Australia has made the news for its improper use of tasers. A call has been put out to stop the use of tasers in police work because they are leading to deaths due to overuse.

THE recent death of a Sydney man after being tasered by police is tragic, made even more so because it is only the latest example of inappropriate and often outrageous use of these stun guns by some police officers. Governments and police services need to justify how it is in the interests of the community that police carry such devices.

This week’s death in Sydney was at least the third recorded Taser death in Australia. Two men also died last year, one after being tasered up to 28 times by police in Townsville.

Their misuse can amount to torture, as well as lead to serious injury. In one case, a man in Western Australia received third-degree burns to 10 per cent of his body, including burns to his throat, after police tasered him while he was carrying a fuel container and a cigarette lighter.

The police argue that using a taser is safer than using a gun, which, in some cases, it may be. However, there have been more and more cases of tasers causing heart attacks and having detrimental effects on the human body and police are using them in situations where they do not need them.

If Tasers were only used to prevent recourse to handguns, one would hope we would not have seen the shocking incident in Western Australia, where it is alleged that police tasered a pregnant 18-year-old woman up to eight times.

It is also unlikely that we would have seen police in South Australia use a Taser to subdue a man in a mental health crisis, and New South Wales police might have avoiding use of a Taser against an 18-year-old at Carols by Candlelight to defuse a situation.

Statistics show that, in Australia, tasers are used disproportionately against the disadvantaged and minority groups, such as aboriginals. In this video, Kevin Spratt is tasered 13 times. This is after he was tasered 11 times a few days earlier.

“Mr Spratt ended up in hospital after the second incident with a tube coming out of his chest from a punctured lung.
“He was manacled to a hospital bed and sustained a shoulder injury as well. He was severely injured during the second Taser barrage.

“This is a cover up. If they were serious, they would have started an inquiry two and a half years ago – not last Monday, five days ago.

The incidents happened to Mr. Spratt in August, 2008. Australia, however, isn’t the only country misusing tasers. A mentally disabled teen was tasered in Philadelphia and died on Thursday. Patrick Johnson wasn’t a perfect kid, but there was no need for the excessive force leveled against him either.

The police had been called to his home a fourteen times this year, so it would be known that he was mentally retarded and probably did not understand everything that was happening.

According to police, at around 12:30 Thursday afternoon, two 911 calls, one by Johnson himself, were made to report a “person with a weapon.” When police arrived they found an agitated Johnson pacing back and forth from the house into the front yard. Police say he was breaking things and grabbing sticks or tree branches, which he tried to set on fire by using the kitchen stove, according to CBS affiliate KYW.

Police said when officers arrived, Johnson confronted them with a stick and at one point tried to set it on fire. They say that officers trained in crisis-intervention were called to the scene but that Johnson failed to respond to repeated verbal requests to calm down, and that a Taser gun had to be used to subdue him.

The first taser firing, according to the police, had no affect, so they tasered him again. Johnson fell to the ground and was taken to the hospital where he later died.

We don’t know how long they tried to calm Johnson down. We do know, that it wasn’t long enough. There is no way a taser should have ever been used in this situation. A more likely scenario is that the police were tired of coming to this man’s home and dealing with him, so they took the shortest route possible to end the situation.

“I feel like it’s ridiculous that they tased him. You can by just looking at him tell that he’s severely retarded and I believe they should have maced him or tried to tackle him instead of using a taser,”

Yes, that’s exactly what they should have done, but that would have required some effort on the side of the police to calm the situation. Instead, taking the easy way out has left a man dead.

EDIT: The second video was not playing right, so I removed it. You can view it on the CBS news site here.