May 28, 2025 • 28 mins
Bryce Masters is in a deep coma. Why? The doctor is sure he knows the reason, but Matt Masters doesn’t know what to believe. Years earlier in Oakland, Officer Mike Leonisio is also hearing news that is hard to believe. When he is invited to a behind the scenes pig testing at Taser international he learns something cops everywhere should know, but don’t.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Previously on Taser Incorporated.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
It was just like this incredible amount of paper, right,
We've got this research compendium, all of the research compiled
that we've done, that other people have done, and every
single one of them says it's completely safe.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
For Taser's Rick Smith sales and profits are skyrocketing, but
so is another statistic Taser related depths.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You read the media reports, and they made this weapon
look like people were out there dying left and right.
Every time an officer used it. It was basically lethal force.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Curtis called me back and he goes, you need to
get here, and I was like, oh my god, you know,
like what is going on.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
I didn't pay much attention to it until he froze,
until the look on his face told me that somewhere
somebody wasn't okay.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
My tour guide during my day at Taser International Headquarters
was Steve Tuttle. He's the guy who put his eye
up to a retinal scanner and let me in the building.
He had parted blonde hair and wore a tight fitting
silk blue shirt with Taser stitched in black lettering on
the collar. Steve was nice, but more importantly, he was confident.
In command. His whole job as vice president of communications
(01:32):
was basically talking to people like me.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
If we didn't have the science and facts on our side,
we wouldn't be here having this conversation. Would be we
have it. That's why I'm still here talking to you.
The taser becomes an easy target.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
He explained. There was no connection between the taser and
any of the hundreds of deaths I'd read about. He
told me excited delirium was really to blame.
Speaker 5 (01:53):
If you see what medical experts are calling excited delirium
when you start seeing sweating profusely, attraction, broken glass, speaking
in tongues, stripping down naked, and freezing weather. In some cases, yeah,
toxicology is clean, and that's They come back and say, yeah,
but tox was clean. Well, did you know he was
supposed to be on medicine? Did you check for that?
(02:14):
What about excited larrium issues. It's a syndrome. It's a
whole conglomeration of different issues taking place.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I shook Steve's hand and thanked him for his time.
I think we both left confused. Steve didn't seem sure
why I kept pressing him about the taser's safety, and
I couldn't figure out why Steve didn't have better answers.
This is absolute. Season one, Taser incorporated a story about
(02:48):
unchecked power. I'm Nick Beredini, Episode three, Defective Pigs. The
(03:43):
day Bryce was tasered started out like any other Sunday.
Matt and Stacy Masters had just sat down to watch
the Chiefs game when they got the call. A cop
from Independence, the town right next to Kansas City, shot
a taser at their seventeen year old son and he
wasn't breathing. They showed up to the scene as paramedics
were wheeling him into an ambulance. His eyes were open,
(04:04):
but blank. Bryce's mom, Stacy was in a panic. How
the hell did this happen? And that's when she spotted
Timothy Runnels, one of the Independence officers who had stopped
Bryce in his car earlier that summer.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
And he's kind of leaned up against his patrol car
like not a care in that fucking world. I needed
him to be like, wow, I really took this too far.
I needed that from him, and instead I see this
arrogant motherfucker proud of himself, and I wanted, I wanted,
(04:46):
I don't know what I wanted.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
To do.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Stacy tried to ride in the ambulance with Bryce, but
she wasn't allowed to.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
We decided in that moment to just split up. She
took the truck and followed the ambulance to the hospital,
and I kind of stayed behind because I was more
in the mode of, like, if you're gonna fucking cover
some shit up, I'm gonna sit here and watch you
cover it up, because I didn't trust that they were
going to not spin it in a way that was
(05:18):
beneficial to the police department.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
At the hospital, they wheeled Bryce into the er.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
I get right back there, and it's bad.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
It's really, really, really bad. Bryce was hooked up to
a ventilator. One nurse cut his clothes off.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
They stuffed ice.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Packs around his body. His chin was split open, dirt
and asphalt mixed with the dried blood on his badly
swollen cheek. His skin was pale, and his lips were
still blue. Bryce was convulsing and his body had twisted
itself into a kind of horrifying fetal position.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Like his arms and his legs were like just doing
unnatural things.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
His fingers and toes curled inward, and his arms were
bent toward his chest.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
I didn't want to see him do that. I didn't
want to I didn't want to see him moving that way.
