Taser Incorporated | Episode 2 - Living in the Red

Previously on Taser Incorporated.

Nobody's getting beat up, nobody's getting hurt. So it was like revolutionary door comes flying open and dude's running out. He's got the cash register in one hand and a gun and the other and shot him like five times.

It wasn't until you rolled him over that you realized how young he was.

Right, Yeah, he looked like a kid. I'm glad he didn't kill him. He was a fifteen year old kid with a bb gunde.

I get hugged by police officers and the code conventions will come up and they'll say, hey, thank you, I didn't have to kill somebody last week.

The Taser is so much better, you know, because we just tase him and then you just pick him up and brush him off, and they've got handcuffs on, and you know, here you go.

Remember that visit to Taser's headquarters that I told you about when they had to let me in with the retinal scanner and then I saw the Taser assembly line, the place dedicated to a future with no violence. Well, I went there because of a guy from Moberley, Missouri, a few towns away from where I was living. He was twenty three when I first heard about him. That's how old I was too. I went to Taser International to ask if they had any idea of what killed him.

I didn't struggle as much with shooting the fifteen year old with a BB gun that robbed his store as much as I dealt with the opinion of me as a cop and missing my target. I mean literally within a day or two of that, like people were just fucking around, joking, saying I needed to go back to the range, you know, and correct my dipping problem. What really bothers me is had not choose to shoot at all.

Like almost made you feel like you had to prove yourself more. Yeah, Matt wanted other cops to know they could count on it, and he decided to prove it. He was going to train for the kcpd's elite swat team. Matt says that for six months he sprinted up staircases in full tactical gear, a door ram in his hands. He studied jiu jitsu and chromagau at the firing range, his aim became virtually perfect.

I mean, there's certainly guys that were much bigger, stronger, you know, faster than I was. But I don't think anybody that had more desire than I did.

He always wanted to be part of something.

Looking back, Matt's wife, Stacy says that he went all in because he had to void to fill.

I think that was allowing him to be part of a brotherhood. I don't know if he would agree with me or even admit this, but it became a supplement for what we had kind of left behind.

When Matt and Stacy first got together, they didn't have any support from their families. They were both raised in strict evangelical houses, but they started flirting in junior high.

Anyway, he was the annoying guy that sat behind me in chapel.

I kicked her chair a lot and with jack with her a lot sitting behind her, and she would you know, it was flirtatious.

Of course, as they got older, Matt sent her flowers and candy. He made her feel special, but their teachers and families made them feel like sinners. Stacy wasn't even supposed to go to the movie or listen to pop music. Matt and Stacy didn't quite understand how they were risking eternal damnation by sneaking out to go on dates. And by the time Stacy graduated high school, they decided to move in together.

And of course our families had a major issues with that because we were living together outside of marriage.

Nobody supported us. There was none of that. It was like, you're wrong, You're going to hell. You know, this is not what God wants.

Their ideas about us and us wanting to still at some level please them is why we got married young.

We can live together now because we're married, so' go fuck you.

So by the time Matt joined the police force, Stacy's theory is he'd already lost one family. He wanted KCPD to be his new one. He put a thin blue line sticker on all their cars, the blue American flag with the light blue stripe across the center.

If somebody stops my wife or somebody stops one of my kids, I always wanted to know, as a police officer, if you're a police family, especially their immediate family, I wanted to know that, right I mean because it's a brotherhood.

This was all back in the early two thousands. Matt's police department didn't have tasers yet, and at the time Matt certainly wasn't thinking about carrying a non lethal weapon. But in other parts of the country, tasers were starting to catch on. Like in Oakland, California, the police department was using tasers under the leadership of a very different

I haven't gone over to the digital side yet.

Mike Leansio's energetic and upbeat, white goatee, strong jaw. He looks like a cop, but he grew up thinking he'd be a firefighter in Oakland, his whole family had been for generations. Mike decided he wanted to be a policeman. His dad eventually got over it. Mike was still relatively new on the force when he saw a video about this new weapon called the Taser. The video where Hans Morrero, the famous marine from Taser International's first promo video, fell to the ground.

I don't know if you're familiar with Hans, But Hans is about five foot six maybe and about the same with this guy is nothing but solid muscle. This guy is like, like you look up marine in the dictionary and there's Hans.

Mike says. He and a bunch of other officers gathered around the TV in the station conference room. What are your impressions as you're as you're watching now.

Well, we were all sitting around at a conference table at the department. The training staff was pretty much crossed the board. The initial response was that's not real. No, no, that's not no, that's not real.

