The Guardian 15 February, 2006
Riot police get deadly stun guns
Tom Pearson
The use of racism by the two major parties to whip up fear in the community and create a
pretext to introduce more police state powers, is hardly new. It is more a question of how far
they will go to ratchet up the hate machine. The Iemma Government in NSW has used the
gang race riots in Sydney as an excuse to arm riot police with stun guns.
The announcement last week of the introduction of the X26 stun guns came as Police Minister Carl
Scully publicly fired a shot clearly aimed at stirring the racism pot, saying that some men of Middle
Eastern background have "quite disgusting" views toward women. That almost trumped Liberal
Leader Peter Debnam's claim that the police are "soft on Middle Eastern crime".
The wires of the stun guns discharge 50,000 volts of electric current through copper probes in a
person's skin.
Cameron Murphy of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties warned that the weapon was not non-
lethal, as claimed by Scully. Amnesty International reports that 103 people have been killed by stun
guns, or Tasers, in North America.
"I think it's an appalling idea", said Mr Murphy. "The police only recently argued for capsicum spray.
And now they're saying that's not working?"
A study by the Alfred Hospital in Victoria found that the risks to victims include injuries caused by
the electrical barbs, the potential to disrupt heart pacemakers and fractures or head injuries caused
by the targeted person's sudden collapse.
Greens MP Lee Rhiannon noted that there has been no independent research that showed Tasers
are safe but that there is a lot of hard evidence that they kill.
"Taser guns will not make our streets safer. This is just further evidence of Iemma's law-and-order
approach", said Lee Rhiannon. "NSW police introduced capsicum spray as a self-defence tool but
before long it was turned into another police weapon."
As for Scully's remark about the attitude of Middle Eastern men to women, Ms Rhiannon said he
should look at Labor's history of treating women. "Sexist attitudes do exist in our society and you
can find them held by men of all races."
She said Scully should recall the actions recently of two Ministers in his own government; one who
drunkenly grabbed a female Labor MP in Parliament and another who allegedly sexually assaulted
a Democrat female staffer at a party.
"It was Minister Scully's government that abolished the Department of Women in 2004, in itself a
massive insult to women."