WEBVTT - Taser Incorporated | Episode 6 - Live Long and Prosper 0:00:03.480 --> 0:00:05.479 Previously on Taser Incorporated. 0:00:06.440 --> 0:00:08.720 I want to start by addressing a couple of questions 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:12.440 we've been receiving over email. The first one is our 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:16.320 chest hits with the Taser dangerous and the answer to 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:18.400 that is definitively no. 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:26.680 The company was formed in order to do something favorable 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:29.560 for law enforcement. Right, We're going to give you a 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:33.120 device that won't kill people, and it ends up killing people. 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:35.760 So now what they do is they put the onus 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:36.720 on the officers. 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:41.479 My understanding that any shot is acceptable, it's preferred to 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:43.760 try to aim for lower center mass. 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:46.480 Show me where it says any shot is acceptable. 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:50.080 In this bulletin, it says when possible and also says 0:00:50.120 --> 0:00:52.320 preferred to indicate any area. 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:56.960 So it doesn't say it's acceptable, doesn't it. It was 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:02.000 much easier to pen it all on Runnels and say 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:05.080 he shouldn't have shot the kid and held the trigger 0:01:05.120 --> 0:01:07.120 down for twenty four seconds, which is all true. 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:09.240 Do you feel like they got away with it a 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:13.280 little bit? Oh? Yeah, by design? 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:16.160 Yeah, he got what it really. 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:30.640 I went to talk with the Masters family late last year. 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:34.200 I wanted to understand how Matt's still a cop after 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:37.880 everything he's been through during Bryce's trial, he told me 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:41.959 that he was done, but it's been seven years and 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:42.680 he hasn't quit. 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:48.960 My perspective changed definitely, Like and I tell people at 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:50.640 the time, you don't get a free pass anymore just 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:54.400 because you're a cop. Obviously, when I first got on 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:58.600 the department, I would consider it a good old boy club, 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.080 you know. I mean, cops took care of each other, 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:06.080 They took care of each other's families. And I really 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:09.240 stopped doing that after this happened to Bryce. 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:13.320 Now he works as a detective in the narcotics unit, 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:16.280 and he says he thinks a lot more than he 0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:18.919 used to about the people he's investigating. 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:25.240 I mean, I'm very careful to keep the case, you know, 0:02:25.400 --> 0:02:29.440 going in the right direction, but I'm also scrutinizing the 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:33.120 reason for the stop, whether there was good reason, suspicion, 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:34.040 or probable cause. 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:39.360 Matt will drop a case if he thinks the arresting 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:42.959 officers did something wrong. Sometimes when he calls it out, 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:46.000 he gets shipped from his fellow cops. But Matt just 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:47.200 focuses on what's right. 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:53.200 I mean, what happened when Bryce taught me to have empathy, 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:53.920 you know. 0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:58.160 This is the side of Matt that Stacey fell in 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:00.880 love with. They spend a lot lot of time together 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:04.239 during the summers. The whole family likes to float together 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:06.600 in the above ground pool Bryce bought for them in 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:10.200 the backyard. They call it the spa. The three of 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:12.760 them like to put movies on an outdoor projector set 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:15.200 up next to the pool and sip cocktails in the water. 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:17.639 We watch a lot of movies. 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:21.360 That's kind of our thing, swimming and movies. Bryce bought 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:23.200 a house a few miles away with some of the 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:25.080 money he got from the lawsuit against. 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:27.840 Runnels, and I'd basically just pay mom and Dad's dead off, 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:30.920 got my house in my car, and then put the 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:31.760 rest in the bank. 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:34.360 He spends a lot of time with us. 0:03:35.240 --> 0:03:39.080 He's always watching my snapchats and knowing what leftover dinners 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:40.080 he needs to show up for. 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:43.480 And so we're lucky. 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:44.840 Heard from him tonight. 