Stray dog's death apparently unrelated to Taser

April 18, 2009 - 7:39 PM
BY CHRIS McDANIEL, SUN STAFF WRITER


According to Taser International spokesman Steve Tuttel, the dog that died after being tased by a police officer on April 4 was not killed by the Taser.

"Dogs have been used in most of our animal Taser device studies that we conducted in the late ’90s and early 2000s. We continue to use canines and pigs in most of our studies today without any problems at all. Additionally, they are used against animals quite often as a secondary tool to stop them. If a dog has very aggressive, strange or attacking behavior, a Taser can be used."

Tuttel said the device has been used on many different animals with great success.

"It has been used on pitbulls, German shepherds, moose, elk, reindeer, mule deer, crocodiles and even Bengal tigers - really just a plethora of animals."

The company cited one of these studies as evidence of the product's safety.

According to them, in a study in 1996, Dr. Robert Stratbucker shocked an anaesthetized pig 48 times with an older lower-powered Taser and found that it did not kill the pig.

They said 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 death. McDaniel later repeated the study on 10 anesthetized pigs and determined the device could be used safely even at 15 times its standard power.

Tuttel said the labrador must have been sick to begin with. "The Taser has been used on animals with great success, so there must have already been a pre-existing condition in the dog that had nothing to do with the Taser device."

The dog had been a stray and had bitten a Yuma police officer the preceding week. It was cornered and tased with a five-second burst after the police officer and an animal control officer failed to restrain the dog using conventional methods. It later died in captivity.