Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s12e06 Episode Script
Tasers
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight".
I'm John Oliver, thank you for
joining us, it has been a busy week!
Canada's prime minister called
a snap election for next month,
Turkish government continued to crack
down on protests against Erdogan,
leading to this incredible footage
of a protester in a Pikachu costume
running away from police.
And in Britain,
a judge delivered a sharp rebuke,
after this Paddington statue was
the subject of a brutal attack.
Drunk at two o'clock in the morning,
two RAF engineers
pick on an unsuspecting bear.
Kicking and pulling at the statue,
they don't give up
until they've torn it in half.
Police recovered the lost half
of Paddington at the RAF base
the day after the attack
earlier this month.
Sentencing them, the judge
condemned their actions,
saying Paddington
"represents kindness, tolerance"
"and promotes integration
and acceptance in our society."
"Your actions were the antithesis of
everything Paddington stands for."
Okay, there is a lot to love there,
from the least effective
running kick I've ever seen
to the image of Paddington
in a police car
looking like the world's
most whimsical bastard.
Though Paddington "promotes
integration and acceptance"
is overselling it a bit. He's not
Martin Luther Bear.
He didn't lead the Selma marches.
He eats marmalade sandwiches
and stares at people
when they're kinda rude.
Just relax a bit.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration
brought us yet another week of chaos,
including this.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth,
along with other top members
of President Trump's national
security team,
sharing details about a planned
large-scale attack on Yemen
earlier this month on the commercial
message app Signal
and inadvertently including journalist
Jeffrey Goldberg on that chain.
It's true, they put a journalist
in their group chat,
something Goldberg revealed
in an article headlined
"The Trump Administration
Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans",
which is one of the greatest
headlines I read this week,
alongside "Monkeys Chase British
Tourist Out of Hotel Pool In Thailand:"
"Scariest Moment of My Life",
"This Octopus's Other Car
Is a Shark"
and "Lots of Fun, Good Weather
Greets Guests"
"During Deerfield's 24th Annual",
wait for it, "Testicle Festival".
Now, in his article, Goldberg wrote
he doubted the chat was real,
until the time of the attack,
when "I waited in my car
in a supermarket parking lot."
"I checked X
and searched Yemen"
and saw that explosions were being
heard across Sanaa, the capital city.
And look, the White House tried
to do damage control all week,
from playing semantic games over
they were technically "war plans"
to hinting Goldberg somehow
got himself onto the chat,
something undercut by it literally
showing Michael Waltz,
the U.S. national security adviser,
adding Goldberg in.
And by the way, all of this
was in the run-up to airstrikes
that are estimated to have killed
up to 46 civilians on one day,
which should be a scandal
in and of itself.
And it's grotesque to see the glib
response in the chat afterward,
because Waltz posted "fist,
American flag, fire emoji",
while another official posted
"prayer hands, muscle, flag."
And look, those clearly
aren't the right emojis to send
after a bombing, because
the right emojis are no emojis.
It's basically like asking
which Minion meme is right to send
after Dylan's ex-wife died
in a car accident.
They weren't together anymore,
were they,
but it feels wrong
not to send something,
when the answer
is "maybe send flowers"
and not this actual meme
of a Minion cheering in a graveyard
holding a sign that says:
"Sorry about your ex-wife."
That is not the answer!
But this is something
of a motif for this administration,
deeply unserious people
doing deeply stupid things,
with massively
serious consequences.
Because it's also the case with their
ongoing targeting of immigrants,
from the disturbing video
of DHS agents grabbing a Tufts
student off the street this week,
to the mass deportations
of Venezuelan immigrants,
who were sent to a notorious
mega-prison in El Salvador.
Even as that move has been
challenged in court,
the administration took
a hideous victory lap.
Homeland Security Secretary
Kristi Noem traveled to El Salvador.
She used her visit to the prison
where hundreds of Venezuelans
with alleged ties to the Tren de Aragua
gang were deported
to post this social video,
warning,
if you come to the U.S. illegally, this
could be one of the consequences.
Know that this facility
is one of the tools in our toolkit
that we will use if you commit
crimes against the American people.
Okay, the visual alone there
is deeply disturbing.
Using caged prisoners with shaved
heads as a backdrop
is a bold choice,
given, you know, history.
And it's now the most appalling use
of a front-facing video
from anyone in this administration,
even surpassing the time
Cheryl Hines hawked body cream
in front of a nude RFK Jr.
showing off his wet armpits.
And I do not say that lightly.
And it's worth noting:
some of the people now in that
prison seem to have been grabbed
on the flimsiest of charges.
One man said an ICE agent
told him:
"You're here
because of your tattoos."
"We're finding and questioning
everyone who has tattoos."
And when he explained
the meaning of his,
which included this autism
awareness ribbon to honor his brother,
he says he was told:
"You're clean."
But then he got sent
to El Salvador anyway.
Another man in there not
only reportedly has no tattoos,
he also has a pending asylum case
and no criminal record,
and ICE's document supporting
his deportation is full of mistakes.
It uses someone else's last name
in several parts of the document,
identifies him
with female pronouns
and uses two different
unique ID numbers.
This is clearly a total mess.
And it is not great that,
when Tom Homan was pressed on
the clear lack of due process here,
this is how it went.
What we've heard from lawyers
representing some of these people
is that they deny that they're
members of this gang.
Do they get a chance to prove that
before you take them out of the country
and put them into a notorious prison
in a country they're not even from?
I mean, do they have
any due process at all?
Laken Riley's due process?
Where were all these young women
that were killed and raped
by members of TDA,
where was their due process?
Okay, here's the thing: no matter
how tragic those examples are,
that's not how
the justice system works.
The Fifth Amendment clearly says:
"No person shall be deprived
of life, liberty, or property,"
"without due process of law."
That's it!
It doesn't then add
in the small print:
"Unless they seem guilty
by association to a man"
"who looks like Buzz Lightyear drowned
a few days ago."
The past couple months have seen
this administration operate
with incompetence and cruelty,
interspersed with the occasional
Nazi-adjacent visuals.
The good news is,
they're facing major pushback
from federal courts
over their mass deportations.
The bad news is, they've already
done a ton of damage.
But if they think they can brush off
illegally detaining and imprisoning
innocent people
with the same flippancy they reserve
for adding the wrong person
to a group chat, they should
know in no uncertain terms
that the rest of us
will push back hard,
or to put it in the language
that they seem to prefer,
go fuck yourselves, assholes.
Love, America.
And now, this.
And Now:
Checking in with DeeAnne,
the Most Loyal Viewer
of "Good Day Atlanta".
Today's Hot Topic,
we wanted to know what modern
technology you refuse to use?
So, DeeAnne says:
"All of it!"
We wanted to know, is there
a correct way to cut a sandwich?
DeeAnne says: "I slice it
when I take bites of it."
She puts a little funky face there.
DeeAnne says:
"I started off with MySpace
and loved it"
"because you can upload music
and pretty backgrounds and all."
DeeAnne says:
"I guess I'm an old fuddy-duddy."
"I just don't like Halloween,
never have,"
"only been trick or treating
once in my lifetime."
What?
DeeAnne says: "It's okay
to have some sense of humor,"
"but I have lived and learned that by
having too much is not good either."
DeeAnne says:
"You ain't had no hot dog
until you tried them air-fried!"
Okay, DeeAnne.
DeeAnne says: "I don't like
to go anywhere these days."
DeeAnne says: "If it ain't free,
then I don't subscribe!"
I guess DeeAnne knows
what's up.
Today is National Discover
What Your Name Means Day.
DeeAnne says: "My real name
means lady of sorrows."
No, they didn't.
Moving on. Our main story
tonight concerns Tasers.
You know, the things that are now
basically a supporting character
on every single cop show.
Stop, FBI!
Amateur.
And don't look up my skirt.
I've never used one of these
things before, this is great!
- I mean, is he all right?
- Yeah, he's all right.
Yeah, he's probably okay!
And the "I've never used one before"
there was very cute.
There's just nothing quite
like the effortless whimsy
of cop procedurals
made before 2020.
Police brutality? How could it be?
She's literally just a girl!
But Tasers are now ubiquitous
in real life, too.
They're carried by some 400,000
American patrol officers,
which is obviously great news for
the company that makes them, Axon.
You might not have heard of Axon
before, which is surprising,
given how huge they are.
The company has a market cap
of over 40 billion dollars,
and they're constantly innovating
in the Taser space.
Here is a pretty slick commercial
for their latest model.
