Cop sues for taser injury

Taser International's sales materials boasts of the safety of its product and claims it protects officers from injury. Tell it to this state cop who is suing them for injuries sustained during a taser gun demo.

James Foley of Grafton has filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Worcester, seeking $1 million and claiming the injury caused by the Taser incident caused him to experience pain and suffering and a diminution in wages and earning capacity.

His lawyer says the million dollars is "just a placeholder" so they're clearly anticipating the award in a successful suit would be higher. The complaint alleges "exposure to the electroshock weapon during a seminar bent a surgical screw in his leg." The Taser employee running the demo assured him there was no danger but as soon as he was struck, he experienced severe pain and at the ER they found the jolt bent the screw enough to fracture his femur.

There doesn't seem to be any official statistics on how many people have died after being tasered, possibly because Taser Int'l threatens to sue coroners who attribute tasering as a cause of death. The latest statistics I could find was this list from April 2008 of known dead after being tasered. I feel confident in saying the list much longer now, a year later. I wonder how many people have to die or be injured before society demands that the weapons be banned entirely?

The premise behind them was good, that being that cops would use them instead of deadly force. Unfortunately in practice, they're often used by sadistic cops to torture suspects that could have been easily subdued without any weapons, and have effectively delivered death sentences to petty criminals and in many cases, to people who didn't commit crimes at all but were simply mouthy when subjected to overly confrontational or even wrongful police interventions. Enough already.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News.]