A sheriff’s deputy in Lake County, Colo., has been placed on one week of unpaid leave after reportedly using a Taser gun on 30 students at a Lake County High School career fair Thursday.
While the Taser is used by officers to aid in the arrest process, Holte said, its effects are not severe. “It’s similar to being stung twice by a bee,” he said.
However, one of the students “tased” by Ortega was taken to the hospital and treated for welts on the skin.
Full Story – HERE
Similar to being stung by a bee?! I haven’t been tasered myself, but I’ve seen plenty demonstrations of it and it looks far more painful than being stung by a bee. Last time I checked, bee stings couldn’t take down a 250 lb. physically fit young adult.
The fact that one student had to go to the hospital to be treated for welts isn’t good either.
Have any of you guys ever been shot with a taser?
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19 responses to “Police Officer Demos Taser On 30 Students”
The head guy of the training group I work with did the taser thing at a trade show and has the video of it posted on our website.
http://krtraining.com/KRTraining/Archive/Archive.html
Go down to the Extra’s section and watch “Karl gets zapped with a TASER”
He described it as almost instant restoration once the juice was turned off. No lingering aftereffects at all.
haha funny video. I love people’s reactions.
It is like being stung twice by some bees. If those bees are made of metal and hooked up to a 50,000 volt generator. I think what was meant was that the marks left are like two bee stings.
LOL
I have been hit with a stungun before, but never an actual TASER. The feeling is probably pretty similar, only less intense.
I remember being more panicked than actually in pain, which I think made it worse. It didn’t hurt so much as made you lose control of the muscle group(s) affected.
I sure as hell didn’t like it though.
Damn, yea it sure doesn’t look like much fun.
Back when my retail store was open we were a Taser dealer and we did demos all the time. Everyone signed a disclaimer though. One of my employees was tased at SHOT in 2008; they used the X26 and it just “locked him up” and he couldn’t do anything but grunt.
When we did it in my store we used the cheaper model (not the C2, something like M12?). We fired a cartridge at a t-shirt hanging up, then cut the barbs off and used that cartridge for the demo which was how Taser did it with us at SHOT. We would put one lead under their belt and stick the other one in their shoelaces. This would ensure it was only in one leg and not arcing across the chest (heart). What made it such fun to watch in-store was that this method of no-skin contact left the target with enough motor control to flop around like a fish instead of being paralyzed. :) Never hit anyone for more than two seconds either.
Everyone we did the demo with all said it was the worst imaginable pain possible, and that all they could think of was wanting it to stop. Immediately afterward there were NO lingering effects.
We normally had someone stand on either side of the target but in this case below (6′ 4″ and 320lbs) we opted to have him lie in the floor. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkLNmzxWBaY
NOTICE: He issues forth the “F” word as soon as he can stop screaming.
LOL those videos are priceless. I killed about a half hour on youtube watching people get zapped.
My dept (corrections) uses the x26… and anyone authorized to use the taser HAS to be familiar with it’s effects….. I’m 5’11”, 205lbs, and it had me on the floor immediately, and like the guy above said, only after the discharge could you whimper out expletives :} Dropped me quick, but recovery was pretty much instant. Now… we’re doing T&E with the XREP and eventually the shockwave…. and as a junior guy i an NOT lookng foward to that :}
So no.. feels a tad more than a bee sting. Now having said that, i personally know several people who tasers, stun shields, and other electronic immobilization devices have NO effect on. There’s a female officer that laughs when hit with the stun shield, she says it tickles…
XREP and the Shockwave look deadly… make sure you get some video! :P
I just got TASER certification for my department in January. I still have the burn marks on my shoulder and hip where they attached the alligator clips (re-usable and easier than sacrificing a real cartridge. Also great for transporting froggy inmates). I am 6ft and 165 with no body fat to slow down the current. It hurt BAD. I made a sort of squeak and then was totally unable to move or scream (which I was trying very hard to do, but nothing came out). I hit the floor and gained a new respect for electricity.
