“Don’t tase me, bro!” immediately entered the national lexicon when university police in Florida zapped a protesting student with a Taser gun. His bleating cries have “become the newest cultural touchstone of our pop-cultural lexicon,” Wired says.
But the incident also substantially raised the profile of Taser International, makers of the police zappers. Company stock is skyrocketing on new orders and it has fended off dozens of wrongful-death lawsuits.
This week, the sheriff’s department of Jacksonville, Fla., purchased 450 new Taser X26s and the Cleveland police ordered 175 more. That was enough to push the stock price up 4.1% on Monday and another 1.34% on Tuesday. The stock is trading at its highest level in two years.
In 2006, only 20% of U.S. domestic law enforcement agents carried Taser stun guns; in 2007, that figure rose to 30%, according to Forbes. “Taser hasn’t scratched the surface of its potential,” said Steve Lee Dyer with Craig-Hallum Capital.
This is a far better picture for Taser International than two years ago, when it was hit with embarrassing stories about dozens of deaths linked to Tasers and high-ranking board members dumping their stock.
Forbes reported that several members of the founding Smith family and board members of Taser sold large amounts of stock amidst the safety controversy. Phillips W. Smith retired as chairman and sold $40.8 million worth of holdings. His sons Patrick and Thomas Smith sold $23 million and $17.7 million of Taser stock respectively, totaling 22% of their combined company holdings, the magazine reported.
The company also was stung in 2004 after President Bush appointed Bernard Kerik, a company director, to run the Homeland Security Department. Kerik made $6.2 million exercising stock options from Taser, which had contracts with Homeland Security and New York City. Taser was one of many companies that received consulting advice from Kerik, a longtime associate of Rudy Giuliani, after he left his job as New York City police commissioner in 2001. Kerik subsequently withdrew his name from consideration as Homeland Security chief, and left the Taser board of directors as well.
There have been an estimated 84 deaths associated with Tasers but the Scottsdale, Ariz., company has been successful in fighting off every wrongful death lawsuit brought against it. The company said the lawsuit was the 59th time a wrongful death or injury lawsuit had been dismissed or judged in favor of Taser.
On Tuesday, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana dismissed a lawsuit against the company by the family of Darvel Smith, who died in custody last year after being tased. An autopsy of the 32-year-old man, who was intoxicated, didn’t show why he went into cardiac arrest when he was shocked by a state trooper. The district court ruled that the Taser “did not contribute to the in-custody death.”
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#1. Connecting the dots in 2007 | Muckety.com - See the news with interactive relationship maps 01.01.2008
[…] Taser achieves verb status […]
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