Is 'non-lethal' taser deadly?

December 1, 2004
By PHUONG CAT LE AND HECTOR CASTRO
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS

Willie Smith was high on cocaine the night he pinned his wife down and told her he wanted to get the devil out of her. She broke free, crawled out of their bedroom window and called for help. Auburn police say that when they came and tried to arrest Smith, he resisted. So officers used a Taser, subduing him with 50,000 volts of electricity. When Smith finally emerged from the apartment, he was rolled out on a gurney -- hogtied, face down with his hands and ankles cuffed behind him, his wife said. She could hear him whimpering. The 48-year-old man had a heart attack in the ambulance. He died in the hospital two days later.

Willie Smith was the third person in Washington state to die after being shocked with a Taser. Smith was the third person in Washington to die after being shocked with a Taser; others died in Silverdale and Olympia. Nationwide, there have been 69 such deaths since 2000, raising concerns about a new breed of electric shock devices in widespread use by law enforcement.

In dozens of cases nationwide, autopsies showed the victims died of a heart attack, cocaine intoxication or underlying causes such as heart disease. But autopsies in at least five cases found Tasers were a contributing factor in the deaths.

The company that manufactures Tasers insists they are safe and non-lethal, and some medical professionals think some of the deaths may be the result of a combination of physical restraint and drug-induced agitation. But Amnesty International and other groups say such deaths are troubling and shouldn't be overlooked as more law enforcement officers use Tasers in a wide variety of situations.

In a report issued yesterday, Amnesty International said Tasers couldn't be ruled out as a factor in seven of 74 deaths in the United States and Canada it asked a forensic pathologist to review. That underscores the need to ban such non-lethal weapons until it is known whether they're responsible for the deaths, it said.

Across the country, 6,000 law enforcement agencies have equipped some or all of their officers with the tools. According to the manufacturer, Taser International, Houston police last month placed a $4.7 million order to buy Tasers for all 3,700 of its officers.

Company says they're safe

Taser International, a publicly traded company with nearly $50 million in sales this year, says the devices have never directly caused a death. The company points out that many of the people died hours, even days, after they were shocked, and of other reasons, such as cocaine overdose or heart disease.

Steve Tuttle, a company spokesman, said a study showing Tasers did not cause ventricular fibrillation in 10 pigs has been accepted for publication in Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology, a peer-reviewed journal. The study will be published in January. Ventricular fibrillation is a condition in which the heart's electrical activity becomes disordered, which could lead to cardiac arrest in minutes.

He said the company has offered to provide funding for more medical studies using standards agreed upon with Amnesty International, but that the group has not responded. "We're not saying Tasers kill people," said Mike Murphy, coroner of Clark County, Nev., where two men have died after being shocked by Las Vegas police officers. "We appear to be seeing some issues that need to be addressed."

The Taser was one of several methods used to restrain William Lomax, a 26-year-old who was under the influence of PCP when he fought with security guards and a Las Vegas police officer earlier this year. He died after being handcuffed, shocked several times and held down, Murphy said. The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy said the Taser played a role in Lomax's death, but couldn't say how big a role.

The Taser, powered by batteries, fires two darts that hook into a person's skin, then deliver an electrical charge that temporary subdues them. It can also be pressed against a person's body in a stun mode.

Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said an in-custody death isn't unusual, so "it's a huge leap to say the Taser caused the death. It's natural to expect, whether it's a huge ingestion of drugs or alcohol or from some other type of injuries, that there are going to be some deaths that are also associated with Taser use," he said.

Chief Sue Rahr, who has been named to replace King County Sheriff Dave Reichert, said she believes the tools are safe and give officers better options than wrestling or fighting someone with a baton or nightstick. She said she wants every deputy to have one. About 250 of 700 deputies now carry them.

"If there were a case where the Taser was shown as the direct cause of death, absolutely we would reconsider," she said. "But I haven't seen any information that directly correlates the Taser with the death."

But while law enforcement officers have accepted the devices as safe, relatives of those who have died aren't convinced.

