Killing Them Safely (2015) - Review
Originally published May 2016I will admit that I started watching Killing Them Safely with my own preconceived notions about the taser as a weapon among law enforcement, though I also knew very little about the weapon's history, or any political spin there may be for or against it. In other words, I was pretty ignorant of the company that made the weapons, and ignorant of the deaths that were caused by them before watching this movie. However, I was nonetheless under the impression that they were a better option than using a firearm in terms of subduing individuals without permanently harming them.
Image: IFC Films
And I still am, despite this film's best efforts.
Pros
Provides solid evidence, facts, and numerous eye-witness testimonies
Gives an in-depth history of the product from its early days in the 60's
Informative presentation of details
Talks to both sides of the story; not just the people who don't like Taser
Could spark (heh) discussion about much bigger issues
Cons
There is a clear message the filmmakers are trying to make, which skews the facts a little bit
Trying too hard to make heroes and villains out of their subjects
Brushes off some real problems for the sake of sticking to the message of the movie
Views are rather black & white
Plot & Thoughts
It shouldn't be a shock (heh) where the filmmakers stand on the subject of Tasers and their use by law enforcement. The title alone gives you a quick heads-up. The ominous foreboding music played for the next hour and a half should be another clue. Killing Them Safely is pretty much out to make villains out of the executives and former executives of Taser International Inc., and rightfully so, in some regards. The problem is that the whole time I was watching this, it felt like there was no view from the moderate side of things. It's all very much either you're with Taser, or you're not.
Image: IFC Films
If you're unfamiliar with the history of the product and of the company, the movie does a good job of getting you up to speed. Two brothers bought the rights and patents to the original Taser product that was developed in the ‘50s/’60s era. They invest a lot of money in making their own, have a number of failures, then make one that seems to work really well, and suddenly it’s a multi-million dollar success worldwide. Early clips of the brothers talking about their product discuss how they had a friend who was killed by a gun in a confrontation and they wanted to create a nonlethal method of subduing people that wasn't as violent as a baton bludgeoning, or as variably ineffective as mace. At the time, perhaps their hearts were in the right place.
However, it doesn't take long for the movie to start showing you plenty of clips of the brothers as successful businessmen, trying to act cool by doing stupid awkward poses and skits in goofy outfits at corporate press events, like successful businessmen are wont to do. Mixed with that is the variety of news clips of them discussing their product and you start to hear their sales and PR rhetoric. Oh no! The guys who may have had the best of intentions are just in it for the business?! Surprise, surprise.
Image: IFC Films
Look, I'm immediately apprehensive about big and successful corporations because I tend to feel that whatever good intentions there may have been at the start are usually diluted or gone entirely by the time the company starts making 7-digit figures a year. I also happen to agree with much of what Killing them Safely is trying to say. There is sufficient evidence they provide throughout the film that shows how the weapon was sold with biased safety data and next-to-no weapons regulations, and how it was successful because ignorant people, like myself, bought into their rhetoric of it being a safe weapon. Of course, no weapon is 100% safe, but that's how Taser sold it. They sold it with medical studies and test cases under their supervision. These studies and cases for their weapon did not use extensive or realistic scenarios, either. I have no problem with the documentary bringing up all these sketchy, immoral, unethical things the Taser corporation and its executives did or didn't do because this should be brought up.
The problem I have with Killing Them Safely is that it's a very biased documentary. This is a common criticism I have of documentaries with an agenda, and I know it's partially because they're trying to entertain as much as educate, but it's pretty similar to how they did it in the Hacker Wars. They're crucifying the company for lying and cheating their way to success at the cost of people's lives and safety, as they should, but they're barely acknowledging the other parties involved who are also to blame for their sheer incompetence and arrogance in the matter. What about the trigger-happy police officers who have a shiny new toy looking for an excuse to try it out? What about the law-enforcement groups and government officials who were too quick to adopt the use of a weapon by a company that funded and controlled the source of statistical information? What about the actual training process for the device and how it likely wasn't followed? This sort of thing is barely mentioned for a fleeting moment with appropriate shame and animosity, and then it's quickly overshadowed by the big message of "Taser is evil."
Image: IFC Films
On more than one occasion, it's said that each law-enforcement group that bought Tasers received training on the device from the company, but that training was not enough to prepare them for use in the field. We don't see much of this training in the documentary, other than the document that advised officers to aim for the body or chest when firing the taser. Though it shouldn't take a genius to figure out it's not a good idea to shoot a project defibrillator at someone's chest. So we're not really allowed to make judgments on their training material beyond that one detail. However, since their demonstrations of the weapon to the officers showed how a person could be subdued in under 5 seconds of use with the weapon, I'm pretty sure that the training did not tell officers to shoot a target more than once or to zap them for 20-30 seconds at a time, which was often the case in the incidents where people were killed by the product.