That's a pretty intense ad
for what basically looks like
a cheap toy that comes with
a strip mall security guard costume
from Spirit Halloween,
set to music from
"Now That's What I Call Hans Zimmer
Falling Asleep on His Synthesizer!"
Axon's stated mission
is to "protect life",
as, according to the company,
"Tasers have been deployed
more than 3.7 million times"
"and have prevented loss of life
or serious injury"
"in more than 200,000 instances."
In fact, to listen to Axon's co-founder
and CEO, Rick Smith,
yassified Bert, tell it, the Taser
is essentially a miracle weapon.
The idea of using electricity
to incapacitate, at its core,
is, frankly, a beautiful
and simplistic idea.
That rather than causing death
or injury to someone,
if we can just temporarily
take away control of their body
and get them under control, it's about
as nonviolent as you could get.
Right. Though I'm not sure
I'd describe getting shocked
with 50,000 volts as
"as nonviolent as you can get".
It certainly doesn't sound
that relaxing.
There's a reason people unwind
by taking a bath with lit candles
or a book
instead of with a toaster.
But as, deep down,
you probably already know,
the reality of Tasers
just isn't that simple.
Over the years, there've been
multiple high-profile instances
of people dying after getting tased.
According to a 2017 investigation,
there've been over 1,000 incidents
in the U.S.
in which people died after
police stunned them with Tasers.
It's impossible to know for sure
what specific role Tasers may have
played in all of those deaths.
But as you're about to see,
that's in part
because Axon's worked incredibly
hard to ensure that's the case.
So, given that, tonight,
let's talk about Tasers.
Specifically,
the company that makes them,
whether their product is as safe
and effective as they claim
and the broader impact
they've had on policing.
And let's start with the fact the Taser
was first invented in the 1970s.
Here is a newscast explaining it
for the first time,
with one hell of a demonstration.
The Taser looks like a flashlight,
fires two electric darts,
and packs 50,000 volts
at low amperage.
In this demonstration, conducted
in a hospital for safety's sake,
the volunteer victim is the son of
the Taser's inventor, Jack Cover.
As it hits, the electrical charge
paralyzed the central nervous system
for a few minutes and the victim
loses control of his muscles.
Yeah, the inventor of the Taser
tested it on his own son.
And that was on the news,
and not somehow a clip
from the '70s TV show
"America's Grainiest Home
Videos of Parental Abuse."
Initially, the product
didn't really take off,
mostly because it was too
cumbersome and ineffectual to use.
Then, in the early '90s,
a 23-year-old Rick Smith
learned about the invention, and he
and his brother bought the rights,
starting a company that
at that point called Taser.
They spent years
tinkering with its design,
including, crucially, swapping out
the gunpowder
that fired the darts in the original
version for compressed nitrogen,
which, conveniently,
meant it suddenly was no longer
subject to firearms regulations.
By the late 1990s, they were marketing
Tasers to law enforcement,
with the promise that they were both
incapacitating and extremely safe.
Smith himself even "took a half-second
shock at a demonstration in LA"
to show his faith in it.
And by the end of 2003, more than
4,300 police agencies had Tasers.
And at the time, they got a lot
of positive coverage.
Across the country, cops call
this Taser "the revolution".
- May I ask what you think of that?
- I love it.
It stops officers having to go
hands-on and fight with suspects.
Sergeant Lauri Williams says
the Taser reduces deadly force,
because police no longer
draw their guns
on suspects
with bricks or knives.
Why the growing use
of this weapon?
The Miami Police Department has set
a record for big city police departments
in that, for the last 16 months,
we have not discharged
a single bullet at a citizen.
It is impressive they went 16 months
without a single police shooting,
and also depressing
that it's that impressive.
Although, for the record, I'm not sure
Tasers can take all the credit there.
The more relevant fact may be
that, at that time,
the DOJ was conducting an investigation
of the Miami Police Department
for use of excessive force.
And once it concluded,
you'll never guess,
police shootings
rose right back up.
So, Tasers can probably take
as much credit
for stopping Miami
police shootings in 2004
as the release of "Shrek 2".
I don't know, maybe
the Miami PD were too busy
going back to the theater
multiple times to absorb
the nuances of Shrek's hero's
journey and/or trying to figure out
how these two actually fucked.
Still, there was undeniably real
enthusiasm for Tasers back then.
And as they pushed into new lines
of business, Taser rebranded as Axon
and started selling technology
like police body cams,
a market they now dominate.
If you ever see body cam
footage on the news,
you'll probably notice
the word "Axon" in the corner.
They're basically the TMZ
of state-sanctioned violence.
And all of this has made Smith
incredibly rich.
As of last year, he's worth
two and a half billion dollars.
While this isn't strictly relevant,
he's done that while creating
a corporate culture
that is borderline cult-like.
Because not only has he been
tased at least seven times,
voluntarily getting shot with Tasers
is kind of a rite of passage at Axon.
"Staff tasings, known as 'exposures,'
are corporate rituals,"
and are often used to initiate
interns or new recruits.
Employees have even
made up their own slang for it:
"ride the lightning."
Which sounds more like what you do
after Pikachu shows you hole.
On Axon's website, you can even see
fun videos of employees getting tased
in the office,
or at corporate events.
And some have even roped in
family members to do it with them.
Yeah. So, fun fact. My mom
and I did an exposure together.
And I asked her to do it with me
and she did.
So, now we have the distinction
of being the only mother-daughter duo
in Axon Taser history to take
a hit from an X2 together.
That's cute! Now, please,
do both try and go to therapy.
Mothers and daughters
are literally more likely
to get tased together
than heal matrilineal trauma.
Also, if any men are wondering
how you're supposed to react to
a story like that, I'll tell you how:
like her coworker here.
Stay frozen, king.
This is not your story.
This is not your fight.
Axon's execs have also reportedly
urged staff to "make things permanent"
by getting tattoos
of the company logo.
In fact, here's Rick Smith with one.
And I'm sorry,
that's just an objectively shitty logo
to have tattooed on your body.
It looks like a "Spy Kids" watch
celebrating its first year of sobriety.
Axon insists that no employee is ever
pressured to get tased or tattooed,
which is a hell of a thing
to have to insist.
But Smith does love engaging
in big displays at corporate events,
attending one as "Taserman" in this
deeply ill-advised superhero costume.
And at another,
he told the company's origin story,
while appearing remotely in what,
I'm going to warn you,
is the dumbest possible way.
Today, I wanted to tell you a story.
It's our story,
of the roots of Taser and Axon,
of how we came to be.
In December 1990, two of my high
school friends were shot and killed
only a few miles from here in what
started as altercation at a red light.
They were in their early 20s,
barely beginning to figure out life.
And in the blink of an eye,
three lives were destroyed.
I found it absurd that the self-defense
choice in the 20th century
was still a bullet, the same tool we've
used to kill each other for centuries.
Okay, first, to get
the obvious out of the way,
that monstrosity
is what Rick calls his "avatar".
And sure, he could have
just Zoomed in, that was 2022,
we all knew
how to do that by then,
but instead, he paid a man in a jacket
to make random arm movements
while wearing a bike helmet with
an iPad projecting his face.
He looks like a member of Daft Punk
trying to sell you a timeshare.
But, that aside, the tragic origin
story Smith's selling there
is one he likes to tell a lot.
He's mentioned it in interviews,
at other events,
and even in an SEC filing
where he wrote:
"I had two friends who
were shot and killed."
"I was enraged that such
a terrible thing could happen,"
"and I wanted
to do something about it."
And that would be a genuinely noble
reason to focus on nonviolence.
But the thing is, while those
young men were, sadly, killed,
when reporters looked into it,
they found,
according to family members: "Smith
was not friends with the deceased."
He did go to the same high school,
but it was
"not at the same time, according
to school yearbooks."
And while Smith insists he knew them
through "social events",
one of their best friends later
told a reporter:
"I don't know any Rick Smith."
All of which puts a bit of a damper
on Rick's origin story.
Imagine finding out Bruce Wayne's
parents weren't even murdered.
It kind of makes this guy's
whole deal even more confusing.
Bruce, why are you doing this?
Your parents are alive and well
in Florida,
but you never return their calls.
They just won
their pickleball semifinals.
There's a seat at the championship
with your name on it, Bruce.
Just pick up the phone.
That's not the only area
where Smith and Axon's relationship
to facts is shaky.
Because let's now talk about the two
main selling points for Tasers:
that they're effective
and that they're safe.
And let's start with "effective".
In the past, Axon's claimed Tasers
are between 80 and 97% effective
at subduing a suspect in the field.
