- 1 day ago
Four Corners (1961) Season 2026 Episode 12
Investigating why a farmer, a school girl and grandmother were all tasered - Four Corners
Investigating why a farmer, a school girl and grandmother were all tasered - Four Corners
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00:04emergency video all i could see were lights so i pulled up and then got out and that's when i
00:11realized it was a police car if i didn't have the video no one would have believed me the video
00:19footage is what got them tasers were sold as a way to stop dangerous police encounters without
00:32taking a life it's like getting hit with a lightning bolt up your bum
00:39today they're carried by police officers in every state and territory in australia but they're being
00:46used in situations they were never intended for do you think your mum was a threat that night she
00:54couldn't have been a threat to anyone if she wanted to 95 years old 43 kilos on a walking train
01:05why would they taser a girl with a disability at a disability school only one company makes and
01:13sells these weapons what if we could make the bullet obsolete a 32 billion dollar tech giant
01:19that's made itself indispensable to police around the world i would say axon is a scary company how
01:27embedded would you say that axon is now with police they're captured i cannot see a way in which police
01:34can separate their reliance axon says its devices save lives but when something goes wrong after
01:43someone is tasered who really decides what happened i think i was lobbying i felt like i was being bullied
01:50they answer to the church of taser
01:53so
02:22steven used to visit this property every day
02:29all right so this is the entrance to the farm he still can't believe what police did to him here
02:37late one night in 2024 when he was checking the sprinklers normally i reach forward like this when
02:43i'm looking around because it's dark and as i went back then i noticed the police car in the mirror
02:48it was a set of lights i noticed and that's when i got out
02:57so this is where it happened right here then yeah yeah majority of it happened here
03:30i'm not proud of property
03:38he was shocked multiple times and capsicum sprayed
03:48when you hit with the taser what did it feel like oh your chest is the heart is just like
03:56equivalent muscles just doing this it's basically like having a heart attack
04:03steven's lawyer jeremy king says the use of a taser that night was both excessive
04:08and in clear breach of policies in the victoria police manual
04:16the big point here for you mate is ceds or tasers must not be used against people offering passive
04:23resistance you are clearly offering passive resistance so on their own rules on their own
04:27manual they should never have used the taser on you
04:32victoria police told us steven was known to them and officers stopped him because he had his
04:38headlights off and sped away when approached local police reviewed the incident finding the actions
04:45of its officers was appropriate steven sued victoria police for unlawful arrest and battery
04:53the case recently settled with police paying him 250 000 in compensation plus his legal costs
05:02the fact that no charges were laid against him is extremely telling is it not arguable that
05:09this is just a case of one officer maybe making a poor decision in that moment rather than something
05:16more systemic i've heard that one before and unfortunately my firm has seen many different
05:23examples where tasers have been used inappropriately police manuals in every state and territory
05:31set out guidelines on taser use in queensland officers are warned multiple taserings have
05:39been linked to deaths new south wales police are told not to taser certain people including
05:46the elderly and children except in exceptional circumstances
05:54new south wales is the only state that transparently reports its taser use the data shows incidents
06:03involving taserings have almost doubled in the last five years how do you respond to criticisms that
06:12tasers are just being overused by police and not in circumstances that are warranted
06:17look i think for any criticism to be leveled it needs to be done on the basis of the circumstances
06:24that exist in an individual situation that can be very difficult to do when you look at bulk statistical
06:30data to be clear why do you think tasers are being drawn more often then there are more tasers being
06:39used
06:39across the state by police more generally it is a tactical option often you know it is a situation that
06:46police are confronted by angry argumentative people may be violent and they do it to
06:50protect life essentially should it ever be used just purely for compliance it's not a compliance tool
07:07in the past two decades 18 people in australia have died following a police incident involving tasers
07:17there were six deaths in the past five years alone one of those was 95 year old claire nowland
07:25she was agitated she couldn't comprehend what was the situation i mean she wouldn't know what a taser was
07:36new south wales police officer christian white and his colleague had arrived at a nursing home