0:03:44.920 --> 0:03:48.200 Yeah, I'm surprised that he hasn't interrupted us. As I left, 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:51.600 Matt handed me the brown Accordion folder stuffed with all 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:57.480 his taser research, these studies articles, years of obsession. Matt 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:01.080 doesn't stay up late reading taser studies anymore, but there 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:03.680 are certain details of what happened that he can't let 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:07.160 go of, like the fact that Rick Smith never acknowledged 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:08.360 what happened to his family. 0:04:10.360 --> 0:04:12.560 I would love the opportunity to sit across from Rick 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:17.839 Smith and you know, let him, let him have a 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:18.600 piece of my mind. 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:22.760 I'd like to sit across from Rick Smith too, but 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:25.760 he's declined to talk to me. What would you say 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:27.200 to him? 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:29.560 My thing would be the question, why didn't you tell 0:04:29.560 --> 0:04:31.760 the truth from the beginning? Why did you Why did 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:35.359 you continue to develop and make that weapon when you 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:42.640 knew that it had the possibility to kill somebody? My 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:48.000 biggest question is with me, why was it all about money? 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:55.160 This is absolute Season one Taser incorporated a story about 0:04:55.200 --> 0:05:43.120 unchecked power. I'm Nick Beredini. Episode six, Live, Long and Prosper. 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:51.200 It's been a full thirty years since Rick Smith first 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:55.000 launched the Airtaser thirty four thousand. That's the model he 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:58.159 built in a garage with the inventor Jack Cover. He 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:01.040 was twenty five years old. Back then, it was winter 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:03.200 and his weapon was about to go on sale in 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:06.680 the Sharper Image catalog. At the time, he planned to 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:10.719 sell the Airtaser to regular civilians to protect themselves. This 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:13.800 was going to be his moment, the first step in 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:18.360 his dream to make the bullet obsolete. But there are 0:06:18.400 --> 0:06:21.120 some pieces of this history that I haven't told you 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:24.680 about yet. The plan for launch day was to shock 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:29.280 a famous local reporter during the news the part. 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:37.000 Station don't miss Steve Filmer's task on air tasers. That 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:39.479 story and more on Bob News tonight, After Er. 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:45.279 And after Er, the taser segment begins. A woman in 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:47.880 jeans and a pink sweater points the air taser straight 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:51.960 ahead the reporter, Steve has khakis in a leather jacket. 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:54.919 He straps on one of those face shields that cops 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:57.960 attached to riot helmets. The camera cuts wide as he 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:00.839 gets ready to charge at the woman. Barbara's got the 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:09.520 air taser. I'll rush her from twenty yards. Steve drops 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:12.600 to the ground about five feet from Barbara. He flops 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:14.800 around like a fish out of water in the grass 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:19.560 as the electric current runs through his body. 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:21.720 That was not pleasant. 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:25.920 Those nine seconds were devastating, but I'm okay. A phone 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:29.320 number flashes on screen. Rick says he was waiting in 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.640 a call center with his employees. Everyone was ready at 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:35.440 the phones. He expected a flood of orders to come 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:36.080 rushing in. 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:37.400 Well. 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:40.040 These air tasers are being made by a company here 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:42.720 in Scottsdale. The price is two hundred and fifty dollars. 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:45.800 Until now only police could carry this weapon, but starting 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:48.840 tomorrow you can carry it for self defense twelve months 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:50.840 to no reporter see filmer tells you what you need 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:52.520 to know before you buy one. 0:07:53.200 --> 0:08:00.600 The segment aired and the phones remained silent. Finally a 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:04.080 call Rick picked up. He wanted to be the one 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:06.800 to greet the first customer for his brand new taser, 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:10.120 but Rick says when he picked up, he heard his 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:14.480 mom's voice ask how's it going, Ricky. He says she 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:19.280 was the only call they got all night. It wasn't 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:22.160 just that the first taser was a bust. You might 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:25.080 remember that things were so bad. Rick wanted to quit 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:28.200 his company. But then, he says, he learned that the 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:30.880 bank was going to take everything from his father if 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:31.880 his company failed. 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:36.880 Millions of dollars went into this, basically wiping. 