Madness : Even School Children Are Being Pepper-Sprayed and Shocked with Tasers |

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  • Madness: Even School Children Are Being Pepper-Sprayed and Shocked with Tasers | | AlterNet
    http://www.alternet.org/story/153536/madness%3A_even_school_children_are_being_pepper-sprayed_and_shocked_with_

    Cruel punishments were also disproportionately dished out to black students, who during that same school year made up 35.6 percent of abused students but only 17.1 percent of the nationwide student population.

    According to a 2008 Amnesty International report, there were 351 Taser-related deaths in the United States between June 2001 and August 2008, an average of some four deaths per month. Moreover, about 90 percent of the victims were unarmed and did not appear to pose any serious threat. In Amnesty’s US 2010 report, the Taser-related death toll had increased to 390. Taser-related deaths have continued to garner headlines, most recently in August when three people died in Taser-related incidents over a single weekend.

    The company claims their product is safe even for kids. But a team of cardiologists at the University of California, San Francisco, recently discovered that existing Taser-related safety research “may be biased due to ties to the devices’ manufacturer, Taser International Inc.” Of the 50 studies analyzed, report the authors, “the likelihood of a study concluding Taser devices are safe was 75 percent higher when the studies were either funded by the manufacturer or written by authors affiliated with the company, than when studies were conducted independently.” The findings are striking:

    Nearly all (96 percent) of the Taser-supported articles concluded the devices were either “unlikely harmful” (26 percent) or “not harmful” (70 percent). In contrast, of the 27 studies not affiliated with Taser International, 55 percent found that Tasers are either “unlikely harmful” (29 percent) or “not harmful” (26 percent).

    The most recent analysis of Taser use, released by the New York Civil Liberties Union in October, found that 40 percent of the state’s Taser incidents “involved at-risk subjects, such as children, the elderly, the visibly infirm and individuals who are seriously intoxicated or mentally ill.” Even more alarming, over a quarter “involved shocks directly to subjects’ chest area, despite explicit warnings by the weapon’s manufacturer that targeting the chest can cause cardiac arrest.”