07:42to search for the great grandmother who was holding a steak knife and hiding out of sight
07:50after finding her inside a room white drew his taser it took less than a minute for him to mutter
07:57three words nah bugger it before he discharged the weapon while he's been sacked and convicted of
08:06manslaughter claire nowland's family still has questions they want new south wales police to address
08:13what has the last few years been like for your family oh it's hard to explain yeah um
08:24yeah that's all right yeah sorry
08:28it's been very horrific i mean to to go through what we've gone you know and we still toss and
08:34turn
08:34um to this very day asking us you know why did this happen you know there were so many solutions
08:43for
08:44it to be de-escalated you know how can i help you sort this out what's happening here new south
08:51wales
08:51police officers undergo mandatory taser training every year i want you to come in this is a warning
08:59that the taser will be deployed i need you to comply with my directions christian white was up to date
09:07with his training having only completed it a few months before he killed claire the senior officer
09:14beside him that night an acting sergeant also gave evidence at the trial that she agreed the tasering
09:20was justified i still can't understand why either of them would think that their actions were appropriate
09:29you know it was a a gutless action and an inhumane action turn around do that now after claire's death
09:37new south wales police reviewed its taser policy but found it wasn't necessary to make any changes
09:44a matter which will likely be considered at an upcoming inquest obviously because mrs nolan's matter
09:51will be before the coroner very shortly and it's therefore not appropriate that we comment on that
09:56do you feel confident that there are no gaps in the training that you're offering officers look i
10:02believe the training is first class the training certainly reflects what the policy and legislation
10:07is and i'm quite confident in the training that we deliver
10:15police use of tasers is under scrutiny in other states too
10:24it was here in north queensland that a particularly disturbing taser incident took place involving a
10:30school girl with a disability who police were trying to interview as a potential victim of sexual assault
10:47this is t joanna mclennan she lives with an intellectual disability cerebral palsy epilepsy
10:55visual impairment and paralysis of her right hand she likes to spend time at her local library
11:03let me let me talk you through what we're gonna do i'm a bit nervous
11:07yeah at the time t joanna was tasered she was 16 years old and described as having the intellectual
11:15capacity of a year one or two student today she's determined to explain the impact it's had on her
11:30it's like i feel like i'm going to cry too much
11:35t joanna has experienced increased seizures since she was tasered
11:40um i can't wait they're done to him i have to wear pull-ups and i can't go to the
11:47toilet any more
11:51it's been awful
11:55done
11:56i appreciate you being brave and talking to us
12:11for six years now her family's been trying to hold queensland police accountable it was february 2020
12:18when two officers investigating allegations t joanna had been abused arrived at her school to interview
12:25her her mom robin says she instantly felt overwhelmed
12:33oh they went up there to ask her questions and she didn't want to
12:37answer them she told them she didn't want to talk to them that's what set her off
12:47outside t joanna picked up a plastic cricket bat and was hitting things before staff started calming her down
12:58so it was when t joanna went into a room and tried to close the door behind her that police
13:04drew the taser the officer apparently said that he feared she was going to pick up a knife or something
13:11that's when she was tasered
13:17what went through your head when you heard that that your daughter had been tasered
13:22i was i mean i got really upset because i think why would they taser a girl with a disability
13:28at a
13:29disability school
13:32t joanna's family has sued queensland police they didn't respond to our questions
13:40the incidents we've investigated raise issues over whether police are becoming too reliant on tasers
13:58the more tools that police have the less they rely on good old-fashioned policing skills like using your voice
14:08like negotiation and tasers simply put the emphasis on coercion so much that it it degrades good quality policing
14:20criminologist dr emma ryan has spent her career researching tasers which were first introduced to
14:26australia more than 20 years ago mostly as a way to stop police shootings firearms deaths have not
14:34decreased since tasers have been introduced mission creep is what i have observed occurring so if a
14:43police officer pulled a firearm out in a lot of the cases that we see around tasers we'd have a
14:50very
14:51we'd be living in the wild west basically
15:09the market for conducted energy weapons is dominated by just one company
15:16it's a 32 billion dollar tech giant whose ceo takes home a bigger pay packet than the boss of apple