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:37.240 Out my dad. 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:41.840 Imagine the pressure. Rick was a kid in his mid 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:45.439 twenties running a business. If his family went broke, it 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:49.280 would be Rick's fault. Rick says he only had one 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:52.840 million dollars to save the company. Five hundred thousand from 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:55.679 his dad and a matching five hundred thousand from their 0:08:55.679 --> 0:09:01.080 only other investor. He had one play left. He used 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:03.440 that money to go all in to make a new, 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:08.080 more powerful taser, one that would work for cops, which 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:10.760 meant that had to be able to stop anyone, even 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:17.520 the ripped marine Hans Morrero. It was called the M 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:20.720 twenty six, and that's because it was powered by twenty 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:24.680 six watts of electricity, almost four times stronger than the 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:27.880 air taser. Nobody was fighting through this thing. 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:32.360 The M twenty six was a big success for one reason. 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:36.040 That M twenty six worked. 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:37.040 So well that he was able to market it to 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:40.240 police departments all over the country, and it saved the 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:44.960 Smith family from financial ruin. But Rick wasn't actually the 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:48.440 first person to build a taser that worked, or the 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:53.520 first person to amp up the power. Before Rick and 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:57.840 Jack Kover first developed their taser in Cover's garage, Cover 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:01.319 had worked on his first model with another company called Tasertron. 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:06.920 Tasertron's technical advisor was a guy named Jim McNulty. Jim 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:09.079 told me that cops had asked for a taser that 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:11.080 was powerful enough to stop anyone. 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:16.360 Officers want someone down on the ground, they considered them 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:18.800 not to be a threat once they're. 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:23.000 Down on the ground. So Jim told me, Jack Kover 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:26.600 and Tasertron tried to give cops what they wanted. They 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:29.800 wanted them to fall down, so they doubled the power. 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:34.400 Tasertron increased the power of its weapons from about five 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:38.520 watts to about ten. But when cops started to actually 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:42.199 use that taser out on the streets, that's when you 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:46.719 started having your first deaths. They were about eleven of them. 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:53.360 Coroners in southern California cited these tasers as a cause 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.720 or contributing factor in at least five deaths between nineteen 0:10:56.760 --> 0:11:00.199 eighty six and nineteen eighty nine. Jim McNaulty said, as 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:04.559 that's why Taser Tron stopped selling them. But about a 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:08.320 decade after those reported deaths, Rick Smith made an even 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:12.120 more powerful taser, the M twenty six, And the M 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:15.520 twenty six wasn't just ten watts. It was twenty six 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:24.400 years later. After the M twenty six came out, Jim 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:27.400 McNulty sued Taser International to try and stop Rick from 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:31.600 irresponsibly dominating the market. Jim testified that Rick had given 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:35.679 cops what they wanted, more power. Rick was there when 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:39.280 Jim told the judge that kind of power can be lethal, 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:44.040 but Jim lost the case and Rick didn't change his design. 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:51.800 When Taser International first released the new M twenty six 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:55.040 taser in late nineteen ninety nine, Rick went all out 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:57.760 to assure cops in the public that the taser was safe. 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:01.600 To accompany the release, he published a document he called 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:05.680 Medical Safety Information. This would be one of the first 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:09.520 documents to go in the company's research compendium. This was 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:15.839 essentially his proof. In this document, Rick Smith compared the 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:19.360 process of developing the more powerful taser to the research 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:22.679 a pharmaceutical company does to get FDA approval for a 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:26.719 new drug. He wrote, it was the same approach as 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:31.240 is used in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. But 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:34.000 Rick Smith didn't get anything like FDA approval for the 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:37.080 M twenty six taser. He hardly had to prove anything 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.840 to anyone. A new drug takes on average about ten 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:44.480 years to go from concept