http://www.alternet.org/rights/142652/a_recipe_for_disaster%3A_school_cops_are_being_armed_with_50%2C000-volt_tasersTasers aren't 'nonlethal'; they've killed hundreds. With younger people being especially vulnerable to the Taser's shock, the risks could be very deadly.
One spring day this April, at the Franklin Correctional Institution on Florida's Highway 67, Sgt. Walter Schmidt pulled out his electronic immobilization device -- EID in correctional officer parlance -- and zapped two people, who immediately "yelped in pain, fell to the ground and grabbed red burn marks on their arms," according to the St. Petersburg Times.
The two were not inmates at the prison, however. They were students visiting as part of "Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Day."
The move cost Schmidt his job, despite his claim that he merely intended to demonstrate how the devices worked. He had even asked the children's parents (who were also employees at the prison) permission first. "When they said 'sure,' I went ahead and did it," he told the Times.
"It wasn't intended to be malicious, but educational. The big shock came when I got fired."
-snip-
Even as news outlets across the country report episode after episode where police officers tase and use stun guns on unlikely people -- the pregnant woman at a baptism in Virginia or the 72-year-old woman in a Texas traffic stop -- more and more police officers are being given tasers to carry into schools.
And not just on college campuses; middle and high schools across the country are inviting Taser-toting cops on school grounds.
This comes at a time when Tasers have claimed the lives of hundreds of people, including three teenagers this year.
-snip of examples-
In 2006, an 11th-grader named Angel Debnam was tased at her high school in Bunn, N.C., just outside Raleigh.
"Something sticks in you, and it's like a wire," Debnam described to local ABC affiliate WTVD. "When I was on the ground crying and shaking, he asked me, 'Was that enough? Are you calmed down now?' and he did it again."
-snip-
In December 2008, Amnesty International released a 130-page report, "Less Than Lethal? The Use of Stun Weapons in U.S. Law Enforcement," which found that since 2001, 334 people had died after being tased. (This figure is already obsolete.) The vast majority of these deaths were due to cardiac or respiratory arrest. Of the 334 victims, 299 of them were unarmed.
The state with the most recorded Taser deaths was California, with 55. Florida ranked second, with 52.
-snip of more examples-
-------------------------------------
sadists love the taser
I would think parents of the schools that use tasers would be in the principal's office throwing fits.