The movie places a lot of blame on the company for not providing the correct training to officers and for not giving them the proper safety information regarding the weapon's use, as they should. I agree with the movie's message of how the big corporation didn't care enough about people's safety to provide accurate information about the risks involved in its use or to provide a method of helping people who were going into cardiac arrest as a result of the weapon's use.
Image: IFC Films
However, I do not agree with how the movie brushes aside the arrogance and incompetence of the officers administering the weapon. Just because they tell you it's perfectly safe, doesn't mean you should use it when a person is refusing to sign a speeding ticket! In some ways, the movie places the blame of sadistic power-horny cops on the corporation for telling them it was so safe, as though the safer the weapon, the more a cop would naturally want to use it. It's a weapon! Every weapon has its risks! Guns can kill people, just like how mace can kill people, just like how excessive bludgeoning with a baton can kill people, just like how tasers can kill people. The person pulling the trigger of a Taser should have been treating it like a firearm or any other weapon that they should be reluctant to use, but instead, they were overeager, treating it like a slap on the wrist with a ruler. Even if we were to ignore the fact that police were too trigger-happy, there's still the fact that they had too much fun zapping people once they fired the thing. If in police training, or just taser demonstrations, you were subdued in less than 5 seconds by getting hit with it in the legs, why would you zap someone with it in the chest for half a minute or more unless you're a dick who likes exerting power over someone?
Obviously, I have a problem with how Killing them Safely positions their villains, heroes, and victims in the "story" the movie is trying to tell because even though it's a documentary, it needs a story. Taser is the obvious villain, while the people who have died and their families are the victims, understandably. However, even the cops who unknowingly administered a lethal weapon thinking that it wasn't lethal are presented as bystanders, as though their ignorance should excuse their involvement, which is bullsh*t.
There's plenty of footage of cops using the Tasers inappropriately, some of which might be difficult to watch for some people because it actually shows people slowly dying from cardiac arrest. In each of these scenes though, the police show unnecessary aggression towards the people and, once on death's door, are completely clueless as to how to keep this person alive after their powerthirst went too far. The movie blames the lack of proper weapon training provided by Taser, but it shouldn't have taken weapon training to notice something was wrong when a teenager who'd been zapped in the chest multiple times was slowly dying in your arms to think to do simple CPR. Each of these police should have known from the crappy training that it only took 5 seconds to put someone down, and they'd then be coherent and aware immediately afterward, not going completely limp. If anything, it shows a lack of general training for the police, not just in controlling their exhibition of power, but in how they should be able to tell when there's a medical emergency and how to respond according, instead of just standing around like confused idiots as a person dies.
Image: IFC Films
So who are the heroes in this story? Lawyers. Maybe I'm too much of a cynical asshole, but I don't completely buy the self-righteous lawyers who are featured in the film talking about how they were fighting Tasers for all the immorality and injustice they've done. Maybe if I saw that a large percent of their earnings from their judicial victories went to the families they represented, or if they donated it to charity afterward I'd be more inclined to believe their purity, but these lawsuits are massive figures and I don't think these guys are in a much better moral position than their targets. At one point during the Taser executives' testimony, the lawyer asks how much money the guy has made as an attack question, as though that has anything to do with the actual topic of whether the weapons are safe or not. How much is the lawyer making off a successful lawsuit against these guys? I'd like to see that figure if we're bringing a person's wages into this discussion as a subject of morality.
Don't get me wrong. I learned a great deal from watching the film. After watching the documentary, I've come to agree that Taser is wrong in how they've positioned their product and I do think that it was stupid to so willingly accept the weapon as a 100% safe method of subduing an individual without doing the proper testing outside of a Taser-company-controlled environment. I agree that the people involved in the big corporations are likely immoral individuals looking to make a profit regardless of the cost to human life and that they lied, cut corners, and cheated to make their business successful. It's terrible, and shame on them for doing so. I just don't like the biased skew this film takes in making them entirely to blame for everything that happened, in how the weapons are somehow as dangerous as firearms, and in how everyone else is saintly in comparison to the company.
Image: IFC Films | Says the police chief of a town in the middle of nowhere.
TL;DR (Conclusion)
Killing them Safely has an obvious agenda. It's an informative and educational documentary that taught me a great deal about Taser weapons and the company that manufactures them. However, its political bias is so strong, that I have trouble listening to everything it has to say. The film provides a lot of facts and information to its argument, but it doesn't convince me to share the political view it's trying to accomplish. In other words, it's a good documentary that I didn't entirely enjoy.