But one survey of police data
found many departments disputed
that with one city claiming that it was
effective as little as 55% of the time,
basically a coin flip.
And Axon's response was,
incredibly, to complain that survey
didn't give them credit for "instances
when a suspect was subdued"
"after an officer merely displayed
or threatened to fire a Taser."
But at that point, that's not really
about their device, is it?
You could presumably get
that result with a gun,
a flamethrower,
or a magic fucking wand.
And the thing is,
if a Taser doesn't work,
police might then escalate
up to a more violent option.
Between 2015 and 2017,
"more than 250 fatal police shootings
occurred"
"after a Taser failed to incapacitate
a suspect."
And, "In 106 of them,
the suspect became more violent"
"after receiving the electrical shock,"
which is understandable.
Also, when we talk about
Tasers being "effective",
at what, exactly?
Because it's often less
"a Taser being used"
"instead of a more lethal option
like a gun", and more,
"a Taser being used instead
of a less-lethal option"
"like talking to someone."
Cops have repeatedly been found
to use Tasers
when they're in no imminent
danger whatsoever,
as a reflexive response to subdue
anyone from
"unarmed mentally disturbed
or intoxicated individuals",
to "suspects
fleeing minor crime scenes",
to people simply arguing with police
or failing to comply immediately
with a command.
In fact,
remember that heartwarming story
about Miami cops getting Tasers
and going 16 whole months
without shooting a single person
before starting again?
Well, it turns out, in that time,
they used those Tasers a lot.
A few months after that piece aired,
CNN was airing stories like this.
About one week after learning
from CNN that police tasered
a six-year-old boy in one
of its elementary schools,
the district said no more.
In a letter sent
to Miami-Dade's police chief,
the school superintendent
asked that police, quote:
"Refrain from deploying Tasers
against elementary school students."
So, that leads us
to our last call question:
should police be able
to use Tasers on children?
That is
a wild question to be asking!
And also, that's basically
what the news was like in 2004.
Debating the ethics
of tasing six-year-olds
in between manufacturing
consent for the Iraq war.
And before you ask: someone
did call in to answer that question,
and yes, I am going
to play you their response.
Yes, if the situation is warranted,
they should be allowed to use Tasers.
I wish I could've used one
on my son.
My instinct is still to disagree,
but I do want to hear
her side of the story.
But it's true: cops have tased kids.
Some see nothing wrong with that.
In 2018, a cop in Cincinnati chased
an 11-year-old who was shoplifting
and then tased her,
and this is how he tried to
justify that to her afterwards.
Sweetheart, the last thing I want
to do is tase you like that.
When I say stop, you stop.
You know you're caught. Just stop.
That hurt my heart
to do that to you.
Then I gotta listen to all these idiots
out here in the parking lot
tell me how I was wrong
for tasing you.
You broke the law, and you fled
as I tried to apprehend you.
First, if you're tasing an 11-year-old
at all, let alone for shoplifting,
the idiot in the parking lot
is very much you.
And as for "that hurt my heart"?
I do not feel bad for you,
for the same reason I wouldn't
feel bad for a kidnapper
if their ransom note started with:
"This is really uncomfortable for me"
"because I'm actually
a people pleaser."
So, when it comes to the efficacy
of Tasers, it's complicated.
If by "effective" you mean "subdue
suspects as little as half the time,"
"increase the hostility
of police encounters,"
"and give cops a quick way to zap
children without breaking a sweat,"
then sure, they absolutely work.
But what about the other key question
here: are they safe?
Well, again, to hear Axon tell it,
absolutely.
When Rick Smith first started
selling Tasers, he told police
that human and animal testing
confirmed
that it "does not leave
lasting harm."
But the thing is, Tasers are virtually
unregulated by any agency,
as one expert has said:
"There are not a lot of products"
"that escape all safety agency
regulation, it really is unusual."
And what that means is,
you basically have to take
the company's word for it.
And honestly, when you look
at some of Axon's initial tests,
they're not that reassuring.
Because their "early animal and human
tests didn't use control groups"
and consisted pretty much
entirely of just tasing
"one pig, five dogs
and some willing cops."
Which honestly sounds less like
a good sample size for a safety study
and more like the original pitch
for "Paw Patrol".
And look, no one wants to see
Jesus! No!
They're fine!
They are probably fine!
But even as Tasers were rolling
out around the country,
some news outlets
began noticing a worrying trend.
One of the first to do that
was CBS, back in 2004,
and they got a heated response
from Rick Smith.
At least 40 people have died
after being hit with stun guns.
James Borden, shocked three times,
died while tussling
with jailers in Indiana.
David Glowczenski died
in his New York neighborhood
just after being stunned.
So did Willy Lomax of Las Vegas.
In none of these cases has the person
died while being hit with the Taser.
Of the cases that we've seen,
we strongly believe,
and our medical experts
strongly believe,
the Taser had no causal effect
in those fatalities.
Had the Taser not been used, all 40
of those people would still be dead.
You're saying that
this is a coincidence?
They would have died anyway?
In every single case, these people
would have died anyway.
Well, that is some amazing,
completely unprovable bullshit.
Sure, maybe all those people
would have died anyway.
Maybe Shinzo Abe's neck
just did that.
Who can ever truly know
the mind of God?
By the way, isn't it crazy that
the former prime minister of Japan
got assassinated three years ago
and we never talk about it?
I'm not peddling conspiracies.
Not suggesting
anything sinister is afoot.
Just observing our cultural immunity
to the relentless onslaught of horrors
bobbing us along toward death,
which will come for all of us one day,
but crucially, as we all now know,
not at the hands of a Taser.
That would be impossible.
But pretty soon,
it became clear there actually
were some safety issues with Tasers.
Because as tests inside and outside
the company became more rigorous,
by the mid-2000s,
multiple studies,
including one commissioned
by Axon themselves,
found that
"Tasers could disrupt the heart."
Yet Axon's only real response to that
came three years later,
after they lost
their first court case,
when they began "advising police
against aiming at the chest."
When police departments became
concerned about that warning,
Rick Smith tried to reassure them
on a conference call
that it really wasn't
anything to worry about.
I want to start by addressing
a couple of the questions
we've been receiving over email.
The first one is, are chest hits
with the Taser dangerous?
And the answer to that
is definitively no.
That's nice!
Again and again in that call,
Smith went out of his way
to downplay the change in guidance,
saying it was mainly
for "risk management,"
because in the event of a bad outcome,
it "saves us all the controversy."
Basically, don't pay too much
attention to the guidelines,
they're just legal
mumbo-jumbo.
Kind of like how this
is officially sold on Amazon
as a "wired powerful handheld
electric back massager."
The company's officially stating
it should be used on your back,
but you know what?
Once it's in your hands,
your body is your body,
your journey is your journey.
Go wild!
And the thing is, over the years,
Axon's put a lot of fine print
onto their product about safe use,
they suggest avoiding
shooting the groin area,
and encourage
"splitting the belt line",
meaning landing one dart
on the upper half of the body,
and one on the lower,
but not near the heart or groin.
It also warns about the risks
of using its products on people
who are "old, young, frail,
agitated, exhausted"
"or suffering from
an array of health conditions."
Quick sidebar to anyone who doesn't
fall into any of those six categories,
let me say, as someone who falls
into five: go fuck yourself.
And all of that helps
to protect Axon from liability.
It can say any death that occurs
in one of those instances
was from someone
misusing their product.
And at this point, I have to say,
there is a lack of scientific consensus
on the exact risks of Tasers.
And the company's insisted
its weapons
are "the most thoroughly studied
and safest force option available,"
and that, in its view,
"there are no 'confirmed' cases"
"of Taser-induced cardiac arrest,
or electrocution."
But it does say something that,
when a voluntary tasing occurs
on its own premises,
where the company itself would
presumably be liable,
its employees are required
to sign a waiver
that "warns of the potential
for death at least 12 times."
Which is both very telling, and
seems like overkill for any waiver.
The one we make our studio
audience sign
only warns about death four times and
it's mainly focused on the front row,
stating they're okay with
being in the splash zone.
Maybe tonight's the night!
Maybe you're gonna get splashed!
But there is one final twist
to this story,
where the harm Axon has done
extends considerably outward.
Because a key component of their
defense against liability
is the use of a particular phrase
that you might notice comes up
an awful lot in coverage of people
who've died after tasings.
The coroner's report says being tased,
restrained,
and stepped on did not kill Rios.
Instead, he died
from excited delirium.
Autopsy results show that Bolick died
of acute exhaustion mania,
which is also known
as excited delirium syndrome.
