| From: John Carragher | 7/31/2008 8:14:26 AM | | | | | | Two-Year Study by Canadian Police Research Centre Finds TASER Devices a Safer Use of Force
Thursday July 31, 7:30 am ET
Belief That TASER ECDs Carry 'a Significant Risk of Injury or Death... is Not Supported by the Data'
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., July 31, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- TASER International, Inc. (Nasdaq:TASR), a market leader in advanced electronic control devices (ECDs) issued the following NEWS ALERT:
ADVERTISEMENT
According to an article in the July 30, 2008 edition of the Calgary Herald, a two-year study by the Canadian Police Research Centre found that TASER(r) Electronic Control Devises (ECDs) ``scored high'' in safety for both suspects and officers in Calgary. The 14-page report examined 562 cases in which Calgary police used TASER ECDs, pepper spray, batons, unarmed techniques, and choke holds against people resisting arrest. Of those cases studied, nearly half were detained with a TASER device and one percent of those suspects resisting arrest ended up hospitalized and 87 percent sustained either minor injuries or no injuries, according to the report.
According to the article, the study stated, ``the commonly held belief'' that TASER ECDs carry ``a significant risk of injury or death... is not supported by the data.'' The study as stated that TASER devices are, ``less injurious than either the baton or empty-hand physical control.''
The complete story is available at: canada.com. |
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| From: Zoro99 | 11/10/2008 12:28:58 PM | | | | | | Chairman of the Board and Co-Founder of TASER International, Inc. Joins Lightwave Logic Board
WILMINGTON, Del., Nov 10, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- Lightwave Logic, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: LWLG) ( lightwavelogic.com ), a technology company focused on the development of electro-optic polymer materials for applications in high speed fiber-optic telecommunications and optical computing, announced today the addition of Thomas P. Smith to its Board of Directors. Mr. Smith, a co-founder of TASER International, Inc., (Nasdaq: TASR), is currently the Chairman of the Board of TASER International and has been a member of its Board of Directors since 1993.
Mr. Smith served as TASER International's President for 12 years, where he established TASER International's initial logistical plans, was responsible for its accounting, finance, manufacturing and operations, and was fully involved with TASER International's international sales activities. Presently, Mr. Smith's primary responsibilities with TASER International are sales and public affairs, as well as working with investor relations. Mr. Smith also oversees the highly sensitive area of aircraft security and he has spent several years assisting with lobbying efforts in Washington, DC and multiple states.
"It is a rare opportunity to find a company such as Lightwave Logic that has an incredible market opportunity by developing revolutionary new electro- optic polymer materials," commented Thomas P. Smith. "I have been fortunate in helping to start, build and grow a revolutionary technology with TASER International, Inc. and I hope to lend that experience wherever it is useful to Jim Marcelli and the team at Lightwave Logic Inc."
Jim Marcelli, CEO of Lightwave stated, "I'm very excited to have an experienced executive like Tom join our board, and our Company will surely benefit from his ability to build start-up companies into successful companies. Also, we expect Tom's global marketing expertise will assist Lightwave with its commercialization and product application objectives."
About Lightwave Logic, Inc.
Lightwave Logic, Inc. is a development stage company, moving toward prototype demonstration and commercialization of its high-activity, high- stability organic polymers for applications in electro-optical device markets. Electro-optical devices convert data from electric signals into optical signals for use in high-speed fiber-optic telecommunications systems and optical computers. Lightwave Logic, Inc. is a portfolio company of Universal Capital Management, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: UCMT). Please visit the Company's website, www.lightwavelogic.com, for more information.
Safe Harbor Statement
The information posted in this release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "explores," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "project," "intend," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic and business conditions, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, delays in completing various engineering and manufacturing programs, changes in customer order patterns, changes in product mix, continued success in technological advances and delivering technological innovations, shortages in components, production delays due to performance quality issues with outsourced components, and various other factors beyond the Company's control.
SOURCE Lightwave Logic, Inc.
URL: lightwavelogic.com
www.prnewswire.com
Copyright (C) 2008 PR Newswire. All rights reserved
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| From: Glenn Petersen | 2/21/2012 3:51:02 PM | | | | | | Taser’s Latest Police Weapon: The Tiny Camera and the Cloud
By QUENTIN HARDY
New York Times
February 21, 2012
SAN FRANCISCO — Sgt. Brandon Davis vividly recalled the moment before he killed Eric Wayne Berry, but it was not the way it really happened.
“I told him to drop his weapon, twice,” the police officer then in Fort Smith, Ark., said. But after repeated viewings of a video of the shooting, captured by a minicamera he was wearing, he said, “it turned out it was nine different times. He kept telling me to drop my weapon.” When Mr. Berry raised his .45-caliber pistol on the officer and leaned at an angle that could improve his marksmanship, Sergeant Davis said, he shot Mr. Berry in the heart.
The shooting, tragedy that it was, was speedily cleared by his superiors because the entire incident was captured on tape. “It happened at noon on a Wednesday,” Sergeant Davis said. “I first watched it with the police psychiatrist on Thursday morning. I got out of there and I was cleared for work.” He has watched it many times since then, to shed any lingering doubts about his course of action.
Sergeant Davis, who now works on the police force in nearby Greenwood, was testing a new kind of camera, to be worn by an officer, when his fatal encounter was recorded in November 2009. Since then, both the hardware and software in the system have been significantly modified by Taser International, the maker of the camera. Taser is better known for stun guns that deliver a painful and immobilizing electric shock.