to FDA approval. There's peer 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:48.040 reviewed animal studies, clinical human research supervised by doctors in 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:53.920 control groups. FDA approval is extremely cautious. But a taser 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:57.400 is not regulated by the FDA. It's not considered a 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:00.400 medical device, even though it sends an electric current through 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:03.959 the human body. It's also not regulated by the Bureau 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:07.640 of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms because it doesn't use gunpowder 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:11.800 like the original tasers did. The very first taser was 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:16.360 technically a consumer product regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:20.400 but even they never did any sort of testing. No 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:24.440 independent regulatory agency ever did a study on the twenty six. 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:29.319 So at the start, everything Rick promised was based on 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:33.440 a few studies that Taser conducted by itself. The first 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:36.000 one was on a pig, the second one was on 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:41.360 five dogs, and finally there was Taser's version of a 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:44.640 human study, which was just those first nine hundred or 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:47.320 so tough guy cops who volunteered to get a quick 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:51.360 shock and didn't drop dead. That's nothing like how tasers 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:55.520 were really used in the real world. Cops taste some 0:13:55.679 --> 0:14:01.120 people for over a minute. I felt like my own 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:05.280 heart stopped when I finally realized this was it FDA 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:08.680 level testing. There were no clinical trials and there were 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:13.280 no peer reviewed studies. When Attorney John Burton, who spent 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:16.840 years of his life battling Taser International in court saw 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:20.080 that Rick compared his testing to an FDA review. He 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:21.040 couldn't believe it either. 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:23.640 There are just certain things I think you just don't 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:27.480 lie about. I mean to me, so when I say 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:30.320 they've done FDA level testing and the current is not 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:35.760 sufficient to affect cardiac rhythms, and they're selling this to 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:39.040 tens of thousands of people with these representations, I just 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:42.400 assume they're true, and I wouldn't think somebody would lie 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:42.840 about that. 0:14:47.600 --> 0:14:50.400 About ten years after Rick Smith built the M twenty six, 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:54.440 John was representing the family of Darryl Turner, the seventeen 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:56.440 year old who had died from a taser shot at 0:14:56.480 --> 0:14:59.920 the grocery store where he worked, and he questioned Rick 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:02.440 about his decision to increase the taser's power. 0:15:05.160 --> 0:15:08.120 Okay, basically, you cranked out the power of the air 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:10.880 taser thirty four thousand, four times. 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:15.120 We increase the energy and the power by roughly four times, 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:18.720 and the output charge by roughly three times. 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:20.320 And then looking at this one pig. 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:22.360 That you did this experiment, John spends at least an 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:24.840 hour asking Rick if he thinks the testing they did 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:26.960 was enough, it's. 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:31.800 Exactly the same mechanism of product development that I learned 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:38.080 developing a project management system for a pharmaceutical company exploratory research, 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:41.080 computer modeling, animal safety studies. 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:46.680 Human In the video, Rick looks defeated. There are dark 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:50.280 circles around his sunken eyes, his normally coofft black hair 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:54.440 is falling down over his face. Burton continues pressing Rick, 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:56.080 and so. 0:15:56.160 --> 0:15:59.680 Why did you think that this new device that had 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:02.480 four times of power was going to be safe to 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:03.960 use on human beings? 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:08.200 Because Rick explains to Burton for the umpteenth time that 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:11.200 everything he did was above board. He had the taser 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:14.440 tested on animals and compared the weapon's power to existing 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:16.280 research on electricity. 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:19.120 Output of this device. It showed significant safety margins, so 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:22.440 all of the review of the literature in the candidate. 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:26.400 At this point, Rick seems to snap to attention. He 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:29.760 stares straight into the camera that's recording his testimony and 0:16:29.880 --> 0:16:31.560 launches into a kind of monologue. 