- Police Brutality Watch

The rationale for Taser International’s stuns guns is that they are non-lethal and help cops subdue dangerous suspects with minimal force. But reports show plenty of suspects have died almost immediately after being stunned. Not the least of these deaths was twenty-one year old Andrew Washington from Vallejo, California who on September 15, 2004 after trying to flee from the police, was shot repeatedly with 50,000 volts while his was body lying in a trickle of water. In Northern California over the last seven months, there have been seven deaths linked to Taser International’s product, but police continue to parrot the Scottsdale, Arizona company’s promotional material that the weapon is safe and that illegal drugs are the problem. Washington’s death and the subsequent stonewalling of the investigation into the true cause is typical of what appears to be increased aggression on the part of police who see the weapon as “a new baton,” as Andrea Pritchett of CopWatch put it. Vallejo police claim Washington was an auto-theft suspect. The trouble is that he had not stolen a car, had not been armed, nor hostile. He was drunk when he hit two parked cars and foolish enough to run, but there were six officers involved in pursuing the five feet, nine inch, 149 lbs. man who wasn’t hostile nor armed. He was stunned first on the fence for five seconds when it only takes a quarter of a second to incapacitate someone. He could hardly crawl. But he got shocked three or four more times anyway.[more]