But my boss sent him to a local taser training session. It was an all day affair at a hotel in San Francisco. A bunch of other agencies from northern California were there to check out this new weapon too.

They knew we were all coming in skeptical. Yeah, we'd seen the videos. It's all staged. Come on, guys, and so the first thing they did we got there, no introductions, made, no nothing.

They all stepped up and got the same treatment that Hans got a shock from the advanced Taser M twenty six.

They hooked the alligator clip to my shoelace and then the other alligator clip in my shirt on my shoulder, and they said, okay, you ready, and I said, yeah.

Sure, I was on the ground.

I mean I was on the ground.

Stop stop, stop. And they only hit me for like a couple of seconds.

It's incredibly painful, and then it's not it's just done. It's gone, and it's just so bizarre. Your brain doesn't quite know how to deal with it. The first couple of times you get hit, can't describe it.

Mike says that everyone in his training laughed hysterically as they watched each other fall to the floor.

Ah.

I've seen lots of videos of cops being trained on the taser, and there really is something funny about watching a big, tough cop, a guy who is always in control, loses shit for a couple seconds. If I meet the guy that can stand up to that, I'll turn in my badge again and become a florist.

And they shocked us all and then at that point they had our attention and the rest of the day went smoothly. But yeah, they had a room full of believers at that point.

This was a game changer. Oakland's chief put Mike in charge of the taser program and eventually signed up to become a Master instructor. That meant he would travel to Scottsdale, Arizona to get certified to tea each other cops how to use tasers. They held what they called Instructor School at the same futuristic building.

I saw.

It's an impressive place. I mean, it's like a spaceship. It's very high tech, you know. Obviously, they take you on a little tour of the place to impress you, you know, immediately, and you get to see the manufacturing, and you get to find out where all the engineering is done, although you don't get to go in there. Behind that glass wall is where the magic is made.

Mike was with a group of cops from all over the country.

And the thing you have to remember, too is the vast majority of police agencies in the United States are under twenty people. So you get somebody from a three man department in Oklahoma somewhere who has an opportunity to travel to Scottsdale, stay in a decent hotel, get wined and dined by the company, go on this tour, see this amazing building with all of the technology. I mean I met people at some of these trainings that this was the first time they'd ever been on a plane.

Oakland was one of the biggest police departments in the country, and so Taser International really pushed Mike to get every officer in the department to carry a taser. Mike attended special offsite training sessions that felt more like luxury trips than classes.

They'd always do it at some resort.

It was work hard, play harder, and they.

Had they'd have food and alcohol, and they'd have guys sitting there wrapping cigars for you. They'd have all these little competition they'd bring people out and you'd have gunfights with these little laser guns. I mean, it was like a festival kind of at you know.

Hans was often at retreats too, the action hero Taser's very own Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He had an entourage around him the whole time. People would follow him around and wanted to train with him, and they had matt rooms set up where there'd be like, you know, fifteen eighteen guys in there, and they just want to wrestle with Hans.

You know. It was like a church revival, but with way more booze celebrating this miracle. The Taser a safe weapon that literally transformed a person's body with a higher power, and this higher power was backed up basically by holy books.

They would wheel this card out and it was a cart that was full of books, and they would wheel this thing out and they would put their hand on top of it, and the thing was like two three feet tall.

This was all the research that proved the miracle of Taser's awe inspiring electric current. It was just like this incredible amount of paper, right. They would put their hand on top of it and say, you know, we've got this research compangn all of the research compiled that we've done, that other people have done, and every single one of

We were using these weapons at that point, probably three hundred to three hundred and fifty times a year, and in the entire time I was running the program, we never had an injury, we never had a lawsuit, we never had a IA complaint. These things are completely safe. I mean, I'm convinced.

Tasers were designed to be used against people who were violently was arrest, people who might eventually be shot if things got out of hand and cops couldn't get them under control. But as taser use exploded across the country, cops found just about any and every reason to use them.

Lots of people were.

Getting taste for simply arguing with cops, like this guy in Utah, put your hands behind your back, who didn't agree with the speeding ticket. Put your hands behind your back, Now you turn out.

Turn around.

He got shocked in front of his wife and kid. There were elderly women getting zapped like this seventy two year old woman in Texas who also didn't want to sign a speeding ticket. The officer got her out of her car to arrest her.

I'm getting back in car. You're gonna be paid. Stop Mariglow.

The reason cops were using the taser so much all went back to how they were trained on the weapon. They were learning, don't put your hands on people who argue with you, Taser them.

It's safer.

That was true for children too, like in Miami, when a six year old boy and a twelve year old girl were tased during school within weeks of each other. The boy was allegedly holding a piece of glass and the girl was running away toward traffic. In both incidents, the department claimed the taser was used for both kids' safety, but the headlines were rough.