It was hard, and I had to look away. I
remember being ashamed of myself because I wanted I wanted
to not see his body doing those things.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
A nurse explained that Bryce's position was a sign of
severe brain damage. He needed an MRI immediately so they
could know just how bad it was. They brought Stacy
out to the waiting room.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Things were going incredibly, incredibly fast, and also they were
in slow motion, like all at the same time. I
felt like I was in the twilight zone. And that's
when I see his shoe. His shoe was on the ground.
I don't know why I fixated on it, but I did.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
She called Matt and she said, you need to get here.
That's when I kind of started learning how bad it was.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
The neurologists pulled them into a private room and explained
that Bryce had had a cardiac arrest. Given the signs
of brain damage, he was already showing, like the way
his fingers and toes had curled inward toward his chest.
They estimated his heart had been stopped between seven and
eight minutes. That's how long his brain went without oxygen.
Bryce was seventeen. His body was strong and healthy, so
(07:39):
if anyone had a shot at a miraculous recovery, it
would be Bryce. What the doctors would do was lower
Bryce's body temperature several degrees to slow the blood flow
that was causing the swelling in his brain. It might
buy him some time for his brain to heal.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
I really wanted to believe that this cutting edge technology
was going to make the difference for us.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
They hooked Bryce up to an ivy that ran cold
fluid through his body and covered him with blankets. His
target body temperature was going to be ninety two point six,
about six degrees below normal. He was going to be very, very.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Cold, which at first it was nice because the convulsing
like he stopped, but then he just shivered the whole time.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I was probably log snut.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
They had already said, you know that he may never
come out of this vegetative state. This is what he
has to look forward to. So it was awful to
the sounds. I just remember feeling like, do.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I want him to live?
Speaker 6 (08:54):
He's trapped in there, what kind of a life? What
do he kind of a quality of existence. He was
just playing a video game. It was just went to
the mall.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
You know, I'm honestly thinking to myself that I didn't
know if I wanted my child to bake it.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
I remember going into like their little waiting room and
just crying and like asking God, you know, I remember saying,
you say some weird shit where you're uh, you know,
when it matters the most.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Matt and Stacy went out into the waiting room to
catch their breath, but the TV was.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
On breaking news right now. We are following from Independence
the teenagers in critical condition.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
After we've learned police taste, and during a traffic stopper,
you know.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Watching your son's story unfold right there in front of you.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
According to police, Masters wouldn't cooperate and the officer stunned
him with a taser.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
He didn't comply.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
He resisted arrest.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
What we're told is that police pulled over.
Speaker 6 (10:06):
The driver because of an outstanding warrant.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
When he had a warrant, you know, the traffic stop,
you know, and that's when all the questions really started.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
For me, a warrant, but Bryce's Grand Prix was registered
to Matt. Resisting rest did Bryce fight a cop? What
caused his cardiac arrest?
Speaker 3 (10:31):
I'll be honest, we thought he was on drugs. I
mean that's what What else do you think?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Matt had learned about excited delirium and taser training, and
as a cop, he'd seen lots of overdoses. Matt and
Stacey caught Bryce smoking weed, but didn't suspect he was
on any hard drugs. Still, nothing else made sense. Late
that night, the surgeon, doctor Augustine, came in to check
on Bryce.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
That was the first thing that came out of our
mouth was like, what happened? Is he is he high
on drugs? Not Gustin just kind of he kind of
just matter of fact. They looked as like, oh, no,
he's not on drugs. It was a taser. Taser caused this.