The cause is excited delirium.
They labeled his cause of death
excited delirium syndrome.
Excited delirium.
Her death was ruled an accident
caused by a condition
known as excited delirium.
Yeah, "excited delirium."
Which I know already sounds like
a wildly outdated medical term.
It sounds like the second biggest
reason people got cocaine
from a pharmacy in the 1800s,
right after, "I want some."
Very basically, "excited delirium" means
you're essentially out of control,
and in that state, your heart can
just stop, of its own accord,
regardless of what anyone else
has done to you.
Here is one of Axon's go-to medical
experts, trying to lay out the argument.
In excited delirium, you have an
individual who's in a delirious state.
He's not oriented to reality.
He has hallucinations.
He can't think straight.
They're described
as having superhuman strength.
You can Taser them.
You can hit them.
And it doesn't seem to bother them.
They still keep going.
And then they get into a struggle.
And the longer they struggle,
the worse it is, and the greater
probability that death will occur.
Wait, what? If someone dies
during a struggle,
it's probably because of the struggle,
not because of an unrelated syndrome.
There's a reason the San Francisco
Chronicle ran headlines
about the Zodiac Killer being at large
and not
"People Dying of Spontaneous
Stab Wound Syndrome,"
"In Unrelated News, Some Random
Guy Sent Us A Super Fun Puzzle!"
And if that sounds
like convenient horseshit,
that's because it absolutely is.
Professional medical associations
have increasingly denounced
the term "excited delirium" as,
"at best, useless, and at worst,
racist pseudoscience."
And yet, Axon's aggressively pushed
the term over the years,
because it's clearly
very useful to them.
But it's also become useful to police,
because they can now use it
anytime they want to try and explain
a death during a police encounter,
whether Tasers are involved or not.
They infamously even tried to do it
after the killing of George Floyd.
And it's worth knowing:
from the beginning, this phrase
had an ugly history.
Its modern use was coined in the 1980s
by a guy named Charles Wetli,
a forensic pathologist in Miami,
who blamed it
"for the mysterious deaths of
more than a dozen Black women."
Wetli began to publicize his theory
saying the women
had "died from combining sex
with cocaine use",
leading to "excited delirium"
and "that autopsies had 'conclusively'
shown they had not been murdered."
But, you should know,
"the women's deaths were eventually
attributed to a serial killer."
And, in some cases, according
to the chief medical examiner,
"the signs of asphyxiation
were so pronounced"
"that one could see them from
'10 feet away, it's that clear.'"
So, yeah, Wetli's an idiot.
A racist idiot.
But a racist idiot who Axon retained
as their expert witness
in more than a dozen lawsuits.
And, in his expert opinion,
Wetli told juries
he'd "never seen a case where
he could say that a Taser"
"actually contributed to the death."
Hiring Wetli is just part of it.
Because Axon and those it works
closely with have gone
to great lengths to familiarize police
with the term "excited delirium".
At one point,
one of the company's attorneys
and an expert they funded
started this group,
which distributed a flyer
explaining excited delirium,
which both recommended
Taser products
to subdue people
showing the symptoms
and featured this helpful
medical crisis mnemonic
explaining all the signs
of excited delirium,
with one of the
"I's" standing for "I can't breathe".
And now, many officers are primed
to blame excited delirium
anytime a death occurs during
an encounter with the public.
When that death involves a Taser,
Axon can get heavily involved.
Just listen to one former spokesman
explain that to a reporter.
I spoke with a representative
of the company.
He told me that when
he reads a news headline,
something about death and Tasers,
he gets in touch with the local PD.
And I got it pre-saved as a draft.
I literally just have to plug in
the name of the city and say:
"Dear so-and-so, I understand you may
have had an arrest-related death."
"Here's my checklist.
Here are some recommendations."
If he hears
about a death involving Tasers,
he sends a pre-saved email
with a checklist of what to do.
And already, it's not a great sign
that it's pre-saved,
just like it wouldn't be a great sign
if every time you typed "sorry"
in iMessage,
the predictive text filled in
"for taking a massive shit in the middle
of the Whole Foods parking lot."
You're doing something very wrong
if this kind of response is automatic.
And as grim as that sounds in theory,
it's worse in practice.
Take the death of 18-year-old
Israel Hernandez-Llach,
who had been "spotted spray-painting
the blackened windows"
"of an abandoned McDonald's",
got a shot in the chest with a Taser,
collapsed on the sidewalk
in cardiac arrest, and died.
Only four hours later,
the Miami Beach PD received an email
from the company featuring "guidance
on how investigators should proceed,"
including "a sample press release and
an evidence collection checklist."
Axon even recommended a specific
expert to contact for testing.
And sure enough, that expert
eventually returned a finding
the body had "biomarkers consistent
with excited delirium syndrome."
And it doesn't stop there. Axon's
presence is even felt at the morgue,
asthe company's sent
hundreds of pamphlets a year
to medical examiners explaining
how to detect excited delirium.
At one point, Axon was even filing
"lawsuits against medical examiners"
"who had attributed in-custody
deaths in part to Taser use,"
with one forensic pathologist saying:
"You get this letter threatening you, if
you say Taser was the cause of death."
And those threats got results.
According to a 2011 survey,
"14% of medical examiners said
they modified diagnostic findings"
"due to the possible
threat of litigation,"
and 32% said that threat
could affect future decisions.
When you take all of this together,
the company's history of excitedly
encouraging the use of its product,
while downplaying its risks and actively
trying to suppress anything
that might tarnish its reputation
it's just a recipe for disaster.
And even some police officers who've
gotten accustomed to using Tasers
can feel betrayed
when they learn about all this.
In Warren, Michigan,
a 16-year-old died after being tased
and this officer on that force
still seemed rattled after the fact.
Nobody told us that these Tasers
were gonna kill people, you know?
You come out with a sales pitch,
they say this,
and then when it doesn't work out,
you just disappear.
That's not right either.
Because I'll tell you what,
if I discharge pepper spray
and it makes the guy go blind,
I expect Guardian to come in
and explain, 'cause far as I'm told,
it doesn't make people go blind.
I've never seen it.
But if that were to happen, they
better come in. That's not my fault.
If I knew that about pepper spray,
I wouldn't use it, you know?
You swore
this wasn't gonna happen.
You swore that this was
a statistically normal thing,
that these people were not dying
at any more of a unusual rate
than they would have with
absent the Taser, you know?
Right. I get why he's upset.
Axon told him the Taser
was basically harmless,
and the truth is, it's just not.
It'd be like finding out that a Nerf gun
was used to assassinate JFK.
I don't care if Nerf says that
was a statistical anomaly,
I'm not handling it
the same way anymore.
So, what can we do? I admit, when it
comes to Tasers, it's complicated.
I don't hate that there's at least
a theoretical alternative to guns.
And I guess I'd much rather
police tase people than shoot them.
Although my ultimate preference
would be for them to do neither of those
and be much more aware
of the actual risks involved.
One way for us all to better know those
risks would be to track Taser usage
far more closely
than we currently do.
Which really doesn't seem
like too much to ask.
But beyond all that, I'd argue
the term "excited delirium"
should just be gone forever.
And there's actually been some
encouraging news on that front.
In 2023, the National Association
of Medical Examiners said
it "should not be listed
as a cause of death."
These states have now restricted
the use of excited delirium,
and New York and Hawaii currently
have legislation in the works.
Which is good.
The point here is,
we shouldn't keep using Tasers
like they're magic wands,
because they're not,
or pretending deaths that occur
after their use don't happen,
because they do.
And if Axon doesn't want
to talk about this, then I will.
But I'll do it in the most
Axon way I know how.
So, ladies and gentlemen,
please, welcome me!
Hi there! Hi, everyone!
Hi! Thanks so much for having me!
Listen, before you say anything,
I know I look a little different.
A little less stiff than usual.
But don't worry, it's still me.
It's just this version of me
can dance! Look!
Look, I'm dancing now!
I've never felt so connected
to my body before! I love this.
All right, stop. Stop!
Look, there are a few rules that
we should have regarding Tasers.
First, they're clearly a weapon,
so they should be regulated like one.
Second, they should only be used
in extreme situations,
not as a first resort.
And finally, no one should ever
get tased with their mom
as part of a corporate
teambuilding exercise,
because that's a very weird thing
to do.
Now, if you'll excuse me,
in my last few moments in this body,
please let me enjoy having an ass.
Look how happy I am!
We're living our absolute dream!
That's our show,
thank you so much for watching.
