many of the people who have died following repeated Taser shocks have suffered the syndrome, which the doctors say makes people wild and uncontrollable.

The syndrome, which is associated with anything from a drug overdose to a severe psychiatric illness, can cause metabolic changes that put the person at higher risk of sudden cardiac arrest.

"The real cause of death in some of these cases is excited delirium," says Kathleen Schrank, EMS medical director in Miami. "These are not people to be put in the back of a police car and taken to jail."

"You could basically say, 'Boo!' next to these people and they would be at risk of dying," says James Dunford, medical director of San Diego emergency medical services. "We don't know everything, but we do know that these people are dying unrelated to the Taser."

"These are the people for which there is almost no other options than shooting them," Dunford says.

The doctors say Tasers are safe when used with restraint, reducing the number of serious injuries from police batons and guns. But they say guidelines are needed so that police and medics can work together to prevent Taser-related injuries and deaths.

Nashville is launching a new type of response. In coming weeks, when a 911 dispatcher or a police officer on the scene suspects that an unruly person is suffering from excited delirium, he or she will call out paramedics, more police officers and a police sergeant.

In the perfect response, Slovis says, paramedics would stand ready with an injection to calm the person. As the Taser shock is administered, the police officers would restrain the person — they can touch the person without getting shocked themselves — and the medic would move in to inject the tranquilizer.

But even after a person is subdued, risks remain. Another medical problem that the coalition found was positional asphyxia, in which people stop breathing when they are restrained and placed on their stomachs, making it impossible to take full, deep breaths.

"You can't sit on people and you can't put pressure on their chest wall," says Slovis. "As soon as you are suppressing their ventilation, you put them at risk."

The coalition also says cities must reconsider where they put Taser use on the police department's acceptable-use-of-force scale. Some cities have used Tasers on anyone who does not comply with police commands.

Dallas police reduced the number of people being shocked by telling officers that some physical threat has to be present. "The officers have to feel that they are threatened or that the public is at risk," says Lt. Robert Owens of the city police department.

He trains his officers to recognize the danger of repeated shocks. "The people who died got an average of 25 seconds. That's five cycles on average," he says. But the Taser prevents serious injuries when used properly, he says.

The other option on a police officer's belt is a baton. "People who will not be controlled, your only option is to beat them up if you don't have any other tools," he says. If an officer has to fight, he says, "you're going to get hurt and they are going to get hurt."