Parts one and two.

The update:

“Elliott later said that while there’s no evi­dence that Tasers kill, the fact that deaths have occurred soon after a Taser was used on indi­vid­uals sug­gests there is a dis­tinct pos­si­bility it may have con­tributed to death in some cir­cum­stances.“
– RCMP tightens the rules on Tasers, Toronto Star

We’re making progress here. Very metic­u­lous philoso­pher sci­en­tists, these RCMP. I wonder, just what kind of evi­dence would it take for them to believe that a thing had caused another thing? Like say, a taser causing the death of someone who had just been shot with a taser? From a more util­i­tarian per­spec­tive, at least they’re going to start acting as though tasers kill people. I sup­pose that’s what counts.

This snippet is interesting:

“The Mounties have also dropped the term “excited delirium” – a phrase that had no med­ical foun­da­tion, and was crit­i­cized ear­lier by the Commons com­mittee, the RCMP’s public com­plaints com­mis­sioner, inde­pen­dent con­sul­tants and civil lib­erty groups.”

So why, until yes­terday, were they using such an odd term to frame their oper­ating pro­tocol? Oh look, it’s a con­struc­tion that TASER International have long been repeating in their press releases and court cases, despite years of head-scratching per­plexity from anyone who has ever tried to figure out just what it might actu­ally mean in a bio­log­ical con­text. How does cor­po­rate unspeak from Scottsdale, Arizona get embedded in the pro­ce­dural man­uals of the Mounted Police? How does it get embedded in their mouths? I’m glad we’re making progress on get­ting it out.