Stephen Colbert’s Current Events
In last night’s hilarious piece on taser abuses, Stephen Colbert looks at the cases of a 76-year-old man driving a tractor in a Wyoming town parade who was tased five times for arguing over where the parade route ended (the officers were fired); a soccer mom tased in front of her kids for driving 50 in a 45 mph zone; and the “revolutionary new multi-shot” Taser X3 (”turn up your speakers,” the tacky Taser International website suggests).
More seriously, Electronic Village rounds-up 40 taser-related deaths in the United States since the beginning of the year. And, significantly, Colbert missed the recent tasering of a legless man in his wheelchair. Police let him sitting on the street hand-cuffed with his pants down. (Video here.) In her story reporting that the NAACP is supporting federal standards for the use of Tasers, Pam Spaulding points to the case in which the daughter of a Cincinnati city councilman woman was tasered in the back while she was on her knees.
Wired adds the case of a mouthy grandmother in its piece touring a Taser factory:
Despite those incidents, the company continuously develops new models, and each is a bit more powerful than its predecessor. Taser claims its products have been used on humans nearly 1.4 million times, and that they do not cause damage to the heart, or change its rhythm.
