Summary
"TASER electronic control devices (ECDs), manufactured by TASER International, Inc. in Scottsdale, Arizona, have become a popular tool for law enforcement. TASER International has sold more than 710,000 devices to 16,880 agencies in 107 countries. Although other manufacturers produce comparable types of electro-shock weapons, TASER products are the most commonly used in the United States and worldwide. Unfortunately, more than 870 people worldwide have died unexpectedly following law enforcement officers’ uses of TASER ECDs. Currently, there is no research definitively establishing a causal relationship between the use of an ECD and the death of a person exposed to it. However, some recent studies suggest that application of TASER technology is responsible for sudden unexpected deaths. The ever increasing number of deaths following application of TASER ECDs and the growing number of cases wherein a coroner or medical examiner attribute the use of an ECD as a cause of death or as a significant contributing factor to the death raise legitimate concerns about the safety threshold of the devices. Researchers have proposed and tested many theories of why people die following the application of ECDs, including direct electro-stimulation of cardiac muscle, interference with breathing, and metabolic changes resulting in acidosis. Thus far, human model experiments have produced no evidence to support these theories. Another theory, which has recently appeared in the literature, has received no empirical testing—the theory of high-risk groups. High-risk group theory postulates that elderly people, young children, people with pre-existing cardiovascular disease, people with pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, people under the influence of drugs (amphetamines, cocaine, lysergic acid diethylamide, marijuana, opiates, and/or phencyclidine) or with a history of drug abuse, people intoxicated from alcohol or with a history of chronic alcohol abuse, people under extreme psychological distress or who exhibit signs of excited delirium, people who are mentally ill or taking psychotropic medications, people subjected to repeated or multiple applications, and pregnant women are at a heightened risk of serious injury or death following application of a TASER ECD. What the current literature fails to consider is that the same physiological attributes that are presumed to render members of high-risk groups more vulnerable to serious injury or death following application of a TASER ECD might render these same people more vulnerable to serious injury or death regardless of the tactics or weapons that officers use to subdue them. If that hypothesis is correct, the use of TASER ECDs on people in high-risk groups might be irrelevant to arrest-related sudden deaths. The potential for fatal adverse effects on high-risk groups when using other less lethal tactics and methods versus the potential for fatal adverse effects on high-risk groups following the use of a TASER ECD is currently unknown. Thus far, research has not directly addressed the question. By examining autopsy and toxicology reports of the deceased and comparing differences in the physiological attributes of arrest-related sudden deaths, one can then estimate whether a difference exists in high-risk group attributes between deaths proximate to the use of a TASER ECD and deaths not involving the use of an ECD. An arrest-related sudden death is a death that occurs following a collapse within 24 hours after the initial arrest or detention. The death must be unexpected, must not be the result of trauma or injury that a layperson could readily discern needs medical attention, and must follow a sudden change in clinical condition or the beginning of symptoms from which the deceased does not recover. It does not include police shootings and suicides. This work was a retrospective open source research study of publicly available autopsy and toxicology reports designed to compare the physiological attributes of high-risk group theory to two groups of arrest-related sudden deaths, TASER ECD-proximate deaths and non-ECD deaths. A non-proportional stratified random sample of 300 publicly available reports was obtained for study and coded for physiological attributes of high-risk groups. Descriptive and inferential quantitative statistics, specifically Student’s t-test, Pearson’s chi-square, and bivariate logistic regression (logit) were used to analyze the data and compare attributes for any significant differences observed. Additionally, crisp set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA) was used to examine whether any configuration of causal conditions described a unique path to arrest-related sudden death following application of a TASER ECD. No statistically significant difference in the frequencies of non-ECD deaths and ECD-proximate deaths was observed in several variables of high-risk group theory: cardiovascular disease, presence of drugs, history of drug abuse, alcohol present, and presence of psychotropic medications. ECD-proximate deaths were more likely than non-ECD deaths in cases involving excited delirium. ECD-proximate deaths were more likely than non-ECD deaths in cases involving cocaine and in cases involving a history of chronic alcohol abuse. Insufficient data existed to calculate any difference in frequencies of deaths involving pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators. The two remaining tenets of high-risk group theory, multiple applications and pregnancy, were not examined in this study." -- Page xviii - xxi.