15:25i believe we're approaching the end of war and the end of killing as an acceptable aspect of human
15:32society i think a world without the taser weapon is one that is far more dangerous than the one we
15:39live in
15:50the company captured the australian market through a retired special operations cop from melbourne and
15:58you might say to someone you know that's aware of what they're doing just say help with your chest
16:03if that was a real meet george haitley yeah so i'm going to put 50 000 volts in in george
16:10the company
16:11found a fearless ally and the ultimate salesman on the count of three
16:19so i was the most knowledgeable person in the country about taser and you've been tasered yourself
16:34tell me about that 13 times 13 times not counting um well you clearly are counting yeah you don't you
16:42you can remember every one of them but it's it's quite painful
16:48yeah because be real with me what does it really feel like i've obviously never been tasered what
16:52what's the sensation well to the police in a mixed in a room full of place i said it's like
16:57getting hit
16:58with a lightning bolt up your bum it's just you know just frightening pain and and severe shock of
17:05you know something like that and that's what you want for pain compliancy for sure a deterrent
17:11and the message goes through the community of criminal community that hey don't muck around
17:16if they say we're going to toes you give up put your hands up please welcome ceo and founder of
17:25axon rick
17:26smith george's unrelenting passion for taser is nothing compared to axon's leader
17:36uh thank you everybody rick smith is a zealot he is a taser zealot zero in on target take off
17:45the safety
17:47and fire
17:51heavens rick smith took an invention from the 1970s that never took off
18:00and revolutionized the technology
18:06part of how they did that is by raising the level of electrical discharge that comes out of the taser
18:14that created new risks to human life initially the success was quite good a lot of people flocking
18:21to buy shares but then uh cases started to hit the courts tonight police in the town of clay are
18:28trying to figure out why a man died after being tasered by one of their officers polish immigrant
18:33was announced dead after rcmp officers tasered him at the vancouver airport last month people are
18:40freaking out politicians it was out of control
18:54in the united states lawsuits over taser related deaths kept mounting this posed an existential threat
19:03to the company because if they got into the habit of losing these cases it would very quickly uh eat
19:10up all their entire profit margin in the early days the company set up what research scientist
19:15justin feldman describes as a product defense strategy to counter litigation and negative publicity
19:23the crux of that strategy would be to bring together uh medical experts in various fields
19:31and fund them to do studies showing their product to be favorable and who would testify
19:39in court uh that tasers did not kill people axon's extensive network of experts included emergency
19:48doctors a neuroscientist and biomedical engineers some of them owned shares in the company or sat on the
19:57board all the while publishing studies and telling police tasers were safe we can see over the years taser
20:05uh jealously guarding the reputation of its um product to the point where they would even sue
20:13a forensic pathologist who would dare to link taser to a death that that really happened yes
20:27very few scientists have publicly disputed axon safety claims
20:38as a young doctor cardiologist zian sang was quoted in the media warning that tasers could stop the
20:45heart if deployed directly to the chest unbeknownst to me i was really i think the first cardiologist to
20:52say such a connection could occur taser contacted me immediately and asked if they could have a
20:58conversation with me do they did i really think it's lethal um you know would you reconsider your
21:04statements um and that escalated actually to the point where um they offered you know me to visit
21:11their company and offered me grant money actually he turned down their offer and instead did his own
21:18independent research on sudden deaths in police custody before and after tasers were introduced
21:25and what we found surprised us that in the first year after taser deployment there was a
21:30six-fold increase in sudden deaths they really didn't like that study and they went to the lengths of
21:36uh taking us to federal court to try to compel the release of all of our research documents to attack
21:42our study and thankfully a judge um refused that order 16 years later i've not seen any study
21:49that has refuted our study results yeah that same year the company did make a concession
21:58issuing a warning to police that repeated taserings and chest hits should be minimized to avoid
22:04controversy about whether tasers affect the human heart police customers were so concerned that ceo
22:13rick smith held a conference call to reassure them i want to start by addressing a couple of
22:19questions we've been receiving uh over email the first one is are chest hits with the taser dangerous