In a letter said to Miami Dade's police chief, the school superintendent asked that police quote refrain from deploying tasers against elementary school students so that leads us to our last conquest.

The original idea of the taser was getting lost. The taser wasn't being used as a replacement for a gun. It was a compliance tool. The National Institute of Justice use the phrase lazy cops syndrome to describe the phenomenon of officers using tasers against nonviolent people. A reporter from ABC Nightline asked CEO Rick Smith about it right, because cops figure, hey, no must, no fuss, just pull the taser.

How do you deal with the lazy cops syndrome? They call it.

That's our technology. It's like our baby, and when it gets misused, it does hit you in the gut.

But that's why we But there were other stories that were much worse than cops just getting taser trigger happy. A lot of articles were about how people died after being tased.

Debate in Ford Worth lingers over the use of tasers.

Five people died after being tased by police.

Fifteen year old Brett Elder died early Sunday after being tasered by police officer.

For Taser's Rick Smith sales and profits are skyrocketing, but so is another statistic taser related deaths.

CEO Rick Smith was getting bombarded with reporters asking if the taser was truly safe, answers He told the public the same story he'd been telling cops. Has he explained to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the taser could not kill.

Look, I've been hit with this thing seven times. Every senior employe this company has been hit with a taser. Many of our wives, many of our children have been hit with tasers. So we believe this is the safest way to get a violent.

Person under control. That's huge.

We're very proud of what we do and it is like a religion to us.

When the CBS Evening News ran a two part investigation because they had found over forty deaths associated with the taser, reconsisted that his weapon played no part in killing them.

None of these cases has the person died while being hit with the taser.

You're saying that this was a coincidence.

They would have died anyway.

In every single case, these people would have died anyway.

You read the media reports, and I mean they made this weapon look like it was you know, people were out there dying left and right every time an officer used it. It was basically lethal force.

Back in Oakland, Mike began talking with other cops about the news. They'd all seen the research taser showed at demos.

It started to become a topic of conversation and agencies across the country were looking for explanationist, we're seeing deaths that are in some way associated with taser use, and the manufacturer was adamant that it's not the weapon.

Rick and his team had a different theory, one that had nothing to do with the taser and everything to do with the violent nature of policing, a condition called excited delirium. The idea was that some people got so worked up they were on drugs in a psychosis or violent rage, that their bodies gave out from.

The exert it's drugs, it's you know, whatever, exhaustion.

Mike spent hours on the phone talking about the taser with other cops, and they told me about how he started similar conversations with people he knew who worked at Taser International, like his friend and sales rep Jim Halstead.

Jim it assured me that, you know, we do all of this research. We're doing constant research, ongoing, all this published research from all these like world class scientists and engineers, and that's when it basically kind of opened the door.

Mike asked Jim if he could watch Taser scientists in action while they conducted their studies of the weapons.

Safety.

That'd probably would be pretty interesting to see something like that. You think he could, I could attend one of those, And then he says, yeah, I don't see why not.

Let me check.

By the time Mike Leansio called up Taser and asked if he could see their research and action, Matt Masters had become the point man for Kansas City's most elite unit, s New Tack, the Street Narcotics Unit Tactical Team.

It was just like that was the shit, kicking indoors and like you know, rifles and chasing bad guys and like that was a level up.

This was the kind of shit you see in shows like The Wire. Matt was the first man through the door on over one thousand high risk Warran arrests, and his team was also the first in Kansas City to get trained on tasers. Perks of being the best.

They start off the whole introduction with this video of this bowl being tased.

In this promo video, there's a bowl in a dusty pat A guy wearing black sunglasses and a black turtleneck aims his taser at the animal from behind the fence.

And he just like falls over, locks up and is I don't even know how much that sucker weight is big bull and they tase him and he's like falls over and his legs are out like this, and they let off the taser and he jumps up rams the gate that they were standing on the other side of with the taser. That's what they show you. That's the first video that I ever saw about taser, you know, and I'm like, holy shit, that's cool, Like look at that.

Then it was Matt's turn to get tased for the first time.

I mean, it's probably not appropriate to say I cried like a little girl, but like I cried like a little girl, Like I was like screaming. It was the most excruciating pain. You don't breathe. I mean maybe you breathe. That doesn't feel like you breathe. It feels like you just lock up. That shot goes through you and you're just like, to me, it's excruciating pain. But I will say that once it's over and done with, there is no more pain. It's weird.

Matt, just like Mike Lenesio became a believer.

