BZZZT!! Tazer Investigation Widens

I am going to open a window (but not the screen) into the personal life of Aaron Lohr, It may not be a good idea, as I do have the air conditioner on, but sometimes you have to throw caution to the wind.

I will be getting married soon (10/8), and quite frankly, I am very excited about that. However I know I will miss some things I enjoyed as a single guy. For example, I currently live in a house with five other guys. One thing we frequently do for fun is tape all the COPS episodes that air in a given day (there's always one on somewhere, especially if you have Lifetime) and then have a little marathon at night. For those of you have never seen COPS (Hi girls!) I have written a sample script of what you would probably see.

SCENE: Two officers are driving down a nearly empty city street at night. A caption appears on the bottom of the screen stating “Newark, NJ”. The two officers named Burkowitz and Kryzanski take turns addressing the camera which is positioned in the back seat.

BURKOWITZ: I always wanted to be a cop. One day…I think I was five or six…we were at 7-11. Some perp cuts in front of us in line, pulls out a gun and tells the cashier to give him all the money in the register. Well, as the cashier starts pulling the money out, the guy behind me in line whips out a pistol, yells “Freeze!” and then shoots him. I knew then. I was going to be a cop.

KRYZANSKI: Newark is a hole. Even the rats take the train to New York. But what we lack in cleanliness we make up for with crime. Sometimes the hardest part about being a cop is finding the guilty party. That’s not a problem here. Everybody’s guilty of something, it’s more a question of what did they do. (smiles) And that comes up in our rigorous interrogation.

BURKOWITZ (scrutinizing the car in front of them): Hey, this guy didn’t stop at the last stop sign, so we’re going to pull him over and see what the deal is. He’s probably shirtless and intoxicated to the point of incoherency.

Car is pulled over and Burkowitz and Kryzanski walk up to the car door and shine the flashlight inside.

PERP (shirtless and intoxicated): Hey man! How are you guys doin’? Did you see that polar bear on the onramp?
BURKOWITZ: Yes we did. We took pictures. Did you see that stop sign back there?
PERP: Wha? Aw no man, I missed it. What did it say?
KRYZANSKI: It said ‘stop’
PERP: whoa
BURKOWITZ: Step out of the car (sniffs). Are there any drugs in this car?
PERP: No way man. I don’t do drugs no more.
BURKOWITZ: So I won’t find anything if I search your car?
PERP: Well, it’s not my car man.
KRYZANSKI: Whose car is it?
PERP: It’s my cousin’s.
KRYZANSKI: What’s his name.
PERP: …..I don’t know……Q-bert?
BURKOWITZ: What? Are you asking me if it’s Q-bert?
PERP: I don’t do drugs no more man.
KRYZANSKI: I think I see a needle.

PERP takes off towards the woods. BURKOWITZ quickly whips out his Taser and zaps him. PERP falls to the ground and shakes a bit.

PERP: Ungh….spuhrgle
BURKOWITZ: I love this job.
KRYZANSKI: I love Newark.

So this is kind of how the show goes. I actually shortened it a bit. Generally if someone runs towards the woods or any kind of slightly wilderness area, it is time to call the K-9 unit. These ominous Fidos are bigger than I am and are fed a strict diet of human blood. The only thing we like more than watching the police dogs is a good tazing.

The Taser or electro-shock gun is a weapon used for subduing a person by administering a deliberate electric shock. It sends an electric current through a person at a level that is less than fatal but still severe enough to incapacitate them, and is not meant to do any permanent damage to a person, only to stun them temporarily.

While the electro-shock gun means well, 70 people have died since 2001 after being shocked with Tasers, mainly from heart or respiratory failure. More criticism of the gun arose when officers used a Taser on a 6 year old, who did survive. In defense of the officer, the 6 year old could have hidden anything in that teddy bear, possibly an even smaller teddy bear.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has recently upgraded its probe of the Taser to a formal investigation, allowing it to subpoena documents. After that, they may upgrade to a legislative inquiry. That comes with fries and a soda.

But the makers of Taser insist the gun is safe. But the truth is, and I kid you not, this is the truth, Taser has performed only minimal research on the health effects of its weapons. Its primary safety studies on the M26, its most powerful gun, consist of tests on a single pig in 1996 and on five dogs in 1999. The company has resisted calls for more tests, saying that it is comfortable with the research it has conducted. That comes from the New York Times.

Can you imagine being the guy who tazed the pig? Scientists are a creepy bunch. And they don’t mention what happened to the pig and dogs. I mean for all we know they were served as bacon at a Newark Denny’s. And being “comfortable” with research is much different then being “confident in the positive results”.

Despite the risks and fuzzy research, law enforcement officials will tell you that if it weren’t for the Taser there’d be plenty more fistfights and people getting shot with real guns. And yes the fistfights and real guns were first tested on pigs.

So what are we to do? Should police keep using Tasers? Maybe just on livestock or people who closely resemble livestock? Let me know what you think.