Tasers will save lives, deputy coroner says

December 17, 2004
Jeff Gray, Globe and Mail

Toronto police board urged to buy more stun guns, told medical safety review not needed

After you read the headline story above (Tasers will save lives, deputy coroner says), consider this: Deputy Coroner Dr. Cairns admitted to me in a March 2005 telephone conversation that he had NOT seen autopsy or pathology results on my brother, nor had he seen autopsy or pathology results on any of the other people who had died outside of Ontario, before publicly concluding that tasers had been cleared of causing the deaths. I had heard him say that on CBC's Ontario Today, as Toronto police considered adding more tasers to their arsenal. This was before the cause of death had even been released in many cases. On the telephone, Dr. Cairns said to me: “it is my personal opinion that, unless a person dies immediately after being shot with a Taser – not 5 minutes later, not 30 minutes later, but immediately – then the Taser did not kill them.” I asked Dr. Cairns, on behalf of my family, to please refrain from including my brother’s death in his statistics, until such time as the official cause of death had been released. He did not respect my request. He went on to publicly declare on radio and television and in newspaper reports that:

None of the Taser-related deaths in Canada can be attributed to the Taser stun gun being used;

All of the deaths in Canada were determined to have been caused by cocaine-induced excited delirium;

All of the deaths in Canada were caused by cocaine overdoses;

Tasers have been cleared of causing any of the deaths in Canada; and

All nine (at that time) people would have died anyway.

To date, none of the deaths in Canada for which final results are available has been attributed to the taser (several have in the US). Nor, in the final analysis, was my brother's death. However, I know that Dr. Cairns has been consulted for his opinion on deaths which have occurred in RCMP custody over the last couple of years, including two that I'm aware of: Paul Saulnier in Digby, Nova Scotia and Kevin Geldart in Moncton, New Brunswick. Neither was attributed to the taser. Dr. Cairns has seemingly become Canada's "expert", the "go-to-it-guy" on tasers and their non-relation to the deaths of people. He also makes himself available for speaking engagements at Taser International and excited delirium-related conferences. You can bet that he's received one of the hundreds of pamphlets the weapon's manufacturer mails out to coroners each year to help them identify excited delirium.

See also: Coroner finds man didn't die from taser, where Dr. Cairns said that had Peter Lamonday died in the parking lot where he absorbed the shots, the powerful stun gun could be considered responsible.
See also: How can you justify using a taser 12 times - "After this huge fight that often goes on, they suddenly go quiet and tranquil. It seems as though they're getting a second wind. In fact, they're not. They're dying at that point," says Cairns.
See also: Drugs, not taser, caused Kingston man's death - A mere two days after Samuel Truscott's death, Dr. Cairns was able to "state categorically that the Taser did not play any role whatsoever in his death."
See also: Fantino gets Taser issue revived