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:34.600 And as we sit here today, the result of this 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:38.200 work is we've developed a technology that, if you include 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:40.520 the Mputy six in the next twenty six, is deployed 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:44.760 by five hundred thousand police officers and over sixteen thousand agencies. 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:47.800 We've had over a million volunteers and over a million 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:52.520 field uses. We've prevented conservatively forty to fifty thousand lethal 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:55.040 force incidents from recurry. 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:59.280 It's almost like Rick doesn't understand why he's under attack. 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:02.680 I'm very proud. I think you would be hard pressed 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:06.119 to find any other scientific development in the field of 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:11.480 modern policing that went through a similarly rigorous approach and 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:14.520 has had the success rate where we have rede from 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:15.560 being usually. 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:22.399 It's been years since this step position. I'm on the 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:25.560 company's website and there's a page that says, as of 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:28.720 twenty twenty five, the taser has saved more than three 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:34.080 hundred thousand people from death or serious bodily injury. It's 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:37.639 a staggering number. Maybe it's enough to convince you that 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:40.800 tasers are worth risking a Bryce Masters or a Darryl 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:44.760 Turner for the greater good until you see how the 0:17:44.880 --> 0:18:14.640 math just doesn't add up. I need to get into 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:18.200 the stats for a second. Rick Smith claims tasers have 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:22.080 saved more than three hundred thousand lives from death or 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:26.240 serious bodily injury since cops began using his company's weapon 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:29.879 twenty five years ago. That means an average of roughly 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:33.520 fifteen thousand people every year that used to keep a 0:18:33.600 --> 0:18:36.480 ticker on the website's homepage that counted down to the 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.000 next life saved one every twenty nine and a half minutes. 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:44.960 Sounds amazing, but dig just a little deeper and it 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:52.000 falls apart. The company calculates the three hundred thousand lives 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:56.200 saved using one study. That study looked at four hundred 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:59.360 and twenty six taser uses by Dallas cops between two 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:02.840 thousand and four. In two thousand and six, officers reported 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:05.800 that five point four percent of the time using the 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:10.159 taser prevented them from using lethal force. Rick took that 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:13.360 one study and he applied the results to an estimated 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:17.439 five and a half million total taser uses worldwide. If 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:20.960 you multiply five point four percent times five point five million, 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:25.600 you get about three hundred thousand people people supposedly spared 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:32.840 a cops bullet. Its creative math, there's no comprehensive evidence 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:37.000 that tasers reduced shootings at all. Six years after Dallas 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:40.119 PD got the taser, the department was still shooting about 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.560 the same amount of people as they did before they 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:46.320 got the taser. One University of Chicago study looked at 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:49.480 thirty six thousand use of force incidents by Chicago PD 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:54.280 cops and found tasers did not reduce shootings. Stanford researchers 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:57.520 reviewed around one hundred and fifty different taser studies and 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:00.920 found the same. The Washington Post host which was doing 0:20:01.080 --> 0:20:04.720 arguably the best job of tracking fatal police shootings, showed 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:08.360 that over the last ten years, police shootings are actually 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:12.440 going up, even though more departments than ever have tasers. 0:20:15.320 --> 0:20:18.880 By using numbers like three hundred thousand lives saved, they're 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:22.639 implying that the taser has reduced gun violence. This number 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:26.000 helps Rick Smith tell a powerful story, the kind of 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:28.640 story he's told since the beginning, to help him sell 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:33.240 tasers and make money. And they made a lot of money. 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:39.920 After Taser went public in two thousand and one, it 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:43.160 transformed from an eight million dollar company to a one 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:46.680 point nine billion dollar unicorn in less than three years, 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:49.800 and all that money got them media attention. 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:52.399 The stock was skyrocketing. 