We'll see you next week,
good night! Look at me go!
I'm John Oliver, thank you for
joining us, it has been a busy week!
Canada's prime minister called
a snap election for next month,
Turkish government continued to crack
down on protests against Erdogan,
leading to this incredible footage
of a protester in a Pikachu costume
running away from police.
And in Britain,
a judge delivered a sharp rebuke,
after this Paddington statue was
the subject of a brutal attack.
Drunk at two o'clock in the morning,
two RAF engineers
pick on an unsuspecting bear.
Kicking and pulling at the statue,
they don't give up
until they've torn it in half.
Police recovered the lost half
of Paddington at the RAF base
the day after the attack
earlier this month.
Sentencing them, the judge
condemned their actions,
saying Paddington
"represents kindness, tolerance"
"and promotes integration
and acceptance in our society."
"Your actions were the antithesis of
everything Paddington stands for."
Okay, there is a lot to love there,
from the least effective
running kick I've ever seen
to the image of Paddington
in a police car
looking like the world's
most whimsical bastard.
Though Paddington "promotes
integration and acceptance"
is overselling it a bit. He's not
Martin Luther Bear.
He didn't lead the Selma marches.
He eats marmalade sandwiches
and stares at people
when they're kinda rude.
Just relax a bit.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration
brought us yet another week of chaos,
including this.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth,
along with other top members
of President Trump's national
security team,
sharing details about a planned
large-scale attack on Yemen
earlier this month on the commercial
message app Signal
and inadvertently including journalist
Jeffrey Goldberg on that chain.
It's true, they put a journalist
in their group chat,
something Goldberg revealed
in an article headlined
"The Trump Administration
Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans",
which is one of the greatest
headlines I read this week,
alongside "Monkeys Chase British
Tourist Out of Hotel Pool In Thailand:"
"Scariest Moment of My Life",
"This Octopus's Other Car
Is a Shark"
and "Lots of Fun, Good Weather
Greets Guests"
"During Deerfield's 24th Annual",
wait for it, "Testicle Festival".
Now, in his article, Goldberg wrote
he doubted the chat was real,
until the time of the attack,
when "I waited in my car
in a supermarket parking lot."
"I checked X
and searched Yemen"
and saw that explosions were being
heard across Sanaa, the capital city.
And look, the White House tried
to do damage control all week,
from playing semantic games over
they were technically "war plans"
to hinting Goldberg somehow
got himself onto the chat,
something undercut by it literally
showing Michael Waltz,
the U.S. national security adviser,
adding Goldberg in.
And by the way, all of this
was in the run-up to airstrikes
that are estimated to have killed
up to 46 civilians on one day,
which should be a scandal
in and of itself.
And it's grotesque to see the glib
response in the chat afterward,
because Waltz posted "fist,
American flag, fire emoji",
while another official posted
"prayer hands, muscle, flag."
And look, those clearly
aren't the right emojis to send
after a bombing, because
the right emojis are no emojis.
It's basically like asking
which Minion meme is right to send
after Dylan's ex-wife died
in a car accident.
They weren't together anymore,
were they,
but it feels wrong
not to send something,
when the answer
is "maybe send flowers"
and not this actual meme
of a Minion cheering in a graveyard
holding a sign that says:
"Sorry about your ex-wife."
That is not the answer!
But this is something
of a motif for this administration,
deeply unserious people
doing deeply stupid things,
with massively
serious consequences.
Because it's also the case with their
ongoing targeting of immigrants,
from the disturbing video
of DHS agents grabbing a Tufts
student off the street this week,
to the mass deportations
of Venezuelan immigrants,
who were sent to a notorious
mega-prison in El Salvador.
Even as that move has been
challenged in court,
the administration took
a hideous victory lap.
Homeland Security Secretary
Kristi Noem traveled to El Salvador.
She used her visit to the prison
where hundreds of Venezuelans
with alleged ties to the Tren de Aragua
gang were deported
to post this social video,
warning,
if you come to the U.S. illegally, this
could be one of the consequences.
Know that this facility
is one of the tools in our toolkit
that we will use if you commit
crimes against the American people.
Okay, the visual alone there
is deeply disturbing.
Using caged prisoners with shaved
heads as a backdrop
is a bold choice,
given, you know, history.
And it's now the most appalling use
of a front-facing video
from anyone in this administration,
even surpassing the time
Cheryl Hines hawked body cream
in front of a nude RFK Jr.
showing off his wet armpits.
And I do not say that lightly.
And it's worth noting:
some of the people now in that
prison seem to have been grabbed
on the flimsiest of charges.
One man said an ICE agent
told him:
"You're here
because of your tattoos."
"We're finding and questioning
everyone who has tattoos."
And when he explained
the meaning of his,
which included this autism
awareness ribbon to honor his brother,
he says he was told:
"You're clean."
But then he got sent
to El Salvador anyway.
Another man in there not
only reportedly has no tattoos,
he also has a pending asylum case
and no criminal record,
and ICE's document supporting
his deportation is full of mistakes.
It uses someone else's last name
in several parts of the document,
identifies him
with female pronouns
and uses two different
unique ID numbers.
This is clearly a total mess.
And it is not great that,
when Tom Homan was pressed on
the clear lack of due process here,
this is how it went.
What we've heard from lawyers
representing some of these people
is that they deny that they're
members of this gang.
Do they get a chance to prove that
before you take them out of the country
and put them into a notorious prison
in a country they're not even from?
I mean, do they have
any due process at all?
Laken Riley's due process?
Where were all these young women
that were killed and raped
by members of TDA,
where was their due process?
Okay, here's the thing: no matter
how tragic those examples are,
that's not how
the justice system works.
The Fifth Amendment clearly says:
"No person shall be deprived
of life, liberty, or property,"
"without due process of law."
That's it!
It doesn't then add
in the small print:
"Unless they seem guilty
by association to a man"
"who looks like Buzz Lightyear drowned
a few days ago."
The past couple months have seen
this administration operate
with incompetence and cruelty,
interspersed with the occasional
Nazi-adjacent visuals.
The good news is,
they're facing major pushback
from federal courts
over their mass deportations.
The bad news is, they've already
done a ton of damage.
But if they think they can brush off
illegally detaining and imprisoning
innocent people
with the same flippancy they reserve
for adding the wrong person
to a group chat, they should
know in no uncertain terms
that the rest of us
will push back hard,
or to put it in the language
that they seem to prefer,
go fuck yourselves, assholes.
Love, America.
And now, this.
And Now:
Checking in with DeeAnne,
the Most Loyal Viewer
of "Good Day Atlanta".
Today's Hot Topic,
we wanted to know what modern
technology you refuse to use?
So, DeeAnne says:
"All of it!"
We wanted to know, is there
a correct way to cut a sandwich?
DeeAnne says: "I slice it
when I take bites of it."
She puts a little funky face there.
DeeAnne says:
"I started off with MySpace
and loved it"
"because you can upload music
and pretty backgrounds and all."
DeeAnne says:
"I guess I'm an old fuddy-duddy."
"I just don't like Halloween,
never have,"
"only been trick or treating
once in my lifetime."
What?
DeeAnne says: "It's okay
to have some sense of humor,"
"but I have lived and learned that by
having too much is not good either."
DeeAnne says:
"You ain't had no hot dog
until you tried them air-fried!"
Okay, DeeAnne.
DeeAnne says: "I don't like
to go anywhere these days."
DeeAnne says: "If it ain't free,
then I don't subscribe!"
I guess DeeAnne knows
what's up.
Today is National Discover
What Your Name Means Day.
DeeAnne says: "My real name
means lady of sorrows."
No, they didn't.
Moving on. Our main story
tonight concerns Tasers.
You know, the things that are now
basically a supporting character
on every single cop show.
Stop, FBI!
Amateur.
And don't look up my skirt.
I've never used one of these
things before, this is great!
- I mean, is he all right?
- Yeah, he's all right.
Yeah, he's probably okay!
And the "I've never used one before"
there was very cute.
There's just nothing quite
like the effortless whimsy
of cop procedurals
made before 2020.
Police brutality? How could it be?
She's literally just a girl!
But Tasers are now ubiquitous
in real life, too.
They're carried by some 400,000
American patrol officers,
which is obviously great news for
the company that makes them, Axon.
You might not have heard of Axon
before, which is surprising,
given how huge they are.
The company has a market cap
of over 40 billion dollars,
and they're constantly innovating
in the Taser space.
Here is a pretty slick commercial
for their latest model.