"A Taser gun did the same harm that a regular gun would have done," said Tammie Smith, who believes the tool helped bring about her husband's heart attack in July. "I don't understand why he had to be Tasered."

The King County Medical Examiner Office last week ruled the 48-year-old machine operator died of "a combination of acute cocaine intoxication and physical restraint," but declined to offer more details. An inquest into Smith's death is pending.

The Auburn Police Department completed its investigation this week and forwarded the case to the King County Prosecutor's Office, which is standard procedure. Cheryl Price, department spokeswoman, said the investigation was focused on Smith's "felony assault," not any issue with the officers' involvement in his death. "He was resistant to arrest and we utilized different levels of force to subdue him, and he happened to have a cardiac episode," she said. She said she couldn't say why the department was still investigating Smith after his death.

Coroners in the two other Washington fatalities ruled that the Taser did not contribute to the deaths of:

Stephen L. Edwards, 59, of Shelton, who fought with a security guard outside a grocery store before an Olympia police officer arrived and shocked him four times in less than a minute and a half;

Curt Lee Rosentangle, 44, a Silverdale business owner, who was high on cocaine and reportedly pounding on doors at an apartment complex when a Kitsap County sheriff's deputy shocked him at least twice.

Some see deadly combination

Some say that for those already agitated, high on cocaine or other drugs or have existing heart problems, the Taser can inhibit breathing and become lethal. Dr. William Anderson, a private forensic pathologist in Florida, believes those people may be particularly vulnerable. Although the Taser is generally safe for most people, he said, the company hasn't done the scientific study to conclude it's safe for everyone. "If you're in that particular situation at the time you get Tasered, it may be the straw that breaks the camel's back," said Anderson, who added that it can be a good tool.

As deputy medical examiner in Orlando two years ago, he ruled that the Taser contributed to the death of Gordon Jones, who was cocaine-intoxicated when he was Tased multiple times. Another pathologist contradicted Anderson's ruling.

Amnesty International's report raised similar questions about whether the devices could exacerbate breathing difficulties caused by violent exertion, drug overdose or other restraint devices, triggering heart attacks.

A British government report warned "excited, intoxicated individuals or those with pre-existing heart disease could be more prone to adverse effects from the M26 Taser, compared to unimpaired individuals." But it also concluded that the risk of serious injuries was "very low" and it wasn't medically necessary to hold off using them until more was known.

"Testing that we've done hasn't identified any groups of people at risk," said Taser's Tuttle, who added that the company supports continued research on the device. "There's no use of force that's risk-free. But studies continue to show that this is one of the safest uses of force that's out there on the street."

The company has cited both the British report and a report sponsored by the Department of Defense to bolster its claims. In September, the DoD released an abstract of the report concluding that the device "does not appear to pose significant risk" and wasn't the primary cause of reported deaths. It recommended more research into how such tools affect "sensitive populations."

But the Air Force Research Laboratory, which conducted the DoD study, released a statement last week saying the devices could be dangerous in certain circumstances and that there wasn't enough data to evaluate it. The need to rely on case reports from the manufacturer and the lack of laboratory data "generate uncertainty in the results," the report said. "There's a huge gap in the scientific data that has been performed," said Larry Farlow, a spokesman with the Air Force Research Laboratory at Brooks City-Base in San Antonio.

'Very little controlled research'

Kenneth Foster, who was on the independent panel that reviewed the U.S. report, said there is no indication the Taser is unsafe, though there has been "very little controlled research." "If a medical device company wanted to put a device on the market, they have to prove the safety and effectiveness using rigorous tests and to get federal approval," said Foster, a bioengineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "The Taser doesn't have that requirement, so there's been rather little systematic study as far as I can tell."

Yet, he and others say any significant hazard would have been obvious by now, given the thousands of times they've been used.

Although some Taser supporters feel more research is needed, they say Tasers shouldn't be pulled from the streets. Doing so would remove a valuable less-lethal option, they say. "I can't overemphasize (that) the value of the Taser is it allows us to gain control of somebody without injuring them. That's huge," said Rahr, of the Sheriff's Office. "What better way to protect the public than to not have to wrestle with them or hit them with a nightstick or shoot them?"