22:27and the answer to that is definitively no but the real sort of biggest reason here in my mind is
22:33risk
22:34management and avoiding the controversy they weren't really conceding lethality they were saying you
22:41know do that to avoid lawsuits
22:51for decades now axon has actively tried to shape the science evidence and legal outcomes around its
22:59signature device at the center of its strategy is a controversial diagnosis known as excited delirium
23:10the term excited delirium first rose to prominence here in miami during the 1980s when
23:18the city was in the midst of the cocaine boom
23:23excited delirium is a theory about how people die in police custody it starts with a true reality which
23:32is that there are people in the world who are in states of acute mental health crisis often that
23:39involves drugs like cocaine sometimes these individuals act aggressively often these individuals have high
23:46high body temperature the leap that they make is to go from those genuine symptoms to saying that those
23:53were the cause of death excited delirium has been rejected by medical and psychiatry groups the world
24:02health organization has never recognized it yet the company has pushed it as the cause of death in taser
24:09incidents and they really developed a rapid response plan that would follow any news story of a death
24:16related to tasers where they would intervene
24:27exactly how the company did this was laid bare in the death investigation of israel hernandez lock
24:34a young miami graffiti artist known as reefer hey felix fernandez witnessed the moment police tasered his
24:48friend after they caught him spray painting an abandoned building and he runs straight towards a bank
24:55and he gets tased and he was just face down on the floor in the dirt not moving and they
25:02were like
25:02uh there's nothing to tell you your friend is dead
25:09within four hours of the taser being deployed the company injected itself into the death investigation
25:17in an email to miami police marked confidential taser executives provided urgent instructions ahead of the
25:25the autopsy
25:30law enforcement is given an excited delirium checklist where they can check off different kinds of signs
25:37and symptoms that they attribute to this condition
25:42the company pushed for brain tissues to be sent asap to the university of miami's brain endowment bank to
25:50look for excited delirium markers it didn't mention the lead researcher there at the time was its paid
25:58expert witness in multiple lawsuits
26:05despite tasers efforts the medical examiner found the death was heart failure due to the taser discharge
26:12but the company was never found liable across the us excited delirium has been linked to 276 deaths
26:23following taser use
26:29death investigations are supposed to be neutral medical and scientific processes and when a corporation
26:36inserts itself into the into the process and tries to sway things that there are serious conflicts of
26:41interest involved
26:48you might be thinking at this point well that wouldn't happen in australia where our coronial
26:53system that investigates deaths is just too robust but that's not what our investigation has found
27:01it has happened i've been contacted by the organization i i did an autopsy on on a person who had
27:09died
27:10in custody um a taser had been used and i was contacted and all of these were provided professor johan
27:19de
27:19flu is a senior forensic pathologist who's investigated and given testimony in taser related deaths so we've
27:27got here the document the excited delirium checklist and all axon once targeted him with its taser defense
27:35strategy so all of these documents here were sent to you in an email from axon yeah that's my
27:42recognition so this is what you should do including obtaining the various samples etc etc including
27:51contacting the university of miami brain endowment bank did you feel at all pressured to follow some of
27:58their advice or instructions um i think i was lobbied not necessarily pressured
28:11was the lobbying successful well in the end though was it i i i don't think it influenced me
28:36we've found axon's key defense excited delirium has found traction in other cases here
28:43it's been a long time but i think of him a lot
28:49these people this church of taser pushed for excited delirium to coincide at the same time as their
28:58weapon discharge
29:02the death of antonio galliano is one of australia's most controversial taser incidents
29:12he died in june 2009 as police restrained him during a violent drug-induced mental health episode at his
29:21friend's home
29:24it's controversial because of the 28 firings that's why
29:30his sister giovanna now realizes the full extent of axon's involvement in the investigation and
29:38inquest do you feel like you got the truth no no it was anything but the truth
29:48right from the start the company's representatives were in contact with police investigating the death
29:56yeah i got a phone call the next morning from the homicide squad up in queensland and said george
30:02this guy's been tasered and uh we need to talk to you and after the brief discussion i said taser
30:09didn't
30:09kill him and they said how can you be so certain i said i am 100 certain what did make