That's a pretty intense ad
for what basically looks like
a cheap toy that comes with
a strip mall security guard costume
from Spirit Halloween,
set to music from
"Now That's What I Call Hans Zimmer
Falling Asleep on His Synthesizer!"
Axon's stated mission
is to "protect life",
as, according to the company,
"Tasers have been deployed
more than 3.7 million times"
"and have prevented loss of life
or serious injury"
"in more than 200,000 instances."
In fact, to listen to Axon's co-founder
and CEO, Rick Smith,
yassified Bert, tell it, the Taser
is essentially a miracle weapon.
The idea of using electricity
to incapacitate, at its core,
is, frankly, a beautiful
and simplistic idea.
That rather than causing death
or injury to someone,
if we can just temporarily
take away control of their body
and get them under control, it's about
as nonviolent as you could get.
Right. Though I'm not sure
I'd describe getting shocked
with 50,000 volts as
"as nonviolent as you can get".
It certainly doesn't sound
that relaxing.
There's a reason people unwind
by taking a bath with lit candles
or a book
instead of with a toaster.
But as, deep down,
you probably already know,
the reality of Tasers
just isn't that simple.
Over the years, there've been
multiple high-profile instances
of people dying after getting tased.
According to a 2017 investigation,
there've been over 1,000 incidents
in the U.S.
in which people died after
police stunned them with Tasers.
It's impossible to know for sure
what specific role Tasers may have
played in all of those deaths.
But as you're about to see,
that's in part
because Axon's worked incredibly
hard to ensure that's the case.
So, given that, tonight,
let's talk about Tasers.
Specifically,
the company that makes them,
whether their product is as safe
and effective as they claim
and the broader impact
they've had on policing.
And let's start with the fact the Taser
was first invented in the 1970s.
Here is a newscast explaining it
for the first time,
with one hell of a demonstration.
The Taser looks like a flashlight,
fires two electric darts,
and packs 50,000 volts
at low amperage.
In this demonstration, conducted
in a hospital for safety's sake,
the volunteer victim is the son of
the Taser's inventor, Jack Cover.
As it hits, the electrical charge
paralyzed the central nervous system
for a few minutes and the victim
loses control of his muscles.
Yeah, the inventor of the Taser
tested it on his own son.
And that was on the news,
and not somehow a clip
from the '70s TV show
"America's Grainiest Home
Videos of Parental Abuse."
Initially, the product
didn't really take off,
mostly because it was too
cumbersome and ineffectual to use.
Then, in the early '90s,
a 23-year-old Rick Smith
learned about the invention, and he
and his brother bought the rights,
starting a company that
at that point called Taser.
They spent years
tinkering with its design,
including, crucially, swapping out
the gunpowder
that fired the darts in the original
version for compressed nitrogen,
which, conveniently,
meant it suddenly was no longer
subject to firearms regulations.
By the late 1990s, they were marketing
Tasers to law enforcement,
with the promise that they were both
incapacitating and extremely safe.
Smith himself even "took a half-second
shock at a demonstration in LA"
to show his faith in it.
And by the end of 2003, more than
4,300 police agencies had Tasers.
And at the time, they got a lot
of positive coverage.
Across the country, cops call
this Taser "the revolution".
- May I ask what you think of that?
- I love it.
It stops officers having to go
hands-on and fight with suspects.
Sergeant Lauri Williams says
the Taser reduces deadly force,
because police no longer
draw their guns
on suspects
with bricks or knives.
Why the growing use
of this weapon?
The Miami Police Department has set
a record for big city police departments
in that, for the last 16 months,
we have not discharged
a single bullet at a citizen.
It is impressive they went 16 months
without a single police shooting,
and also depressing
that it's that impressive.
Although, for the record, I'm not sure
Tasers can take all the credit there.
The more relevant fact may be
that, at that time,
the DOJ was conducting an investigation
of the Miami Police Department
for use of excessive force.
And once it concluded,
you'll never guess,
police shootings
rose right back up.
So, Tasers can probably take
as much credit
for stopping Miami
police shootings in 2004
as the release of "Shrek 2".
I don't know, maybe
the Miami PD were too busy
going back to the theater
multiple times to absorb
the nuances of Shrek's hero's
journey and/or trying to figure out
how these two actually fucked.
Still, there was undeniably real
enthusiasm for Tasers back then.
And as they pushed into new lines
of business, Taser rebranded as Axon
and started selling technology
like police body cams,
a market they now dominate.
If you ever see body cam
footage on the news,
you'll probably notice
the word "Axon" in the corner.
They're basically the TMZ
of state-sanctioned violence.
And all of this has made Smith
incredibly rich.
As of last year, he's worth
two and a half billion dollars.
While this isn't strictly relevant,
he's done that while creating
a corporate culture
that is borderline cult-like.
Because not only has he been
tased at least seven times,
voluntarily getting shot with Tasers
is kind of a rite of passage at Axon.
"Staff tasings, known as 'exposures,'
are corporate rituals,"
and are often used to initiate
interns or new recruits.
Employees have even
made up their own slang for it:
"ride the lightning."
Which sounds more like what you do
after Pikachu shows you hole.
On Axon's website, you can even see
fun videos of employees getting tased
in the office,
or at corporate events.
And some have even roped in
family members to do it with them.
Yeah. So, fun fact. My mom
and I did an exposure together.
And I asked her to do it with me
and she did.
So, now we have the distinction
of being the only mother-daughter duo
in Axon Taser history to take
a hit from an X2 together.
That's cute! Now, please,
do both try and go to therapy.
Mothers and daughters
are literally more likely
to get tased together
than heal matrilineal trauma.
Also, if any men are wondering
how you're supposed to react to
a story like that, I'll tell you how:
like her coworker here.
Stay frozen, king.
This is not your story.
This is not your fight.
Axon's execs have also reportedly
urged staff to "make things permanent"
by getting tattoos
of the company logo.
In fact, here's Rick Smith with one.
And I'm sorry,
that's just an objectively shitty logo
to have tattooed on your body.
It looks like a "Spy Kids" watch
celebrating its first year of sobriety.
Axon insists that no employee is ever
pressured to get tased or tattooed,
which is a hell of a thing
to have to insist.
But Smith does love engaging
in big displays at corporate events,
attending one as "Taserman" in this
deeply ill-advised superhero costume.
And at another,
he told the company's origin story,
while appearing remotely in what,
I'm going to warn you,
is the dumbest possible way.
Today, I wanted to tell you a story.
It's our story,
of the roots of Taser and Axon,
of how we came to be.
In December 1990, two of my high
school friends were shot and killed
only a few miles from here in what
started as altercation at a red light.
They were in their early 20s,
barely beginning to figure out life.
And in the blink of an eye,
three lives were destroyed.
I found it absurd that the self-defense
choice in the 20th century
was still a bullet, the same tool we've
used to kill each other for centuries.
Okay, first, to get
the obvious out of the way,
that monstrosity
is what Rick calls his "avatar".
And sure, he could have
just Zoomed in, that was 2022,
we all knew
how to do that by then,
but instead, he paid a man in a jacket
to make random arm movements
while wearing a bike helmet with
an iPad projecting his face.
He looks like a member of Daft Punk
trying to sell you a timeshare.
But, that aside, the tragic origin
story Smith's selling there
is one he likes to tell a lot.
He's mentioned it in interviews,
at other events,
and even in an SEC filing
where he wrote:
"I had two friends who
were shot and killed."
"I was enraged that such
a terrible thing could happen,"
"and I wanted
to do something about it."
And that would be a genuinely noble
reason to focus on nonviolence.
But the thing is, while those
young men were, sadly, killed,
when reporters looked into it,
they found,
according to family members: "Smith
was not friends with the deceased."
He did go to the same high school,
but it was
"not at the same time, according
to school yearbooks."
And while Smith insists he knew them
through "social events",
one of their best friends later
told a reporter:
"I don't know any Rick Smith."
All of which puts a bit of a damper
on Rick's origin story.
Imagine finding out Bruce Wayne's
parents weren't even murdered.
It kind of makes this guy's
whole deal even more confusing.
Bruce, why are you doing this?
Your parents are alive and well
in Florida,
but you never return their calls.
They just won
their pickleball semifinals.
There's a seat at the championship
with your name on it, Bruce.
Just pick up the phone.
That's not the only area
where Smith and Axon's relationship
to facts is shaky.
Because let's now talk about the two
main selling points for Tasers:
that they're effective
and that they're safe.
And let's start with "effective".
In the past, Axon's claimed Tasers
are between 80 and 97% effective
at subduing a suspect in the field.
