I always chuckle when I hear an officer speak about "excited delirium" because really it can be used to describe anything and essentially with very little further questioning it seems to me as an uneducated observer that excited delirium is essentially jargon for police actions coupled with other circumstances resulted in someone in custody dying. Would the subject have died if not for police intervention, likely not... but was the police intervention the reason for the death, that is a grey area but in my opinion the answer is no... the medical issue is the underlying reason (be it drug overdose, undiagnosed/unknown heart disease, pulmonary embolism, etc, etc there are a million and one of them)
Taser's are an interesting problem because they are marketed as a non-lethal way for police officers to get control of a situation, and that is what they are for the most part. However it seems from the news stories as well as through analytical evidence from police officers I have talked to, that they are being used in situations where it is not necessary to do so and more training seems to be needed as to the risk vs. reward.
|