I am in no way commenting on the appropriateness of the use of a Taser in this specific situation. Whether this was the right thing to do or not depends of so many factors that I don't know about (this department's use of force continuum, the actions of the man as perceived by the officers, etc.) that I feel it is premature to come to any conclusions.

That being said, the lethality of Tasers has been wildly overestimated. She and I have spent quite a bit of time trying to determine the statistics on Taser-related deaths related to the overall use of Tasers. As near as we can estimate, the ~200 Taser-related deaths represent .1% of the uses of Taser within the 11 year period these deaths have been reported. Those are very good odds.

My wife is an officer so obviously these types of stories really hit home for us. She would be devastated if any force she had to use on a suspect resulted in any significant harm. Despite what many seem to think, most officers have absolutely no desire to harm anyone. They simply want to do their job in such a way as to ensure that everybody is safe, suspects, officers and the public alike.