I had no idea that that was even possible.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
The surgeon was so confident. In doctor Augustine's world, this
was obvious. But in Matt's world, the cop world, the
opposite was true. Matt was just as sure the taser
couldn't cause a cardiac arrest as the surgeon was that
it could. Now these two worlds were colliding, and Matt
had to figure out which one was real. Matt didn't
(12:02):
believe the taser could cause a cardiac arrest because he
thought he understood the weapon. He and other Kansas City
cops were trained on the taser. They learned how to
shoot the taser, and they watched a PowerPoint about how
safe the weapon was. It included those videos of tasers
being used on bulls and information about excited delirium. I've
read every page of every training manual Taser International issued
(12:26):
between two thousand and twenty fifteen, so I've seen firsthand
what Matt and every other cop in the country was learning.
And the slide that stands out to me the most
is one that shows that the taser's electric current is
weaker than a Christmas tree bulb. One reason taser training
sessions are so effective is because they're usually led by cops.
(12:50):
Instructors follow a company script, but it's cops teaching cops.
Once a cop goes through the training, they can qualify
to become a master instructor themselves. Remember the work hard,
Play hard retreats where mike Le and Eco from Oakland
could get a cigar wrapped or wrestle Hans Morrero. That's
how Mike became a master instructor. When I went to
(13:11):
see Mike at his home near the Smoky Mountains, he
was retired and drinking his French Press coffee from a
mug that said Leftist tears, and he made us snacks
and yeah, fresh banana bread.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
I just made it this morning.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
So so this is when Mike casually mentioned his time
at culinary school before he became a cop. Has anyone
ever compared you, like like the dose Eki's guy or
anything like that. As Mike never trained Matt masters, but
he did train more than a thousand cops just like
Matt over the years. He told me how important reliability
(13:44):
is when it comes to any weapon a cop carries,
and Mike believed in the taser's reliability even during the
height of the criticism and media reports alleging that taser
was killing people.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Because you know, I was seeing officers would come in
and voice concerns about how, Hey, did you see that
news article somebody got killed by a taser. Impossible can't happen.
We've got a compendium of research. It's three feet tall
in it. No, it can't happen.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Mike was good at training cops. His confidence was contagious,
so Taser wanted him to become a Senior Master instructor,
what CEO Rick Smith called the Creme de la creme.
Unlike most instructors, senior Master instructors were paid by Taser International.
Some of them were given other perks like tropical vacations
or stock options, but Senior Master instructors weren't always transparent
(14:35):
about their ties to the company. When Mike's rep at Taser,
Jim Halstead, was still a cop out in Chandler, Arizona,
he became a Senior Master instructor, and one time he
gave a whole presentation about tasers to the Chandler City
Council in uniform. He told them tasers were like a
weapon from the future, and he urged them to act
(14:55):
that night to give a Taser to every cop in
his department. Official were impressed and did approve a purchase
of three hundred tasers for about two hundred thousand dollars
that night. What they didn't know was that Jim was
given over a thousand shares of the company's stock as
part of his compensation from Taser. When Mike was approached
(15:19):
to be a Senior Master instructor. He didn't want the
job because I didn't like the politics involved. What do
you mean by the plogist, Well, you know, you were
their representative. They would send you to some agency somewhere
and you were kind of the ambassador to go in
there and talk and get them to buy the product.
(15:40):
Mike didn't want to lose sight of who he really
worked for Oakland taxpayers, and even though he was confident
in his training and the potential of the Taser, Mike
told me he talked a lot about all these headlines
that said people were dying. He said he even talked
about it with Jim Halstead after Jim became Taser's VP
of sales. Mike would bring up news articles and Jim
(16:03):
reassured Mike that Taser International was constantly doing cutting edge
research to back up its claims. One day, as they
were talking, Mike just asked, could he actually go see
some of this testing for himself.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
I want to make sure this weapons what they say
it is. And you know, I'll be the first person
outside of the company who's ever been able to attend
one of these things. I said, So, you know, what
is it hurt?