30:15you so confident
30:18i'd been to america quite a few times sat down and with these doctors
30:22and said tell me guys i need to know does this thing kill you know what happens in this scenario
30:28what
30:28happens if they've got a pacemaker what happens if they're feeble what happens if they're whatever
30:32in heart attacks and they said george it doesn't affect the heart and so you were you were convinced
30:38by these doctors and researchers that takes the internet by facts and evidence
30:44we've examined the coronial files and discovered taser's own experts and their research feature
30:50heavily in this case including references in the pathologists autopsy findings
30:55he found that my brother died of excited delirium that was the first time i'd ever heard of it
31:05inquest documents show the pathologist conceded he had minimal experience of excited delirium but
31:13read up on the experiences of american experts and literature to make his findings we've found he
31:20relied on a report of a taser board member and also referred to the excited delirium checklist
31:28tasers got their fingers in it at every turn so it becomes almost impossible to
31:35you know disaggregate the truth from the propaganda
31:41lawyers for the company queensland police and the officer who fired the device
31:46brought in four american experts who were part of tasers network to testify on the cause of death
31:54three of them blamed excited delirium they used excited delirium they used the idea that he would
32:02have died anyway whether the taser had been used or not why would they do that why put so much
32:10effort
32:10into convincing everyone that this excited delirium condition exists look you use the word convincing
32:16it's more informing it's a coroner that's that makes that final decision
32:23the coroner delivered her findings in november 2012.
32:28the cause of death was found to be excited delirium
32:31and the taser use was only very peripherally implicated the findings were
32:41very hard to accept because even at the time of your brother's death you're saying that excited
32:46delirium was surrounded in controversy yes it was and it still is today well it's debugged it's not
32:54acknowledged as a condition the findings are even more striking when compared with an inquest being
33:03held at the same time over the border in new south wales the death of roberto curty chased by up
33:10to
33:1111 police mr curty was eventually brought down by a taser and handcuffed but the tasering continued
33:18along with capsicum spray it's impossible to believe that he would have died but for the actions of police
33:28i've never forgotten that and i'm sorry to say that there was some appalling behavior from police
33:36i at the time called it like behavior from lord of the flies as state coroner mary jerem ended up
33:44making
33:45an open finding but much like in queensland an expert witness on taser's payroll had argued excited
33:53delirium killed him what did you make of that evidence not much why was that well well i think
34:02he had a bias an obvious bias it makes a a mockery really of expertise if you're just appearing
34:11for a company that pays you not good the axon ecosystem is the global operating system for
34:20public safety axon doesn't just sell tasers anymore equip your officers with industry leading smart
34:27devices to affect it has an ever-expanding list of interconnected products that include body cameras
34:33evidence software ai tools and drones the company is making itself indispensable to police at a furious
34:43pace join 18 000 agencies across the world that trust the axon ecosystem to help them protect more lives in
34:56more places australian police are big customers we've found more than 300 million dollars in axon
35:04contracts for body-worn cameras tasers and other products victoria is rolling out 10 000 taser sevens
35:12to frontline police and queensland has recently signed a 47 million contract for more than 6 000 taser tens
35:27but the rapid adoption of axon's new technology could have unintended consequences for frontline police
35:37we've been contacted by a hacker who's discovered a major vulnerability in bluetooth technology
35:45in axon devices that he says is putting police lives at risk
35:55he's worried about retaliation from axon hello how are you i'm grace nice to meet you too
36:05and is asked that we don't use his name or show his face what is it that you've discovered
36:12pretty much that you can uh track police devices via bluetooth low energy uh from
36:19quite a significant distance away things like body worn cameras tasers he shows us how he built his own
36:28proof of concept software and how it could be scaled up and weaponized by criminals
36:35to be used for ambushing the police attacking them escaping them organized criminal gangs or whatever
36:44he explains to us that every device that uses bluetooth has its own digital footprint
36:50a 12-digit code that's called a mac address most mobile devices like apple iphones have inbuilt
36:58privacy features making them harder to track when he realized axon's devices were detectable he emailed