At the end of the day, if you have to put your hands on somebody, you got to scuffle with somebody, why risk that, you can just shoot them on the taser. So it became more of a compliance tool, in an everyday compliance tool where hey, put your hands behind your back, fuck you, okay, watch this, you know, And it was, you know, a taser deployment, and that was how we were trained.

The thing is, even though they got tasers first, they weren't designed for the kind of police work Matt and Hiss newtech brothers were doing. For the taser to work reliably, you have to fire it at close range and both probes need skin contact. The technology was still no match for lethal force in these life and death situations. The taser wasn't the tool they needed to get the job done, and in Matt's case, using the wrong weapon could get

You have we would call out a career op, or you go on an operation that is like a once in a lifetime thing like I had like five of those.

He really did enjoy it, and he threw himself into it. It became part of his identity. It became part of who he was instead of.

What he did.

Stacy says that when he wasn't on duty and Matt was bulking up the gym with his squad, they even all got matching tattoos. The archangel slicing a demon's neck on Matt's shoulder is actually this new tac tat all the guys got that one. Matt's free time, his work time, his lunch dates with Stacy, even family dinner, it all revolved around being a cop.

It came to a point where I would really resent that question at the dinner table, Hey, Maut, what's a good story? You know, because I didn't want him to

But you know, I don't know.

I'm not proud of that, but I hated him.

Tactical cops have this phrase living in the red. It means living without the fear of consequences. Matt was living in the red. He spent years in snowtak kicking down doors until the consequences.

Caught up with him.

I told you I've known Matt for a long time. I think I might have heard all his cop stories. In my head, I see his life as a cop as divided into three parts, and each part revolves around a different shooting. The first part you already know when he shot the fifteen year old kid in the legs, and it pushed him to become part of the most elite unit in Kansas City. Before we get to the third, which involves a taser, I need to tell you about

You know, in that moment, I thought I heard gunshots, but I was like, wasn't sure, Like this just like this weird slow motion type thing going on. And I remember seeing Paul fall and he fell on the ground, and I remember thinking, fucking dummy, you just fell down, like like what is going on? Like why are you falling down? And I remember looking down at him.

He had fallen like right by the the car had he had his gun up trying to protect himself, and he's like, I've been shot.

I've been shot.

A gunman in the back seat had fired through the driver's side window, hitting Paul three times. One of the bullets hit his spine, paralyzing it.

And I remember a lot of emotions going through my mind that because I was furious because I realized Paul had been shot. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, I feel this cool wetness on my arm, and I'm like, what is going on? Like the stained sensation. I pull up my arm and I'm like, there's a hole in my arm, and I'm like, well, shit, did I get shot. I don't want to be like a whoosy here, but like, hey, guys, like, I's got something going on here. I'm not sure what

The department got ahold of Stacy to let her know Matt had been shot, and she panicked.

Can't get a hold of him. So I got to drive the whole way to the hospital, thinking that when I got inside he was gonna be gone.

Oh just sitting there just like and then all of a sudden, the chief comes in, Ty comes in, my wife comes in, and they're like, are you okay? And I'm like, yeah, I'm fine.

So this became that second big turning point for Matt, Stacy was not fine. She was relieved, but she was also rattled, and in that moment, she gave Madison simple choice.

She said, it's either you either commit to be with me and this family and leave that part of the job, or I'm leaving, you know, And what are you gonna do? You know, You're like, okay, you know, give me some time. I'll figure it out.

He traded the drug squad for a desk job in HR.

I mean it was boring, you know, it wasn't fun, But.

Boring also meant that he had time to be a dad. He finally started going to his son's football games, something he'd missed for years. Matt and Stacy both wanted to be parents who supported their kids and let them have freedom that neither of them grew up with. When they're oldest Colin got his license, Matt brought them car shopping. They found a used gray Pontiac Grand Prix with leather trim, tinted windows, and a ground effects package straight from Fast and the Furious.

It was funny because when we bought a guy told me, he's like, you'd be careful, man. He's like, the cops do not like this car. You know what. I was like, That's okay, because I'm a cop. I ain't gotta worry about it, right.

Matt bought the car and that's when he put a thin blue line sticker on the back windshield. A few years later, the master's younger son, Bryce got the car from his brother and seen. Bryce was driving everywhere to his job at Baskin Robbins and to hang out with friends, and that car did start getting attention from cops. Stacey

So he calls me. He's like, hey, Dad, I'm really sorry. He goes, this is what happened. I was leaving Jason's house and they swooped in on me. I had a little bit of weed in my pocket and he, the officer, found it, and I'm in jail for possession, you know. And I'm like, well, what did he stop you for. He's like, well, they said my car was stolen.

