Toronto’s police force wants to spend 8. 6 million dollars to equip every officer with a Taser.
(Taser Inc., sponsors the Canadian Police Chiefs convention. Any bets on whether TO cops will get their wish?)
At the request of the Toronto Police Services Board the co-founder of Taser Inc. made his case for selling these weapons in a public forum.

I’d laugh, but there is nothing funny about 300 people dead and Canadian police officers accepting money from this company.

The co-founder of the Arizona company made a public pitch for the sale last night.
People listened politely while he did his sales pitch, and then it was their turn.

Mr. Smith, who was in town as the Toronto Police Services Board weighs a request by Police Chief Bill Blair to spend $8.6-million to equip and train every front-line officer with a taser, was confronted by the sister of a man who died after being tasered by Vancouver police.

He was also presented with an offer to stun an elderly man right then and there, and was caught off guard by audience members armed with research.

“Are tasers risk free? No. … The reality is that there [are] still studies to be done, we encourage them, we work with them, we want them to be done because it’s going to continue to answer those questions,” he told the standing-room-only crowd.

It got more interesting.

Ken Wood was the senior who volunteered to be stunned in front of the crowd.

“Everything that I see that you do in your studies is basically physically fit, gung-ho military types saying, ‘Go ahead, taser me.’ You don’t know my health history, you don’t know who I am, I’m Joe Average on the street.”

Andy Buxton, chair of Amnesty International Toronto, asked Mr. Smith about research on tasers conducted by Amnesty and other independent organizations. Mr. Smith repeatedly responded that he had not seen the data and so he could not comment.

Then, Mr. Buxton asked: “Are you familiar with research that suggests that 20 per cent of all use of tasers are in what you refer to yourself as pain compliance mode [set to inflict pain to get a subject to co-operate]?”

“I’m not familiar with that specific study,” Mr. Smith responded.

“Those were your own statistics, Mr. Smith, from your own website,” Mr. Buxton said.