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Tayser execs said sure, Mike was welcome to come check
out the company's next test. Soon, Mike got on a
plane to Arizona. He had no idea what he was
in for. Mike Lenisio signed an NDA and flew down
(17:06):
to Arizona to watch his first company funded test. He
told me he went straight to the test site. It
wasn't the scene you might expect. Taser International set up
a lab near their headquarters at a veterinary clinic.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
We spent the whole day out there with pigs and
in the back of a sweltering hot metal truck in
the Arizona heat.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
The test took place inside a big trailer parked in
the parking lot.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
I mean this thing was. It was so hot in there.
We were literally in the sweatbox and we would have
to take breaks constantly.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Mike told me how he watched as Taser scientists took
the pigs, sedated them, then laid them out on.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Tables, basically set up like you would go into surgery.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
This sounds wild, but pigs are often used in medical
research because their bodies are similar to humans. Mike told
me the pigs were brawled out on tables in the
back of the truck. Taser scientists hooked them up to
ventilators to measure their oxygen levels. They stuck electrodes on
their bodies to get a baseline measure of the pigs
heartbeats on an EKG machine. You've probably seen an EKG
(18:15):
and a TV show. It's got those needles that bounce
back and forth and rhythm with your heartbeat. It's literally
measuring the electric pulses of your heart and waves drawn
on the machine's graph. Mike told me he looked around.
He didn't tell anyone that because he had once been
a paramedic, he knew how to read the beeping machines
and numbers on screens.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
They had no idea of my background, and they had
no idea that when I walked into that study, I
knew exactly what I was looking at. He says.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
The taser scientists took the darts from the taser and
inserted them into different parts of the pig's fuzzy chests.
Then they pressed the taser's trigger.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I was looking at the monitor and like, oh, I
want to see what happens.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Mike describes how they shocked the pigs over and over
for hours, taking measurements studying the effects and monitoring for safety.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
From the first shot that I witnessed, I watched the
cardiac monitor go into artifact. That's when Mike says he
noticed something strange. The electric current from the taser shot
was interfering with the electric reading on the EKG machine,
and EKG is sensitive to outside electrical interference. Sometimes led
(19:27):
lights or cell phones can cause the machine to spike,
so imagine the reading during a taser shock.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
The needle goes haywire. Taser International's team made absolute statements.
They said the taser could not cause cardiac arrest.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
They're making this just concrete statement, but there's no way
they could know that because while the taser's going off,
you can't read the cardiac Rythough.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Mike told me that this test wasn't specifically a safety test.
They were measuring the muscle contractions caused by the taser,
so Mike figured they probably had a better way of
measuring heart safety in a different test. At the end
of a sweltering day inside the trailer, Mike says Max Nierheim,
one of Taser's top engineers, took him back to the
airport and.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I said, yeah, you know, if you guys ever have
another one of these things, I'd sure like to come,
you know, and he, oh, yeah, no problem. So I
just kind of got on their list.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Mike says, every now and then he would get a
call inviting him to another test, and it didn't take
long for things to get really weird.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
One session in particular, we shocked the pig. Well, it
was actually was a series of two shocks.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Mike was back in Arizona watching pigs get shocked with tasers.
He told me it had been a long day and
he noticed that after so many shocks, this pig was
in really bad shape.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
At that point, again, we didn't check a pulse, and
immediately following that, Max said, well, let's shock it again,
and so we shocked it again, and this time we
shocked it into a sisterly.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Mike says, the pig's hearts stopped, it died.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Pig went straight into flat line and then that was
basically the end of the test. I mean, we were done.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
So you see this pig go into a sisterly, were
you surprised?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Oh? Absolutely, that's not supposed to happen. I mean cardiac effects.
They told us for years that this doesn't have cardiac effects.
So my first reaction was I saw it, and I said, well,
is that a cistily? And I went over and checked
the pig.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Mike's first thought was that the probes measuring the pig's
hearts had simply fallen off, but when he realized they
were still where they were supposed to be, he told me.
He turned to the two taser scientists in charge of
the study.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I said, that's not supposed to happen, and they just
kind of chuckled and said, no, no, that happens. We've
seen that before. And I was like, what do you
mean you've seen that before? He says, yeah, that happens,
and I think wow. I said, so, when you publish
the study associated with this event today, are you going
(22:12):
to note that the pig was shocked into a sisterly?