37:06police i'm trying to raise a potentially serious cyber security issue with police i've created software
37:13that can detect the presence of police officers from 400 meters away using a laptop or a phone
37:19the axon brand tasers need to be recalled they leave the entire force essentially wearing beacons that
37:25broadcast their location and what came of those emails i got nothing but uh radio silence
37:32so no police agency in australia has ever written back to you about it no
37:41all right thanks for having us uh so today's talk is snoop under them as they snoop under you
37:46details about the security floor are being shared online there are even tutorials the boys in blue are
37:53actually the boys in ble last year us border agents were told to stop using their body cameras in the
38:00field due to the potential security risks this is like quite an open secret basically
38:10there are already police tracking apps available publicly the hacker downloads one to show us how it
38:17works so the app will start alerting us to the fact that a police officer is nearby yeah yeah it'll
38:23start
38:23alarming you get a notification and it'll probably start beeping we pull up outside a police station
38:29in melbourne's inner suburbs and wait
38:36axon taser detected there's in that car right there oh yeah there's a couple of police officers
38:42walking out right now and it's just cars pulling in so picking up quite a few another one there
38:50got one two three four five six seven eight nine ten ten tasers that were picked up the last couple
39:00of
39:01minutes our investigations discovered victoria police did receive the hackers email back in 2024 the issue
39:11was assessed internally with the risk found to be very real especially for officers undercover
39:18in tactical units or who take their axon devices home we know police executives were told to act but dismissed
39:28the advice victoria police refused to confirm whether its officers have
39:34ever been directly told they can be tracked while wearing their axon tasers and cameras
39:41a spokesperson said it hasn't had any issues with unauthorized tracking of tasers or body worn
39:47cameras over bluetooth and that it had gone to axon for security advice
39:55four corners went to all policing agencies about the floor but they refused to confirm if
40:01any steps had been taken to protect the safety of their offices
40:07why wouldn't axon just fix it you would need to design a brand new device and basically replace
40:15probably most of their products with newly designed products that actually meet the specifications of
40:20bluetooth buried within its website axon itself acknowledges the vulnerability to its bluetooth products
40:29warning operational security considerations should be made where detection may result in unintended outcomes
40:39how embedded would you say that axon is now with police oh hugely they're captured there is
40:47i cannot see a way in which police can separate their reliance
40:56a way in which police can separate their reliance on the ground
40:57she's really known as caring claire and she brought up eight children on her own
41:02and always had a concern about other people
41:06i mean you know she was our mum i mean she's the
41:16i mean she was the best mum in the world and you know like
41:20um she was there for us every every day so uh tasers were meant to be a safer way for
41:30police to stop
41:31dangerous situations without taking a life but after more than two decades of use in australia
41:39people are still dying and others are seriously affected when tasers are used in situations they were
41:47never intended for in australia not a single death has ever been solely attributed to the use of a taser
41:59but our examination of 18 deaths shows the role of the device is often contested and not clearly
42:07understood i'm the first to admit taser weapons aren't perfect but taser 10 is a hell of a step towards
42:13making taser energy weapons the most reliable and effective force option in the world axon maintains
42:20its signature product saves lives and that its research supports that but how that science is
42:28shaped and the company's influence during police investigations is far from transparent
42:36taser the most researched weapon in history but researched by the company
42:43no by the media by everyone most analyzed researched and taser are very focused on making sure
42:51decision makers get all information for claire nowland's family their hopeful and upcoming
42:57inquest may address key issues about taser policies and training do you feel like you still
43:05want some kind of reassurance from new south wales police that this was a one-off cop that this
43:11isn't going to happen with other officers as well i mean the only way that's going to happen is if
43:16they number one better training and number two change something in the policy i'm sure that they have
43:25some really pressure situations they have to make that decision instantly you know this is completely different
43:31where you know there was no one's life under threat at all you know and um it still happened
44:08what's going to happen with other officers and that they have to make that decision
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