if you're touching someone who gets tasered

No government agency tracks fatalities in police incidents where Tasers are used. But the probability of dying from a Taser shock in a police encounter may be incalculable, researchers say, citing a lack of official data on stun-gun use, the fact that deaths often have more than one cause, and other complexities. Most independent researchers who’ve studied the weapons agree deaths are rare when Tasers are used properly. The rest involved both Tasers and other forms of force. A review of more than 400 of the fatal encounters – those in which court documents provide a relatively detailed account of what happened – indicates Tasers were the only form of force allegedly used by police in about one in four of the cases. It’s impossible to know precisely what role the Taser played in many of the deaths documented by Reuters. More than 100 of the fatal encounters began with a 911 call for help during a medical emergency. In nine of every 10 incidents, the deceased was unarmed. A quarter of the people who died, like Schrock, were suffering from a mental health breakdown or neurological disorder. Many of the casualties are among society's vulnerable. Reuters documented 1,005 incidents in the United States in which people died after police stunned them with Tasers, nearly all since the early 2000s – the most thorough accounting to date of fatal encounters involving the paralyzing stun guns. Tom Schrock’s death is one tragedy in a larger constellation of fatalities involving Tasers explored by Reuters in a first-of-its-kind examination of deaths and lawsuits involving the stun guns.

But the episode’s nuances – a mentally ill victim, a complex death investigation, a debate over the weapon’s use – tell a deeper story. As thousands of police forces across America have embraced Tasers, the outlines of the Schrock case have grown familiar: a Taser shot, an unintended death, a damage claim.

If you're touching someone who gets tasered