And you know, the response was, well, we don't handle
that end of it. That's not our job.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
From Mike's perspective, taser scientists were acting like it was
just another day at the office, but he'd read the research.
He relied on it to train all of the officers
in his department. What he had just witnessed directly contradicted
everything he'd taught cops.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
It turns out. I went back to work the next day.
I was in my office and I get a phone
call on my cell and it's Mark Curl, the head.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Of Taser's Scientific and Medical Advisory Board.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Hey, how are you doing, Mike? I said, oh, good, good,
What's what's going on? He says, yeah, I understand you
saw some things yesterday at the study that we might
need to talk about. I said, yeah, it was definitely
eye opening. And he says, yeah, so what kind of
concerns do you have? I said, oh, I don't know,
maybe shocking the pig into a sisterly And he says, yeah, yeah, well,
(23:16):
you know, there's probably a good explanation for that. And
he had like five or six explanations right off the
top of his head, and like he's going down the list.
He says, yeah, you know, but yeah, it was probably
a defective pig. That was the first one. And I said,
a defective pig? I said, what's that? He says, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's well known in research. I mean sometimes you just
get a pig and they're just wired wrong, and you know,
you shock them when they die. And I said, yeah, okay, Well,
(23:40):
we've been shocking this pig for like six hours. If
he was defective, don't you think he would have gone earlier.
I remember his response was, well, that's a good yeah,
that's that's a good point, okay. And then he mentioned
another thing, and then he mentioned I don't know three
or four or five other things, and I remember he
gets to the end of his list, and I give
him my last explanation as to why that's likely, and
(24:01):
there was a little silence for a couple of seconds,
and then he says, well, that's all I got. And
I said that's all you've got, Okay. He says, yeah,
well I gotta get go on boom, hangs up, And
that was it that made me dig in deeper.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Mike says he talked to everyone he could on Taser's
research team.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
How are you addressing this? They initially said, well, cardiac
captures on a big deal, and that that really got me.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Mike knew every cop in the country who carried a
Taser was trained to think the weapon couldn't do this.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
They believed what they had been told and what I
had been taught. You know, we're not talking about a
bunch of electrical engineers here, we're talking about a bunch
of cops. We're talking about using a weapon that's not
designed to do this, being used by a person who's
not trained in any kind of real medicine. Maybe first
aid if we're lucky out in an uncontrolled setting, and
(25:07):
you're telling me that cardiac captures, no big deal. And
that was a real turning point for me.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Mike says he began to ask questions to Jeff Hoe,
Taser's medical director, even to Rick Smith.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Why don't we know about this? Why aren't you reporting it?
And I just never was able to get a satisfactory
answer to those kinds of questions.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
You can see why Matt Masters was confused when a
doctor told him a taser stopped his son's heart. Even
years later, most cops had never heard a thing about
pigs dying and tests and new stories about people getting
killed by tasers. They thought it was just the media
out to get them. Anyway, Matt hardly had time to
(25:58):
think about it. His son was lying in a hospital bed,
unconscious and frozen.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
What's going to happen? Is he going to wake up?
Next time?
Speaker 1 (26:13):
On Absolute Season one Taser Incorporated.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I said, what do you mean you fix the problem.
And these are the exact words. I said, Well, we
tweaked it. I said, you tweaked what he says, we
took the weapon and we tweaked it. It's fine now.
And I said, what is a tweak? What does that mean?
And you're sitting there going.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
My kid, Hey, my kid got tased and went in
cardiac arrest. Like, if you need somebody to talk to,
come talk to this guy, right.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
I mean, you're in the twilight zone. You're like, I'm
meeting with the FBI.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
That was just a whole nother revelation, Like this is
way more fucked up than we thought.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
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 and produced by me Nick Beredini.
Our executive producers are Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wordis.
(27:26):
Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer. Jackie Paul is our producer.
