After calling for a ban on Taser guns in law enforcement for two years, a national civil rights group said Friday more dialogue is needed to encourage more responsible use of the weapon.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is now calling for better standards and training for officers using Taser guns, and their efforts are being bolstered by Georgia lawmakers who have proposed legislation calling for both a ban and a plan to address how and when to use Tasers.

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According to a Medical Examiner’s report, the Taser stun gun contributed to the death of a Lee County man in 2004. Bryon Black, 39, of Ft. Myers, died after being hit by the Taser and pepper spray as police were trying to subdue him. Toxicology reports were negative for drugs.
In spite of more than 100 deaths attributed to Taser, this is the first Medical Examiner’s report that lists Taser as a contributing cause of death.

The Food and Drug Administration released a warning letter yesterday it had sent ot Guidant Corporation restricting the ability of the company to win approval for some new medical products. The reason for the restriction stemmed from Guidant’s inability to fully respond to FDA concerns about manufacturing procedures at the company’s largest plant. The FDA cited a lack of proper controls, procedures, and methods to validate product improvements it was making. The warning letter dated December 22, raised eight specific deficiencies and threatened more severe penalties if Guidant didn’t properly fix the problems.
The FDA warning letter comes a week after documents were filed in a Texas lawsuit showed that Guidant officials had projected that some patients might die because of short circuits in one of the company’s implantable defibrillators. But the documents also suggest that the company did not deem the unit’s overall failure rate high enough to warrant public disclosure.

Police Officer Ronald Dupuis was charged with assault and battery against a fellow police officer after firing a taser gun at her after an argument. A police report indicates that Dupuis and his partner, Prema Graham, began arguing after Dupuis demanded she stop the patrol car at a convenience store so he could purchase a soft drink. Graham wanted to get back to the police station and drove past the store. At some point, the pair began arguing and struggling in the vehicle.
Dupuis was fired a week after the incident.

A man with autism is dead after a scuffle with northwest suburban police, who used a Taser gun in a struggle to subdue him.
The man had just bitten his caregiver at a group home in Des Plaines. CBS 2’s Mike Parker reports the Taser was just one way the officers tried to get the victim under control.
Police around the country are now using Taser guns to subdue suspects with electric shocks.
The weapons are supposed to be non-lethal. On Sunday, in the back yard of a Des Plaines home, 30-year-old Hansel Cunningham died moments after police used a Taser and pepper spray to take him down.
“He was extremely combative, completely enraged, wouldn’t listen to reason,” said Des Plaines Police Chief Jim Prandini.
The victim was a resident of a group home for autistic adults. Police came to the house after Cunningham allegedly severely bit his caregiver then, according to officers, went out of control.
The Des Plaines police chief says the fatal incident was “unfortunate.”
“I will certainly review the use of our Taser in this incident. We’ve used it successfully on several other occasions where we haven’t had a problem with it,” Prandini said.
The company that runs the group home said, “we are deeply saddened by this tragedy. Our condolences go out to the family of the victim.”
The medical examiner says it may take weeks to determine precisely what killed the man. One theory is that he may have died from the Taser shock combined with prescription drugs he may have been taking.
Illinois State Police are investigating.

According to an article published on October 19, 2005 in The NY Times, the influential Police Executive Research Forum urged restrictions on taser use in the wake of 140 deaths of people being taken into custody. The group suggested that officers be allowed to use the stun guns only on people who are aggressively resisting arrest, not just refusing to follow orders. The group also recommened that officers pause and evaluate suspects after shocking them once, instead of repeatedly shocking someone without a break. Sales of the guns to police departments soared in 2003 and 2004, and more than 7,000 police departments now use them. But sales have plunged this year, as questions about the safety of the guns have increased. Taser shocks can cause a potentially dangerous condition called acidosis in which the blood becomes too acidic. Shares in Taser International, the company makes the weapons, have fallen 80% this year, and Taser is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission over claims it made about the safety of the guns, as well as the way it disclosed an order it received last year.

This story ran on September 28, 2005 in Forbes Magazine:
Taser International Inc. has voluntarily changed some of its broad safety claims and limited its use of the word “non-lethal” in an effort to appease Arizona officials concerned about possibly misleading marketing, officials said Wednesday.
The move by the nation’s largest maker of stun guns comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission investigates the company and as the Arizona Attorney General’s Office conducts its own inquiry into safety claims.
On Tuesday, Taser said the SEC had stepped up an informal inquiry and was conducting an expanded official investigation of claims Taser has made about safety studies; an end-of-year sale analysts have questioned because it appeared to inflate sales to meet annual projections; and the possibility that outsiders acquired internal company information to manipulate the stock price.
In January, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said his office was probing claims Taser has made about safety studies on its products.
Taser President Tom Smith said company officials met with the Attorney General’s Office several times since January and have made changes to the way they characterize the weapon’s safety to consumers.
According to Taser and the Attorney General’s Office, the stun gun maker submitted a list of language changes the company has already made, including an 18-point “product warning.”
Among the changes, Taser explains that it uses the term non-lethal as defined by the Department of Defense – which doesn’t mean the weapon can’t cause death, but that it’s not intended to be fatal.
Other changes include substituting the phrase “leave no lasting after effects” to “are more effective and safer than other use-of-force options.”
Taser began marketing police stun guns in 1998 as a way to subdue combative people in high-risk situations. Now, more than 8,000 law enforcement agencies and military installations use them worldwide.
But critics say the stun guns have been used too liberally by police and have contributed to scores of deaths. Amnesty International has compiled a list of more than 100 people the group says have died after being shocked in scuffles with lawmen.
Taser maintains that no deaths have been directly caused by the weapon alone.

This week a committee of Florida legislators is discussing police use of Taser guns manufactured by Taser International. The weapon has been marketed by its manufacturer as a non-lethal way to subdue people. However, there is mounting evidence to the contrary. We represent a young victim of the lethal weapon and plan to file suit on behalf of his family this week. Please read the following article published in the Fort Worth Weekly:
by Peter Gorman, Fort Worth Weekly
June 24th, 2005
Robert Guerrero may have died because he wouldn’t come out of a closet.

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Guidant Corp. told U.S. regulators that it learned of six additional failures of implantable heart defibrillators since issuing a July notice about the devices used to regulate cardiac rhythms.
The failures occurred in the Contak Renewal and Renewal 2 brand of devices, the Food and Drug Administration said. The two devices were among models included in warnings Guidant sent to doctors in June.
The new reports of failures since a previous FDA notice July 14 bring the total worldwide to 21, including three cases in which patients died, the FDA said.

The number of defects present in implantable defibrillators is rising at a dangerous pace, according to joint research Harvard Medical School and
the Food and Drug Administration. The study suggests that the recent recalls by defibrillator manufacturers such as Guidant, Medtronic, and St. Jude’s Medical point toward a growth in the number of defibrillator defects. Additionally, they also state that defibrillator replacements due to these defects has decreased, showing that even though the number of defective devices are rising, not enough is being done to assist in the replacement of the devices.