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:56.440 In two thousand and four, an investigative reporter named Robert 0:20:56.480 --> 0:21:00.159 Anglin walked into Taser International's headquarters. He was one of 0:21:00.240 --> 0:21:02.280 the first people I turned to is I was trying 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:04.480 to make sense of the company and what I'd gotten 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:07.879 myself into fifteen years ago. He went to Taser to 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:10.840 write a puff piece about this successful local company. 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:14.560 It was this local company makes good and I'm not 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:16.960 a business reporter by any means. That wasn't why I 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:20.120 was asked to go. They wanted, the editor at the time, 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:23.320 wanted a profile of this company would tell us what 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:27.399 makes a tick. I didn't realize at the time that 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:29.160 that would be the first step in a two year 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:30.920 long investigation of the company. 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:35.439 At the time, Taser International was the talk of Wall Street. 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:39.120 Traders were going crazy for the stock. Shares that sold 0:21:39.200 --> 0:21:41.639 for less than four dollars in February two thousand and 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:44.720 three fetched one hundred and thirty five dollars a year later. 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:50.560 Throughout the day, the Smiths and Steve Tuttle kept insisting 0:21:50.680 --> 0:21:54.800 that no corner, no medical examiner, had ever cited the 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:58.159 stunt gun in an autopsy report. And this was like 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:01.520 a drumbeat. It wasn't just a throw away, you know, factoid. 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:05.200 Every ten or fifteen minutes they were raising the issue. 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:08.920 No corner had ever sighted this gun. The gun can't kill, 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:12.720 the guns never killed, the gun won't kill. And you know, 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:15.720 it's it's kind of a case, at least in my 0:22:15.920 --> 0:22:20.119 thinking of the Lady Duck protest too much. So towards 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:21.840 the tail end of the day, I asked them for 0:22:22.040 --> 0:22:24.640 the autopsy reports, and I got a lot of blank 0:22:24.760 --> 0:22:25.639 stares in return. 0:22:27.359 --> 0:22:30.800 Englyn kept following up, and he remembers eventually they sent 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:32.080 him like five reports. 0:22:33.280 --> 0:22:35.800 So I took it upon myself at that point to 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:40.680 wait on doing the company profile and began looking into 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:43.920 these deaths and track everybody who died and then get 0:22:44.000 --> 0:22:46.280 the autopsy reports from those jurisdictions. 0:22:47.400 --> 0:22:50.080 Taser employees weren't telling him the full story. 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:53.840 During my investigation, I found there were deaths that Taser 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:57.120 hadn't bothered put on their report. And then, of course, 0:22:57.200 --> 0:23:01.080 once I started getting the autopsy reports that corners were 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:05.400 infect citing Tasers as causes of deaths, contributing factors to deaths, 0:23:05.440 --> 0:23:06.880 are saying they couldn't rule it out. 0:23:09.720 --> 0:23:12.439 When he took his findings back to Taser, he couldn't 0:23:12.480 --> 0:23:13.440 believe the response. 0:23:14.240 --> 0:23:16.920 When a medical examiner had blamed death on the gun, 0:23:16.960 --> 0:23:19.280 they would say that medical examiner doesn't have the experience 0:23:19.359 --> 0:23:21.320 or the or the qualified training to blame a death 0:23:21.359 --> 0:23:21.760 on a gun. 0:23:23.040 --> 0:23:27.000 Englen wrote articles questioning the company's claims. By the fall 0:23:27.040 --> 0:23:29.560 of two thousand and four, the stock price was down 0:23:29.560 --> 0:23:34.080 about fifty percent. That's when Taser International issued a press 0:23:34.119 --> 0:23:39.280 release October eighteenth, two thousand and four, an independent study 0:23:39.359 --> 0:23:42.560 by the Department of Defense found Tasers were safe. 0:23:43.680 --> 0:23:46.560 As a consequence of that release, They're stock skyrocketed. 0:23:47.160 --> 0:23:50.399 Over the next month. The stock shot up over sixty percent. 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:55.800 Executive members of Taser's staff sold stock, made it millions 0:23:55.840 --> 0:23:57.879 upon millions of dollars in stock sales. 0:23:58.400 --> 0:24:01.800 Rick and his family sold over one million shares. That 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:05.000 made them almost sixty million dollars combined. 0:24:06.160 --> 0:24:09.040 And later, when I obtained copies of the actual safety 0:24:09.080 --> 0:24:11.960 study and began interviewing people surrounded with that safety study, 0:24:12.280 --> 0:24:14.760 what became obvious and apparent was that there had not 0:24:15.080 --> 0:24:19.240 been a safety study. It wasn't true. A, the study 0:24:19.359 --> 0:24:22.720 wasn't independent. B. The government scientist involved in the study 0:24:22.760 --> 0:24:25.280 didn't even look at stunt gun safety. They were looking 0:24:25.280 --> 0:24:27.480 at whether it was applicable for use in the military. 0:24:28.440 --> 0:24:31.520 Government scientists acknowledged they had never studied the safety of 0:24:31.520 --> 0:24:34.360 the sun gun, so to suggest that the government affirmed 0:24:34.440 --> 0:24:38.320 safety the stunt gun. Safety was false. As it turned out, 0:24:38.680 --> 0:24:41.200 Taser was involved in every step of this study. 0:24:42.680 --> 0:24:46.480 It was a literature review, not a medical study, and 0:24:46.760 --> 0:24:50.200 almost all of the literature the DoD reviewed came directly 0:24:50.240 --> 0:24:55.320 from Taser International, and it was organized by Taser's own employees. 0:24:56.400 --> 0:25:00.760 Every level of this study involved some members of Hayser's staff. 0:25:02.080 --> 0:25:05.240 As Anglin uncovered the truth, the stock collapsed again. 0:25:06.359 --> 0:25:09.360 At one point, Rick Smith accused me of costing them 0:25:09.640 --> 0:25:13.080 more than five hundred million dollars in shareholder value. I 0:25:13.200 --> 0:25:18.040 was besieged with calls from people's shareholders, especially shareholders who 0:25:18.119 --> 0:25:20.600