The company cites animal studies it funded, as well as tests on older versions of electric shock devices, as evidence of the product's safety. In a study in 1996, Dr. Robert Stratbucker shocked an anaesthetized pig 48 times with an older lower-powered Taser and found that it didn't affect the pig's heart.

In a later study at the University of Missouri, he and another researcher, Wayne McDaniel, shocked five dogs 236 times in the chest area with no episodes of ventricular fibrillation. McDaniel later repeated the study on 10 anesthetized pigs, and determined the device could be used safely even at 15 times its standard power.

Kerlikowske said police agencies are left to their own devices when determining the safety of new policing tools, but his agency didn't buy Tasers as a knee-jerk reaction. A citizens group researched the options and compared notes with other police agencies. "There are some departments that have a controversial shooting and, within a month, they buy 500 Tasers and issue it to every officer," he said.
"We went into this as methodically and thoroughly as any agency as I've ever seen."

Taser says the device operates at a fraction of the electricity used to resuscitate heart attack victims -- 1.6 joules. A joule is a unit of energy. "That amount of energy applied to the chest, probably only a fraction ends up going to the heart," said Dr. Peter Kudenchuk, professor of medicine at the University of Washington. "Simply the pain created by a shock of 1.6 joules might make the heart rate faster, but I'd be surprised if much of the energy reaches the heart itself," he said. "In terms of causing a cardiac arrest, the risk is probably low."

Some medical experts believe the common denominator in the publicized deaths is not the Taser, but how officers restrain out-of-control, agitated people. Some of those who died while in custody were hogtied, handcuffed or held down, which compressed their chests and restricted their ability to breathe. A person's delirious, excited state combined with the way he or she is restrained plays a more significant role in a fatal outcome, they say.

In a British Columbia report this fall, a group of medical professionals said the deaths of four people there may have been because the individuals were restrained while in an excited, delirious state and that the Tasers didn't cause their deaths.

Tasers cited in five deaths

But Tasers played a part in at least five deaths nationwide, according to medical authorities. A county coroner in Indiana ruled that electric shock contributed to the death of James Borden, who died in an Indiana jail after being shocked several times while handcuffed. The jail officer faces two counts of felony battery. "People who carry these should be warned," said David Brimm, an attorney representing the Borden family in a wrongful death suit against the county and Taser.

Pathologist Ronald Kohr ruled Borden died of cardiac dysrhythmia, or disorder of the heartbeat. He listed an enlarged heart, pharmacological drug intoxication and electric shock as contributing factors. But a pathologist working for the jail officer's defense, Dr. Cyril Wecht, wrote in a memo that there was no basis to conclude the Taser contributed to Borden's death.

Electric shock was also listed as one of four causes of death for Jacob Lair, a 29-year-old who died last June after a struggle with police officers in Sparks, Nev. The autopsy report said methamphetamines combined with delirium, the Taser and restraint combined to kill him. "There's not a single one of those that you can make the sole cause of death, and not one that you can ignore," Washoe County Coroner Vernon McCarty said of Lair's case.

A coroner in South Carolina also ruled the Taser contributed to the death of William Teasley, who died in August after he was shocked at the county jail. "The Taser gun was a last straw because he was Tased and he collapsed to the floor," said Charlie Boseman, a forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy. Teasley died of cardiac arrhythmia, with the Taser and health problems, including an enlarged heart and heart and liver diseases, contributing. Boseman said two Taser representatives called him and asked him "could we not use the Taser as part of the man's death." "I told them that we could not change the report and leave the Taser out, because the Taser was used to bring the man down to the floor," Boseman said.

Tuttle said the company has never pressured any medical professional to alter a report involving a death in which a Taser was involved. Rather, they called Boseman's office to offer technical information on Tasers that the pathologist requested, he said.

Smith, who has been waiting for her husband's death certificate, is convinced the shock played a role in her husband's death. She said she hoped police would "take responsibility for their part in it."