A 36-year-old man has burst into flames after being shot by a police Taser in Western Australia.

Police say they were trying to arrest the Aboriginal man for petrol sniffing at the Goldfields Aboriginal community of Warburton yesterday when he turned violent.

It is alleged the man was threatening police with a container of petrol and a cigarette lighter, and ignored repeated requests to stop, when he was shot.

abc.net.au news article

All I can say is FACEPALM

f*** cops are dumb.

^ Don't you mean NAPALM?

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA


(not racist)

I giggled when I saw this. So much media hype around zapping someone these days, cops should just go "fine you guys want to cry about it we'll just go back to shooting people with guns".

i think the point is that in the old days, they wouldnt have used guns in this sort of incident. Likely a few of them would have just tackled him. Maybe he would have copped a hit or 2 from a baton. A bruise will fade much quicker than 3rd degree burns.

The general concern is that police are reaching for their tazers too soon and also that tazers aren't as safe as people are led to believe.

Having said that, if your in a situation where a cop has to taze you, i'd say you probably deserve what you get (im sure there are exceptions, im just generalizing here).

if your in a situation where a cop has to taze you

like being black?

I guess Tazers are now the 'hot topic' again.

This will only add fuel to the 'tazers are bad' fire.

Wait, the cops are the dumb ones? What about the guy threatening the police with a fuel can and cigarette lighter who ignored repeated requests to stop?

They're dumb because they didn't shoot him.

dont taze me bro!

More like, "Don't taze me bro so I don't catch fire before I attack you with fuel and a lighter!"

Don't start a 'flame war' guys.

when he turned violent.

Not sure they would have tackled a violent man :)

dont taze me brudda!

I'm all for the cops taking a more hard line stance and protecting and enforcing the law with some authority. I don't care if he was black, white, yellow or what ever ... someone ignoring a police request and turning violent ... just shoot him in the leg or something as a wake up call to stop being an idiot.

Shooting someone with a high voltage spark that has petrol in their hand....

Well done.

^ Sounds like the victim was.

last edited by mission at 13:37:15 21/Jul/09

yes clearly the cops should have taken out their batons and beaten the guy. its not like he was threatening the cops with fiery death.

if they gonna be violent, the only option is to immobilize and then incinerate.

"The investigation will try to determine the full circumstances about the incident and also the source of the ignition," she said.

I'm not a detective, but bear with me on this theory, it might have been the high voltage electrical shock. I'll test with my car later when i drive home. Pretty sure it'll still start I don't think physics have changed at all.

It might have also been the lighter ....

Dance Dance Immolation.

It's not clear. The report mentions the guy was holding a cigarette lighter. Well, maybe they tazed him because he made a move to light the petrol himself. There are enough questions raised for a review into what happened.

*edit* beaten.

It might have also been the lighter ...

Yeah of course - he set himself on fire and THEN they tazed him. Sounds great.

Or hell, they tazed him - some how defying logic and physics, didn't set him on fire and then to escape the pain he set himself on fire?

PS: Not questioning the review - just the single statement about the source of the ignition. Certainly there should be a review, if nothing else to come up with a procedure to use in case where tazers can't be safely used (like this one).

last edited by skythra at 14:50:56 21/Jul/09

IMO the tazers were used safely and as intended - to immobilise a threat. Unfortunately, the idiot was attacking the police with gas at the time he was tazed.

I'd say it was his personal stash for snififng.

Mmmmm love that fumey flavour.

skythra, you make it sound like people haven't set themselves on fire before (examples: 1, 2, 3, 4). It happens every other day.

It's possible that the police saw the victim was going to set himself alight and decided to taze him for his own safety.

skythra it's not viable that when they zapped him and he had his hand on the lighter ready to spark it and then when he was hit it made him tense up and do it by mistake? I know it is highly unlikely but people really shouldn't jump to conclusions.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/additional/large/office_space_kit_mat.jpg

to quote wesley

'ya should be drinking goon not petrol
goon don't burn ya silly c***'

pinky how is setting a man on fire via tazer gun helping him not set fire to himself?

i feel sorry for the poor bloke.. he really got all fired up for nothing

sniffing petrol is for bright sparks.

You're all taking a lighthearted joke way too seriously :P

But i'll take it serious too then...

skythra it's not viable that when they zapped him and he had his hand on the lighter ready to spark it and then when he was hit it made him tense up and do it by mistake

You were right - it isn't viable.

Petrol as a liquid form doesn't easily combust, it was most likely the fact the guy had been sniffing fumes (which the article seems to substantiate, had not covered the container of the petrol (which seems likely considering else his threats would have been pretty diminished) and the fumes were hanging around his person. If the fumes were vapor they would in fact be very combustible and faced with the first ignition source would combust. Think of it like how your spark plugs in your car spark the fumes. The first source would have been the electrical spark between two taser nubs. Likely? Very. I'd even speculate that he would have then thrashed around realising he's been tased (mostly in the falling to the ground kind of thrashing) dropped his container and made matters worse with introducing more fuel vapor to the mix. I cant think of any other circumstance whereby it would have been still logical to tase the person

skythra, you make it sound like people haven't set themselves on fire before

Nope - I'm saying there would have been no reason to tase him at all if he was already on fire. So they wouldn't have. Which rules out the lighter as the source of the fire. Or rules in the cops being especially stupid.

I know it is highly unlikely but people really shouldn't jump to conclusions.

:) .... while I do agree with the logic provided above.

Dance Dance Immolation

You mean this?

f***er deserved it

I think they should have cremated him on the spot