If I could respond, I'm not indifferent to the medical issue, but the documents I've seen are all over the place. What is a factor for me is the impact on people, and there are identified at-risk groups. The at-risk groups would be those who have mental health issues and those who have a lifestyle where they're using drugs, particularly methamphetamine and cocaine. These seem to be the ones who may lend themselves to more frequent encounters with the police. They may, in fact, be the ones who are tasered more often. And because of their lifestyle, they tend to have underlying health challenges. So they tend to be the ones who show up statistically, more often than you would think, in terms of being tasered, and they are also the ones who suffer what is called excited delirium.
I've adopted the default position, without being a doctor, that for me there's enough there in terms of proximal death from a taser application to these high-risk people, where they die sometimes within seconds and minutes, that an average person would say there might be a problem here. I don't think it's fair to put the onus upon counsel for the deceased or someone to bring to an absolute level of perfection of proof that this device caused the death.
I'm working from the assumption that there is a material risk to it, but it is less than the risk associated with someone discharging a firearm at you, and it may be more commensurate with the risk of a person deploying a baton. Police use violence, so that's the view I've taken.
I've identified the high-risk groups as ones, if you look at the cluster of excited delirium, that a police officer would recognize, and unless that individual is posing a physical risk to the officer or to a member of the public or to themselves, don't taser them.
The current policy is crafted almost to suggest that officers should use the tasers in probe mode to put that person down so they can receive medical treatment. Police officers are not doctors, and we're imposing on them one heck of a burden in using a force device that results in death. If the medical response is to do that, I say give it to the paramedic or give it to the doctor, and let them prove that it's a proper medical device.
When the officer uses the device, it should be for public safety issues.