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We desperately, desperately need improved non-lethal deterrents for our police force in the U.S.

This always has seemed like an enormous industry for someone out there to disrupt.




The story already opens with an unarmed man in the shower in his own home being repeatedly tased.

If your problem is you're punching people in the head too often, the solution isn't to wear soft gloves, it's to stop punching people.

How to achieve that is still a matter of debate.


I read the gp comment as basically: desperately needing improvement through the entire non-lethal ‘stack’. This would include new training materials, R&D for better equipment, and so on.


The person in the first story was "non-lethally" tazed over and over, 15 times before being dragged out of the shower and injected with multiple sedatives. Any "non-lethal deterrents" applied that aggressively are still gonna kill people.


And if they don't, they should be regarded as "cruel and unusual punishment", colloquially known as torture.

Seriously, policemen who repeatedly fire a tazer at their victim, rendering him unable to control any of his muscles (including the sphincter), while screaming "STOP RESISTING!!", should be locked away indefinitely.


tasers aren't considered "non lethal", they're "less lethal", because yeah, they kill people all the time.

if somebody is advocating "non lethal" tools, and you start in on tasers, you're not even on the same page.


My point was that if the police are going to act so aggressively, it won't matter how cuddly their tools are. Pillows aren't generally considered lethal, but if you suffocate someone with one....


You don't need more non-lethal deterrents, you need to educate your police officers about how to deal with a human without shouting and threatening.

And nope, no industry needs to be disrupted, no industry needs ignorant individuals without domain knowledge to reinvent the wheel or replace human interaction with a machine interaction, 5 star ranking system and all your personal data sold away.


Deescalation training and aligning incentives with good outcomes should be put in place before technology solutions are called for.




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