[Editor's Note: The irony of this story is double. Following the killing of 294 American citizens at the hands of sadistic police personnel using TASER Torture guns, we now have the British Metropolitan Police Authority saying 'hold on, we're not jumping into this so fast' and the disability suffered by the unidentified American cop who was obviously there to promote the use of TASER guns. Such a turn of events is not an accident; it's called karmic justice. Second, the doctor who's attending the 38 year old police "victim" is from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the very SAME university which published the utterly bogus and contrived Wake Forest Taser Study (story below) whitewashing the depravity, cruelty, unconstitutionality, torturing, life-long disabling and murdering menace posed by the use of TASER guns. That too is karmic justice.

Those American policemen who forsake the tenets of humane and just treatment enshrined in the Constitution and allow themselves to be turned into New World Order thugs in uniform will pay the price for their cruel decisions, now or later; in this life or the next. What goes around, ALWAYS comes around. It's a Universal Law and it can't be rescinded..Ken Adachi]

http://educate-yourself.org/pnt/amerciancopinjuredtaserdemo11oct07.shtml
October 11, 2007

American Cop Seriously Injured in TASER Demo for Brits (Oct. 23, 2007)

http://www.janes.com/news/lawenforcement/pr/pr071011_1_n.shtml

Original Title:
Officer injured in Taser demonstration

A roll-out of Taser for non-firearms-trained Met officers has been postponed after the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) vetoed the plan. A police officer in the US who volunteered to be the subject of a Taser demonstration has suffered possibly lasting damage, including spine fractures after receiving a five-second discharge, according to a respected medical journal.

The 38-year-old victim was rushed by ambulance to hospital where a scan showed he suffered compression fractures in his spine caused by muscle spasms triggered by being Tasered in a training class.  Nine weeks after his injury he has continued to report significant pain.

The officer's doctor, James Winslow, MD, of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina said: 'In this case, the pain continued for a long time, leading the patient to reduce his work hours significantly.' The case has now entered medical literature after being written up in the eminent American College of Emergency Physicians journal which released the details.  Supt Charlie Hill, staff officer to the ACPO police use of firearms working group, said the case underlined the need to move with caution until more can be discovered about the potential side
effects of using Tasers.

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Wake Forest Taser Study Ignores the Elephant in the Room, 294 Dead and Counting
by Raj Jayadev ( svdebug [at] newamericamedia.org )

http://siliconvalleydebug.com/story/100107

Thursday Oct 18th, 2007

A recent study on Tasers lead by Wake Forest University Medical School gives a false sense of safety to a proven dangerous, and at times lethal, weapon, says Bay Area activists. Community leaders and civil rights advocates are condemning the study as insufficient, misleading, and not truly independent of law enforcement bias.

Taser Experts and Civil Rights Leaders Say Study is Disconnected from Reality

SAN JOSE, CA – A recent study on Tasers lead by Wake Forest University Medical School gives a false sense of safety to a proven dangerous, and at times lethal, weapon, says Bay Area activists. Community leaders and civil rights advocates are condemning the study as insufficient, misleading, and not truly independent of law enforcement bias.  The study, presented at the American College of Emergency Physicians' Scientific Assembly in Seattle on October 8th, 2007 has been touted by Taser advocates as evidence of safety, yet further examination of the study leaves more questions than answers.

Nationally recognized Taser expert Aram James of the Coalition for Justice and Accountability (CJA) says, “The study concludes -- without supporting data -- that Tasers reduce injuries to both police and the individuals Tasered. But the authors, offer no systematic data to support this
conclusion.” James says that actually the study's own data belies their own conclusion of safety. The abstract reported 23% of 597 subjects received some sort of injury. “Nearly 1 in 4, hardly support for the proposition that Tasers are safe -- and when coupled with 293 taser related
deaths, a statistic conveniently ignored by the authors of this study, the conclusion that Tasers are safe is not only not true but in fact a lie of deadly proportions.”

Richard Konda, Executive Director of the Asian Law Alliance and CJA co-founder, says the study ignores the reality that some populations are at higher risk when Tased. “The study fails to mention the effect of Tasers on vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women, the elderly, the
mentally ill, and those under the influence of drugs, who are far more likely to suffer serious injuries and even death as a result of being Tasered.”

Konda, who's organization is supporting a ban of Tasers, says the evidence of the deadly effects of Tasers is already being acknowledged by
law enforcement communities. He says, “Medical remedies to prevent death are being developed because Tasers kill. In Miami emergency medical technicians are spraying a sedative in the noses of Tasers victims or inject them with iced saline solutions. These protocols lead us to only one
conclusion – that Tasers are deadly weapons and must be banned.”

Indeed, Noreen Salinas, eldest daughter of Steve Salinas, who died after being repeatedly Tased by San Jose Police, is appalled by the study's disconnect from the real life impacts of Tasers on families. “How can anyone try to make a claim that Tasers are safe, when it has taken a father
from his daughters, a son from his mother?”

The Santa Clara County Coroner's office have cited Taser discharge as a potential contributing factor to the death of Steve Salinas.  James says the reason why the study does not appear to be independent is because it was, essentially, a law enforcement report, and points to several red flags.

“First, it was conducted at six law enforcement agencies across the country, interestingly enough not disclosed. Why the secrecy?

Secondly, the underlying police reports and any accompanying medical records were reviewed by ‘tactical physicians' who are closely connected to a law enforcement agenda.

Finally, not mentioned anywhere in the press release related to this study is the companion piece put out by the Wake Forest Physicians Group. In a study dated September 4, 2007 -- the same doctors credited with the above study -- reported on a police officer who after volunteering to receive a 5 second Taser exposure, under very controlled circumstance, was Tased for 5 seconds and suffered a very serious and apparently permanently debilitating thoracic compression fracture. Why was this piece buried by the good doctors? So much for Tasers being a low risk of injury weapon. If there unsafe for the cops there unsafe for us!”

James, CJA, along with other civil rights advocates, are demanding a truly independent study, and are calling for law enforcement agencies to shelve Tasers until an authentic and comprehensive investigation of its use is conducted.

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