But one survey of police data
found many departments disputed
that with one city claiming that it was
effective as little as 55% of the time,
basically a coin flip.
And Axon's response was,
incredibly, to complain that survey
didn't give them credit for "instances
when a suspect was subdued"
"after an officer merely displayed
or threatened to fire a Taser."
But at that point, that's not really
about their device, is it?
You could presumably get
that result with a gun,
a flamethrower,
or a magic fucking wand.
And the thing is,
if a Taser doesn't work,
police might then escalate
up to a more violent option.
Between 2015 and 2017,
"more than 250 fatal police shootings
occurred"
"after a Taser failed to incapacitate
a suspect."
And, "In 106 of them,
the suspect became more violent"
"after receiving the electrical shock,"
which is understandable.
Also, when we talk about
Tasers being "effective",
at what, exactly?
Because it's often less
"a Taser being used"
"instead of a more lethal option
like a gun", and more,
"a Taser being used instead
of a less-lethal option"
"like talking to someone."
Cops have repeatedly been found
to use Tasers
when they're in no imminent
danger whatsoever,
as a reflexive response to subdue
anyone from
"unarmed mentally disturbed
or intoxicated individuals",
to "suspects
fleeing minor crime scenes",
to people simply arguing with police
or failing to comply immediately
with a command.
In fact,
remember that heartwarming story
about Miami cops getting Tasers
and going 16 whole months
without shooting a single person
before starting again?
Well, it turns out, in that time,
they used those Tasers a lot.
A few months after that piece aired,
CNN was airing stories like this.
About one week after learning
from CNN that police tasered
a six-year-old boy in one
of its elementary schools,
the district said no more.
In a letter sent
to Miami-Dade's police chief,
the school superintendent
asked that police, quote:
"Refrain from deploying Tasers
against elementary school students."
So, that leads us
to our last call question:
should police be able
to use Tasers on children?
That is
a wild question to be asking!
And also, that's basically
what the news was like in 2004.
Debating the ethics
of tasing six-year-olds
in between manufacturing
consent for the Iraq war.
And before you ask: someone
did call in to answer that question,
and yes, I am going
to play you their response.
Yes, if the situation is warranted,
they should be allowed to use Tasers.
I wish I could've used one
on my son.
My instinct is still to disagree,
but I do want to hear
her side of the story.
But it's true: cops have tased kids.
Some see nothing wrong with that.
In 2018, a cop in Cincinnati chased
an 11-year-old who was shoplifting
and then tased her,
and this is how he tried to
justify that to her afterwards.
Sweetheart, the last thing I want
to do is tase you like that.
When I say stop, you stop.
You know you're caught. Just stop.
That hurt my heart
to do that to you.
Then I gotta listen to all these idiots
out here in the parking lot
tell me how I was wrong
for tasing you.
You broke the law, and you fled
as I tried to apprehend you.
First, if you're tasing an 11-year-old
at all, let alone for shoplifting,
the idiot in the parking lot
is very much you.
And as for "that hurt my heart"?
I do not feel bad for you,
for the same reason I wouldn't
feel bad for a kidnapper
if their ransom note started with:
"This is really uncomfortable for me"
"because I'm actually
a people pleaser."
So, when it comes to the efficacy
of Tasers, it's complicated.
If by "effective" you mean "subdue
suspects as little as half the time,"
"increase the hostility
of police encounters,"
"and give cops a quick way to zap
children without breaking a sweat,"
then sure, they absolutely work.
But what about the other key question
here: are they safe?
Well, again, to hear Axon tell it,
absolutely.
When Rick Smith first started
selling Tasers, he told police
that human and animal testing
confirmed
that it "does not leave
lasting harm."
But the thing is, Tasers are virtually
unregulated by any agency,
as one expert has said:
"There are not a lot of products"
"that escape all safety agency
regulation, it really is unusual."
And what that means is,
you basically have to take
the company's word for it.
And honestly, when you look
at some of Axon's initial tests,
they're not that reassuring.
Because their "early animal and human
tests didn't use control groups"
and consisted pretty much
entirely of just tasing
"one pig, five dogs
and some willing cops."
Which honestly sounds less like
a good sample size for a safety study
and more like the original pitch
for "Paw Patrol".
And look, no one wants to see
Jesus! No!
They're fine!
They are probably fine!
But even as Tasers were rolling
out around the country,
some news outlets
began noticing a worrying trend.
One of the first to do that
was CBS, back in 2004,
and they got a heated response
from Rick Smith.
At least 40 people have died
after being hit with stun guns.
James Borden, shocked three times,
died while tussling
with jailers in Indiana.
David Glowczenski died
in his New York neighborhood
just after being stunned.
So did Willy Lomax of Las Vegas.
In none of these cases has the person
died while being hit with the Taser.
Of the cases that we've seen,
we strongly believe,
and our medical experts
strongly believe,
the Taser had no causal effect
in those fatalities.
Had the Taser not been used, all 40
of those people would still be dead.
You're saying that
this is a coincidence?
They would have died anyway?
In every single case, these people
would have died anyway.
Well, that is some amazing,
completely unprovable bullshit.
Sure, maybe all those people
would have died anyway.
Maybe Shinzo Abe's neck
just did that.
Who can ever truly know
the mind of God?
By the way, isn't it crazy that
the former prime minister of Japan
got assassinated three years ago
and we never talk about it?
I'm not peddling conspiracies.
Not suggesting
anything sinister is afoot.
Just observing our cultural immunity
to the relentless onslaught of horrors
bobbing us along toward death,
which will come for all of us one day,
but crucially, as we all now know,
not at the hands of a Taser.
That would be impossible.
But pretty soon,
it became clear there actually
were some safety issues with Tasers.
Because as tests inside and outside
the company became more rigorous,
by the mid-2000s,
multiple studies,
including one commissioned
by Axon themselves,
found that
"Tasers could disrupt the heart."
Yet Axon's only real response to that
came three years later,
after they lost
their first court case,
when they began "advising police
against aiming at the chest."
When police departments became
concerned about that warning,
Rick Smith tried to reassure them
on a conference call
that it really wasn't
anything to worry about.
I want to start by addressing
a couple of the questions
we've been receiving over email.
The first one is, are chest hits
with the Taser dangerous?
And the answer to that
is definitively no.
That's nice!
Again and again in that call,
Smith went out of his way
to downplay the change in guidance,
saying it was mainly
for "risk management,"
because in the event of a bad outcome,
it "saves us all the controversy."
Basically, don't pay too much
attention to the guidelines,
they're just legal
mumbo-jumbo.
Kind of like how this
is officially sold on Amazon
as a "wired powerful handheld
electric back massager."
The company's officially stating
it should be used on your back,
but you know what?
Once it's in your hands,
your body is your body,
your journey is your journey.
Go wild!
And the thing is, over the years,
Axon's put a lot of fine print
onto their product about safe use,
they suggest avoiding
shooting the groin area,
and encourage
"splitting the belt line",
meaning landing one dart
on the upper half of the body,
and one on the lower,
but not near the heart or groin.
It also warns about the risks
of using its products on people
who are "old, young, frail,
agitated, exhausted"
"or suffering from
an array of health conditions."
Quick sidebar to anyone who doesn't
fall into any of those six categories,
let me say, as someone who falls
into five: go fuck yourself.
And all of that helps
to protect Axon from liability.
It can say any death that occurs
in one of those instances
was from someone
misusing their product.
And at this point, I have to say,
there is a lack of scientific consensus
on the exact risks of Tasers.
And the company's insisted
its weapons
are "the most thoroughly studied
and safest force option available,"
and that, in its view,
"there are no 'confirmed' cases"
"of Taser-induced cardiac arrest,
or electrocution."
But it does say something that,
when a voluntary tasing occurs
on its own premises,
where the company itself would
presumably be liable,
its employees are required
to sign a waiver
that "warns of the potential
for death at least 12 times."
Which is both very telling, and
seems like overkill for any waiver.
The one we make our studio
audience sign
only warns about death four times and
it's mainly focused on the front row,
stating they're okay with
being in the splash zone.
Maybe tonight's the night!
Maybe you're gonna get splashed!
But there is one final twist
to this story,
where the harm Axon has done
extends considerably outward.
Because a key component of their
defense against liability
is the use of a particular phrase
that you might notice comes up
an awful lot in coverage of people
who've died after tasings.
The coroner's report says being tased,
restrained,
and stepped on did not kill Rios.
Instead, he died
from excited delirium.
Autopsy results show that Bolick died
of acute exhaustion mania,
which is also known
as excited delirium syndrome.