Going to the hospital for welts officially makes you a mega-sissy. I wonder if he got two Barbie bandaids and a lollipop. Kids these days.
That’s crazy that you still have the burn marks from January.
LOL
Thirty kids stepped up, eh? Two years from now, all the newspapers will be whining about the new “epidemic” of “current abuse” in high schools…
yea that seems like a lot of kids that were willing to get tased
I “rode the lightning” – full 5 seconds – at my local county sheriff’s Citizen’s Academy. Purely voluntary, of course, but when everyone starts chiming in (including tiny little 5’0, 90 lbs gals), you don’t want to be the 6’0″, 220 lbs tough guy left standing on the sideline…
They shot a single real cartridge into a dummy to show us how it functions ($20 per pop), then reused the expended cartridge by duct-taping it to us over our clothes at the upper shoulder on one side and the high buttocks/muffin top on the other – the current goes right across your lumbar/spinal column.
Since the prongs aren’t inserted into your body, they arc across the distance between your clothes and your skin. This will cause a bit of cooking over 5 seconds and will leave permanent burn marks about the size of an eraser head at each electrode point. As I understand it, when they embed, the burning is considerably reduced, but not always entirely eliminated.
But going to the hospital for it? Seriously wimpy. Honestly, a pair of barbie band-aids and a lollipop fo’ sho’!
My experience was pretty dramatic. Locked me up, then dropped me like a stone. Sure, no lingering effects, but in the moment I could do nothing, and as soon as it stopped, I was so happy that it was over, I could care less about little else for a bit. One thing’s for sure – I’m never willingly getting tased again, peer pressure be damned.
We had a young guy who volunteered to get hit twice – the second time, he was given a shock-knife while his uncle (one of the deputies) stood just a foot away, while he was hooked up to a taser. All he had to do was move his arm 12 little inches to “stab” his uncle. Couldn’t do it.
We also had an 80 year old lady in our group that had attended several other Citizen’s Academies, and to date had been willingly tased 4 times – this was her fifth. She was a real trooper and did just fine. We were told that taser does extensive testing on a wide variety of age groups and health conditions.
The only concerns they have are pacemakers and similar implants which can short out and stop functioning, and people drenched in flammable materials (gasoline, alcohol, large volumes of cologne, meth dust, etc), which would easily ignite when the taser starts arcing. Police are trained on the potential for loss of life and to watch for potentially hazardous situations where it may be inadvisable to fire a taser. Not everyone remembers/follows their training of course.
Also, standard protocol for a tasing is that there be a back-up officer with “lethal cover” – e.g. a firearm pointed at the person, in case something goes wrong with the tase. This is the choice you get when you fail to comply with police instructions – a shock that will hurt and may kill you, or a bullet that may hurt and will kill you.
Unfortunately, many departments more and more are seeing tasers as the go-to solution over actually making an effort to calm the subject down verbally. That’s a whole ‘nother issue entirely…
All you guys are scaring me with your stories.. I don’t think i’ll ever volunteer to get tased if the opportunity arises now :P I see what you mean though if the women and children are volunteering, then it would be hard not to!
That’s unfortunate that the burns are permanent.. especially if you volunteer for it. I could really care less if it burned criminals permanently, although they would probably wear them as a badge of honor anyway.
Interesting about the fact the arc could ignite something, makes sense! Crappy that the officers have to worry about that too for their own safety especially.
There are several YouTube videos that were made in my store. It’s amazing how many people volunteer for it. I don’t gave the links handy but on YouTube there’s a guy called URPREY who posted vids from my store. We tased a father and son by connecting one wire each. That was fun.
LOL i just looked those vids up, they are hilarious! Looks like a fun night.
Yeah, we actually had a lot of fun with it. I am still dumbfounded by the people who “just want to know what it’s like”.