Independence police had gotten a call about a suspicious vehicle parked on the street all night.

And I go, okay, well what were you under rest for?

What?

How'd they find the weed? Well, he went through my pockets. I'm like, well, what's he going through your pockets for? Are you under arrest? Well? No, I'm like, well that's an illegal search.

So Matt and Stacy were mad to learn that Bryce was smoking weed, but listening to him described the stop got Matt worked up too. Matt remembers Bryce telling him about it. It sounded so adversarial. Bryce described how one of the officers pulled the thin blue line sticker off the car's windshield after he told them that his dad was a cop. Plus, Matt knew the search was illegal. The other officer had no probable cause to dig into

To know what for.

Privately, Matt and Stacy thought that Bryce was being profiled.

They didn't like the tin windows, they didn't like the ground effects package on the car. They didn't like that this kid, you know, matched his shoes and his clothes up and kind of, you know, dressed a little too flashy for them.

Bryce didn't just hang out with a munch white kids. He had white friends, but he hung out with everyone. And one of the lovely things about him is his ability to find a piece of almost every individual and identify with them. I have sometimes wondered if some of the friends that didn't look like him caused people to make assumptions about his character. I do think that there was a level of racism that was going on in the police department, and I think that Umbress had black friends.

To be honest with you, I'd literally think they thought he was like a gangster or something. You know what I'm saying.

There was just a whole line of events that led to that fateful day, and all of it completely unnecessary.

It was a perfect late summer day in September of twenty fourteen. The football season was just getting started, and in Kansas City, the Chiefs are the center of the universe on Sundays, so.

We were kind of like getting ready to you know, turn the game on and you know, sitting and watching football. And we were in our front room and Bryce said he was going to go pick up his check from Basket and Robbins, and he was going to go to the mall and buy some shoes, and then he was going to go over to his friend Curtis's house and they were going to play some video games. So, you know, of course, we were like, okay, fine, just keep in touch, you know, we'll see you later.

Later Matt's phone rang. It was Bryce's friend Curtis.

And he's like, hey, Bryce is getting stopped out in my front yard. And he's like, I don't know what's going on, but the cops trying to get him out of a car, and I was like, okay. Really initially I didn't really I didn't panic or anything. I didn't like think, oh my god, you know, my kid's getting stopped. At the time, cops got free passes from me. Maybe Bryce did I'm wrong, maybe Bryce, I don't know, speeding there, you know, did something that he deserved to get stopped.

And I didn't pay much attention to it until he froze, until his the look on his face told me that somewhere somebody wasn't okay.

I hung up the phone. I told Stacey, I'm like that something else and something's not good, something's all right. Something happened. And I remember Stacey just like what's going on? And I'm like I don't know. I know, Brice Scott just got stopped and we just need to get there.

It's a ten minute, eleven twelve minute drive probably, And in that period of time of us getting in the car, Curtis is calling us and saying where are you at.

They just tasered him.

And he's not moving and he's not breathing, and we're like what. Matt weaved his way through traffic and they pulled up to the scene.

By this time there was a fire truck there and ambulance there, and of course we walk up to the scene. Of course, you know, the cops are like get back, you know, and you're like, don't fucking touch me, man, do not touch me, you know, I'm like, that's my kid.

It was chaos. It's about a half dozen Independence officers marked off the street and rifled through Bryce's car.

So the first words out of my mouth for you bunch of fucking cowboys, like seriously, what is going on?

Neighbors were out in the yard. Curtis Bryce's friend was scared.

When they put him on the gurney. They had put it. They'd put a tube down his throat and were innovating him with a bag and then I was over the top of him, looking into his eyes and he was completely limp. And I remember looking over.

Ready on the top head, looking over at his face and looked into his eyes.

There was I'll never forget that. It was just a blake.

Next time. On Absolute Season one Taser Incorporated, we were in.

The back of a semitruck trailer and so we spent the whole day out there with pigs and in the back of a sweltering hot metal truck in the Arizona heat. Were you surprised, Oh, absolutely, because that's not supposed to happen. I mean cardiac effects. They told us for years that this doesn't have cardiac effects.

That was the first thing that came out of our mouth was like, what happened?

I get right back there and it's bad.

It's really, really, really bad. Absolute Taser Incorporated is a production of Lava for Good in association with Signal Company Number One. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and threads at Lava for Good. Follow me at Nick Beredini on Instagram and Twitter. Taser Incorporated is written in by me Nick Berendini. Our executive producers are Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler and Kevin Wordis. Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer. Jackie Paul is our producer. Hannah Biel is our writer