The cause is excited delirium.
They labeled his cause of death
excited delirium syndrome.
Excited delirium.
Her death was ruled an accident
caused by a condition
known as excited delirium.
Yeah, "excited delirium."
Which I know already sounds like
a wildly outdated medical term.
It sounds like the second biggest
reason people got cocaine
from a pharmacy in the 1800s,
right after, "I want some."
Very basically, "excited delirium" means
you're essentially out of control,
and in that state, your heart can
just stop, of its own accord,
regardless of what anyone else
has done to you.
Here is one of Axon's go-to medical
experts, trying to lay out the argument.
In excited delirium, you have an
individual who's in a delirious state.
He's not oriented to reality.
He has hallucinations.
He can't think straight.
They're described
as having superhuman strength.
You can Taser them.
You can hit them.
And it doesn't seem to bother them.
They still keep going.
And then they get into a struggle.
And the longer they struggle,
the worse it is, and the greater
probability that death will occur.
Wait, what? If someone dies
during a struggle,
it's probably because of the struggle,
not because of an unrelated syndrome.
There's a reason the San Francisco
Chronicle ran headlines
about the Zodiac Killer being at large
and not
"People Dying of Spontaneous
Stab Wound Syndrome,"
"In Unrelated News, Some Random
Guy Sent Us A Super Fun Puzzle!"
And if that sounds
like convenient horseshit,
that's because it absolutely is.
Professional medical associations
have increasingly denounced
the term "excited delirium" as,
"at best, useless, and at worst,
racist pseudoscience."
And yet, Axon's aggressively pushed
the term over the years,
because it's clearly
very useful to them.
But it's also become useful to police,
because they can now use it
anytime they want to try and explain
a death during a police encounter,
whether Tasers are involved or not.
They infamously even tried to do it
after the killing of George Floyd.
And it's worth knowing:
from the beginning, this phrase
had an ugly history.
Its modern use was coined in the 1980s
by a guy named Charles Wetli,
a forensic pathologist in Miami,
who blamed it
"for the mysterious deaths of
more than a dozen Black women."
Wetli began to publicize his theory
saying the women
had "died from combining sex
with cocaine use",
leading to "excited delirium"
and "that autopsies had 'conclusively'
shown they had not been murdered."
But, you should know,
"the women's deaths were eventually
attributed to a serial killer."
And, in some cases, according
to the chief medical examiner,
"the signs of asphyxiation
were so pronounced"
"that one could see them from
'10 feet away, it's that clear.'"
So, yeah, Wetli's an idiot.
A racist idiot.
But a racist idiot who Axon retained
as their expert witness
in more than a dozen lawsuits.
And, in his expert opinion,
Wetli told juries
he'd "never seen a case where
he could say that a Taser"
"actually contributed to the death."
Hiring Wetli is just part of it.
Because Axon and those it works
closely with have gone
to great lengths to familiarize police
with the term "excited delirium".
At one point,
one of the company's attorneys
and an expert they funded
started this group,
which distributed a flyer
explaining excited delirium,
which both recommended
Taser products
to subdue people
showing the symptoms
and featured this helpful
medical crisis mnemonic
explaining all the signs
of excited delirium,
with one of the
"I's" standing for "I can't breathe".
And now, many officers are primed
to blame excited delirium
anytime a death occurs during
an encounter with the public.
When that death involves a Taser,
Axon can get heavily involved.
Just listen to one former spokesman
explain that to a reporter.
I spoke with a representative
of the company.
He told me that when
he reads a news headline,
something about death and Tasers,
he gets in touch with the local PD.
And I got it pre-saved as a draft.
I literally just have to plug in
the name of the city and say:
"Dear so-and-so, I understand you may
have had an arrest-related death."
"Here's my checklist.
Here are some recommendations."
If he hears
about a death involving Tasers,
he sends a pre-saved email
with a checklist of what to do.
And already, it's not a great sign
that it's pre-saved,
just like it wouldn't be a great sign
if every time you typed "sorry"
in iMessage,
the predictive text filled in
"for taking a massive shit in the middle
of the Whole Foods parking lot."
You're doing something very wrong
if this kind of response is automatic.
And as grim as that sounds in theory,
it's worse in practice.
Take the death of 18-year-old
Israel Hernandez-Llach,
who had been "spotted spray-painting
the blackened windows"
"of an abandoned McDonald's",
got a shot in the chest with a Taser,
collapsed on the sidewalk
in cardiac arrest, and died.
Only four hours later,
the Miami Beach PD received an email
from the company featuring "guidance
on how investigators should proceed,"
including "a sample press release and
an evidence collection checklist."
Axon even recommended a specific
expert to contact for testing.
And sure enough, that expert
eventually returned a finding
the body had "biomarkers consistent
with excited delirium syndrome."
And it doesn't stop there. Axon's
presence is even felt at the morgue,
asthe company's sent
hundreds of pamphlets a year
to medical examiners explaining
how to detect excited delirium.
At one point, Axon was even filing
"lawsuits against medical examiners"
"who had attributed in-custody
deaths in part to Taser use,"
with one forensic pathologist saying:
"You get this letter threatening you, if
you say Taser was the cause of death."
And those threats got results.
According to a 2011 survey,
"14% of medical examiners said
they modified diagnostic findings"
"due to the possible
threat of litigation,"
and 32% said that threat
could affect future decisions.
When you take all of this together,
the company's history of excitedly
encouraging the use of its product,
while downplaying its risks and actively
trying to suppress anything
that might tarnish its reputation
it's just a recipe for disaster.
And even some police officers who've
gotten accustomed to using Tasers
can feel betrayed
when they learn about all this.
In Warren, Michigan,
a 16-year-old died after being tased
and this officer on that force
still seemed rattled after the fact.
Nobody told us that these Tasers
were gonna kill people, you know?
You come out with a sales pitch,
they say this,
and then when it doesn't work out,
you just disappear.
That's not right either.
Because I'll tell you what,
if I discharge pepper spray
and it makes the guy go blind,
I expect Guardian to come in
and explain, 'cause far as I'm told,
it doesn't make people go blind.
I've never seen it.
But if that were to happen, they
better come in. That's not my fault.
If I knew that about pepper spray,
I wouldn't use it, you know?
You swore
this wasn't gonna happen.
You swore that this was
a statistically normal thing,
that these people were not dying
at any more of a unusual rate
than they would have with
absent the Taser, you know?
Right. I get why he's upset.
Axon told him the Taser
was basically harmless,
and the truth is, it's just not.
It'd be like finding out that a Nerf gun
was used to assassinate JFK.
I don't care if Nerf says that
was a statistical anomaly,
I'm not handling it
the same way anymore.
So, what can we do? I admit, when it
comes to Tasers, it's complicated.
I don't hate that there's at least
a theoretical alternative to guns.
And I guess I'd much rather
police tase people than shoot them.
Although my ultimate preference
would be for them to do neither of those
and be much more aware
of the actual risks involved.
One way for us all to better know those
risks would be to track Taser usage
far more closely
than we currently do.
Which really doesn't seem
like too much to ask.
But beyond all that, I'd argue
the term "excited delirium"
should just be gone forever.
And there's actually been some
encouraging news on that front.
In 2023, the National Association
of Medical Examiners said
it "should not be listed
as a cause of death."
These states have now restricted
the use of excited delirium,
and New York and Hawaii currently
have legislation in the works.
Which is good.
The point here is,
we shouldn't keep using Tasers
like they're magic wands,
because they're not,
or pretending deaths that occur
after their use don't happen,
because they do.
And if Axon doesn't want
to talk about this, then I will.
But I'll do it in the most
Axon way I know how.
So, ladies and gentlemen,
please, welcome me!
Hi there! Hi, everyone!
Hi! Thanks so much for having me!
Listen, before you say anything,
I know I look a little different.
A little less stiff than usual.
But don't worry, it's still me.
It's just this version of me
can dance! Look!
Look, I'm dancing now!
I've never felt so connected
to my body before! I love this.
All right, stop. Stop!
Look, there are a few rules that
we should have regarding Tasers.
First, they're clearly a weapon,
so they should be regulated like one.
Second, they should only be used
in extreme situations,
not as a first resort.
And finally, no one should ever
get tased with their mom
as part of a corporate
teambuilding exercise,
because that's a very weird thing
to do.
Now, if you'll excuse me,
in my last few moments in this body,
please let me enjoy having an ass.
Look how happy I am!
We're living our absolute dream!
That's our show,
thank you so much for watching.
We'll see you next week,
good night! Look at me go!