On Tuesday, Taser will announce a camera, a half-ounce unit about the size of a cigar stub that clips on to a collar or sunglasses of an officer and can record two hours of video during a shift. The information is transferred by a docking station to a local machine, and eventually stored in a cloud-computing system that uses Taser’s online evidence management system.
Taser, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., has had its share of controversies over its electric-shock guns, which Rick Smith, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, says are used by 17,000 of the 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States.
Although it is sold as a nonlethal weapon, the device’s safety has been repeatedly questioned. The Securities and Exchange Commission investigated the company’s safety claims in 2005 and 2006, and while it took no action against Taser, the company’s shares fell 78 percent in 2005 as sales declined. Law enforcement agencies with tight budgets also slowed their orders.
Fears about the safety of Tasers remain, despite company claims they are safer than nightsticks or guns. The 2007 “Don’t Tase Me Bro” video of a student receiving shocks at a political event was seen six million times on YouTube, keeping concerns high. Last spring, a team of cardiologists at the University of California, San Francisco, said Taser-related safety research may be biased because of ties with the company, something Taser denies.
Mr. Smith, who has had himself shocked in public with versions of his product seven times just to allay fears, said, “You have to lead from the front.”
But the camera system, called Axon, is one way to defuse the controversies. Taser already has some 55,000 minicameras mounted on Tasers. But the camera is only triggered when the gun is drawn. It could do the same for police shootings. The video, however, would not capture the events leading up to that point and provides no context that might justify the weapon’s use.
“One big reason to have these is defensive,” Mr. Smith said. “Police spend $2 billion to $2.5 billion a year paying off complaints about brutality. Plus, people plead out when there is video.” Sergeant Davis says Mr. Berry’s widow later claimed her husband was holding a cellphone, not a gun, but the video exonerated the officer.
In Taser’s cloud evidence system, which resides on Amazon.com’s cloud storage service, the videos can be tagged and labeled for record-keeping. The software has editing capabilities to protect the identities of some people captured on the video, like victims of child sex crimes or undercover officers. The video cannot be deleted while in the camera, though an officer can choose when to turn his camera on and off, something Mr. Smith does not think will happen often during confrontations because the videos could help clear law-abiding officers.
“When people know they are on camera, they act like better citizens,” said Hadi Partovi, an Internet entrepreneur who is on Taser’s board.
That goes for law enforcement officers, too, said Mr. Smith. “We have more cameras on cops than anyone else.”
Jay Stanley, a policy analyst with the speech, privacy and technology project at the American Civil Liberties Union, was enthusiastic about the prospect of body cameras on law officers.
“We don’t want the government watching the people when there is no reason, but we do support the people watching the government,” he said. “There are concerns about police editing or deleting files, but overall the cost and benefits make it worthwhile.”
By holding the video evidence on remote servers, Taser hopes to help law enforcement agencies achieve the cost savings that cloud computing has provided for business and industry. The cloud product, Taser says, does not require an information technology professional on the police department’s payroll. It cuts down on losses from poor storage of disks or tape, loss or theft of evidence or even evidence-tampering.
Taser will charge clients on a sliding scale that involves both the amount of data stored and customer support. The system could cost a small department a few thousand dollars a year or a few hundred thousand dollars for a large force. Taser is initially offering the first year of the service at no charge in the hopes of luring a lot of customers to the cloud. The new cameras sell for $1,000, including a battery that lasts 14 hours.
In an era of tight budgets, that might not be an easy sale. “This is at least a $1 billion opportunity,” said Mr. Partovi, who is better known for inventing, along with his twin, a social music sharing service called iLike, which was sold to MySpace in 2009 for about $20 million. “Once video is up in the cloud, why not photos? Why not all sorts of evidence? It will make it easier for different agencies to collaborate.”
Taser’s competitors say wearable video will be big, but they doubt the police will move to cloud-based evidence systems. “CSI and all those shows with ‘video forensics’ mean juries have come to expect camera evidence,” said John McConnell, a Nashville entrepreneur who has sold dashboard cameras to police departments for over a decade. He is moving into body cameras, but asks, “Have you ever seen a law enforcement agency outsource their evidence room?”
If body cameras do catch on, the images will almost certainly flood the Internet. Video from cameras mounted on dashboards of police cruisers is already a staple on YouTube. Footage of a New Hampshire law officer’s murder in 2007 has been seen 2.3 million times.
Some of Sergeant Davis’s deadly encounter is also online, through a local television station that got the footage. That is fine with him, he said, because it could possibly serve as a useful training model for other officers.
nytimes.com |
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| From: Zen Dollar Round | 7/26/2018 4:55:02 AM | | | | | | Hello, I'm J.F. Sebastian. After searching the forums at SI and not finding one related to Axon Enterprise, Inc., I was about to create my own when I realized I needed to check for any that had been created with under Axon's former name, TASER International, Inc., trading under the symbol TASR.
After seeing this thread and noticing that moderator Jill had not posted on this thread since 2008, nor on SI at all since 2010, I PM'ed Dmitry to inquire if I might take over the moderation duties here. He accepted my request, so I updated the introduction and I'm making my first post.
With AAXN up 175% year-to-date and their transition and expansion into wearable body cameras for law enforcement, I think the sky is the limit for the company's future prospects. As mentioned in the intro, I've seen AAXN show up many times on "best stocks to own" type lists this year, and after some investigation, I agree.
I look forward to contributing to a more active thread and getting the word out about this great company.
Yes, I am long AAXN. :-) |
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