The term "less lethal" is a marketing triumph and a medical fallacy. In the wake of three high-profile Australian deaths involving police tasers and beanbag rounds, the legal system is finally grappling with a reality that paramedics and human rights advocates have known for years. These weapons are not safe alternatives to firearms. They are high-energy delivery systems that interact unpredictably with the human body, particularly when that body is already in a state of physiological crisis.
The current judicial scrutiny into these fatalities reveals a systemic failure to account for "excited delirium" and the compounding effects of multiple force applications. When a person is experiencing a mental health breakdown or drug-induced psychosis, their heart is often already racing at its limit. Introducing $50,000$ volts of electricity or a lead-filled fabric bag traveling at $90$ meters per second doesn't just "subdue" them. It often triggers a cascade of cardiac or respiratory failures that the current police training manuals are ill-equipped to prevent.
The Myth of the Non-Lethal Option
For decades, the narrative pushed by weapons manufacturers and adopted by police departments across New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland has focused on the "force continuum." The idea is simple. Police should have a toolkit that allows them to scale their response. If a baton isn't enough, use pepper spray. If pepper spray fails, reach for the taser. Only use the sidearm as a last resort.
The flaw in this logic is the assumption that these middle-tier options carry a negligible risk of death. They don't. A beanbag round, often fired from a $12$-gauge shotgun, is frequently described in court as a "kinetic energy projectile." That is a sanitized way of saying it is a heavy blunt-force object designed to cause extreme pain and temporary paralysis. If that projectile hits the chest at the wrong moment in the cardiac cycle, it can induce commotio cordis, a lethal disruption of the heart rhythm.
In the three recent Australian cases currently under the microscope, the victims weren't career criminals in the middle of a heist. They were individuals in various states of distress. One was an elderly woman with dementia; another was a man in the throes of a mental health crisis in a public park. In each instance, the "less lethal" intervention was the catalyst for a rapid physical decline that ended in a morgue.
The Physiology of a Taser Strike
To understand why these deaths keep happening, we have to look at the physics of the Taser. The device fires two small probes attached to thin copper wires. When both probes embed in the skin, they complete a circuit, delivering a pulsed discharge designed to cause "neuromuscular incapacitation."
The goal is to override the sensory and motor nerves, causing the muscles to contract uncontrollably. However, the heart is also a muscle governed by electrical impulses. While manufacturers argue that the current is too low to affect the heart directly, independent researchers have repeatedly raised alarms about the risk of ventricular fibrillation, especially when the probes land near the chest.
The risk factors are compounded by "drive-stun" mode, where the device is pressed directly against the body. This is often used for "pain compliance"—a polite term for shocking someone until they do what they are told. When a person is already struggling, their adrenaline is spiking, and their blood pH is dropping due to physical exertion, the addition of repeated electrical shocks can lead to metabolic acidosis. The heart simply stops.
Accountability and the Shield of Qualified Immunity
The Australian legal system is notoriously slow to hold individual officers accountable for deaths in custody. Coroners often deliver "narrative findings" that criticize departmental policy while stopping short of recommending criminal charges. This creates a vacuum where equipment is blamed, but the decision-making process that led to its use remains shielded.
Internal police reviews often focus on whether the officer followed the "Standard Operating Procedure" (SOP). If the SOP says a taser can be used on a non-compliant subject, and the officer used it, the box is checked. This ignores the fundamental question of whether the weapon should have been used at all given the subject’s visible frailty or mental state.
We are seeing a pattern where "compliance" is valued above life. If a person is unable to follow commands because they are hallucinating or experiencing a stroke, their "non-compliance" is met with escalating physical pain. This isn't policing; it's a failure of medical triage.
The Beanbag Round Fallacy
Beanbag rounds were introduced as a way to "disarm" people from a distance. The theory is that the impact will knock the wind out of a suspect or cause them to drop a weapon. But the accuracy of these rounds is notoriously poor. At certain ranges, the bag doesn't spread out, hitting the target like a solid slug.
In recent Australian coronial inquests, evidence has emerged showing that officers often fire these rounds into the "center of mass"—the chest and abdomen. This is exactly where the vital organs are located. If the round fractures a rib, that rib can puncture a lung or the heart. If it hits the abdomen, it can cause internal hemorrhaging that isn't immediately apparent to the officers on the scene.
The "less lethal" label gives officers a false sense of security. It lowers the threshold for using force. An officer who would hesitate to pull a handgun will reach for a beanbag gun much faster, believing the consequences are temporary.
Mental Health is Not a Ballistics Problem
The core of the crisis lies in the fact that we have turned police officers into the primary responders for mental health emergencies. A person screaming in the street because they have lost touch with reality needs a clinician, not a tactical response group.
When police arrive with sirens, barking dogs, and drawn weapons, they inevitably escalate the situation. The subject’s "fight or flight" response kicks in. They become "unpredictable," which in police parlance justifies the use of tasers or projectiles. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy of violence.
Alternative models, like the CAHOOTS program in the United States or various co-responder models in the UK, show that sending healthcare professionals to these calls reduces the need for force by over $90%$. Australia has experimented with these programs, but they remain underfunded and secondary to the traditional "boots on the ground" approach.
The Data Gap and Corporate Influence
One of the most frustrating aspects of investigating "less lethal" deaths is the lack of transparent, centralized data. Australian police forces are fragmented by state, and each has its own reporting standards. When a death occurs, the manufacturer of the weapon often provides the "expert" testimony regarding the device's safety.
This is a clear conflict of interest. A company selling millions of dollars worth of equipment to a government has every incentive to downplay the lethal potential of its products. They point to thousands of "successful" deployments where the subject lived, using those numbers to bury the cases where the subject died.
The courts are beginning to see through this. Recent subpoenas for internal testing data and "use-of-force" reports are revealing that the "safe" zones for these weapons are much smaller than advertised.
Critical Points of Failure in Force Deployment
- Proximity to the Heart: Probes landing in the chest area significantly increase the risk of cardiac arrest.
- Duration of Discharge: Multiple five-second cycles prevent the body from recovering its natural rhythm.
- Pre-existing Conditions: Obesity, heart disease, and drug intoxication create a "perfect storm" for sudden death.
- Post-Incapacitation Care: Officers often wait for "the scene to be safe" before allowing paramedics to treat a prone, unconscious subject.
The Path Toward Actual Safety
Fixing this isn't about better aim or more "de-escalation" PowerPoint slides. It requires a fundamental reclassification of these weapons. They should be treated as "potentially lethal" and subject to the same strict reporting and justification requirements as firearms.
Furthermore, the "pain compliance" doctrine must be abolished. Using electricity or blunt force to make someone move their hands behind their back when they are physically unable to understand the command is a violation of basic human rights.
The three Australians who died recently weren't just victims of "unfortunate circumstances." They were victims of a system that chose a gadget over a conversation, and a "less lethal" lie over a difficult truth.
The next time a police department announces a multi-million dollar contract for the latest "non-lethal" tech, the public shouldn't ask how it works. They should ask how many people it’s expected to kill.
The judicial system must move beyond the "reasonableness" of an officer's fear and start looking at the objective lethality of the tools we have put in their hands. If a weapon can stop a heart, it is a deadly weapon, regardless of what the brochure says.