Hannah Biel is our writer and producer. Joe Plored is
our sound designer. Music composed and produced by Alexis Quadrado
at the Plaza Rojas Studio. Marianne mcune is our editor,
fact checking by Dania Suleiman. Jeff Cliburn is our head
of marketing and Operations. Our Social Media director is is
(27:49):
Marie Guarda Rama, our Social Media manager is Sarah Gibbons,
and our art director is Andrew Nelson. Additional reporting by
Matt Strouds.
Previously on Taser Incorporated.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
It was just like this incredible amount of paper, right,
We've got this research compendium, all of the research compiled
that we've done, that other people have done, and every
single one of them says it's completely safe.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
For Taser's Rick Smith sales and profits are skyrocketing, but
so is another statistic Taser related depths.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You read the media reports, and they made this weapon
look like people were out there dying left and right.
Every time an officer used it. It was basically lethal force.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Curtis called me back and he goes, you need to
get here, and I was like, oh my god, you know,
like what is going on.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
I didn't pay much attention to it until he froze,
until the look on his face told me that somewhere
somebody wasn't okay.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
My tour guide during my day at Taser International Headquarters
was Steve Tuttle. He's the guy who put his eye
up to a retinal scanner and let me in the building.
He had parted blonde hair and wore a tight fitting
silk blue shirt with Taser stitched in black lettering on
the collar. Steve was nice, but more importantly, he was confident.
In command. His whole job as vice president of communications
(01:32):
was basically talking to people like me.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
If we didn't have the science and facts on our side,
we wouldn't be here having this conversation. Would be we
have it. That's why I'm still here talking to you.
The taser becomes an easy target.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
He explained. There was no connection between the taser and
any of the hundreds of deaths I'd read about. He
told me excited delirium was really to blame.
Speaker 5 (01:53):
If you see what medical experts are calling excited delirium
when you start seeing sweating profusely, attraction, broken glass, speaking
in tongues, stripping down naked, and freezing weather. In some cases, yeah,
toxicology is clean, and that's They come back and say, yeah,
but tox was clean. Well, did you know he was
supposed to be on medicine? Did you check for that?
(02:14):
What about excited larrium issues. It's a syndrome. It's a
whole conglomeration of different issues taking place.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I shook Steve's hand and thanked him for his time.
I think we both left confused. Steve didn't seem sure
why I kept pressing him about the taser's safety, and
I couldn't figure out why Steve didn't have better answers.
This is absolute. Season one, Taser incorporated a story about
(02:48):
unchecked power. I'm Nick Beredini, Episode three, Defective Pigs. The
(03:43):
day Bryce was tasered started out like any other Sunday.
Matt and Stacy Masters had just sat down to watch
the Chiefs game when they got the call. A cop
from Independence, the town right next to Kansas City, shot
a taser at their seventeen year old son and he
wasn't breathing. They showed up to the scene as paramedics
were wheeling him into an ambulance. His eyes were open,
(04:04):
but blank. Bryce's mom, Stacy was in a panic. How
the hell did this happen? And that's when she spotted
Timothy Runnels, one of the Independence officers who had stopped
Bryce in his car earlier that summer.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
And he's kind of leaned up against his patrol car
like not a care in that fucking world. I needed
him to be like, wow, I really took this too far.
I needed that from him, and instead I see this
arrogant motherfucker proud of himself, and I wanted, I wanted,
(04:46):
I don't know what I wanted.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
To do.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Stacy tried to ride in the ambulance with Bryce, but
she wasn't allowed to.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
We decided in that moment to just split up. She
took the truck and followed the ambulance to the hospital,
and I kind of stayed behind because I was more
in the mode of, like, if you're gonna fucking cover
some shit up, I'm gonna sit here and watch you
cover it up, because I didn't trust that they were
going to not spin it in a way that was
(05:18):
beneficial to the police department.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
At the hospital, they wheeled Bryce into the er.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
I get right back there, and it's bad.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
It's really, really, really bad. Bryce was hooked up to
a ventilator. One nurse cut his clothes off.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
They stuffed ice.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Packs around his body. His chin was split open, dirt
and asphalt mixed with the dried blood on his badly
swollen cheek. His skin was pale, and his lips were
still blue. Bryce was convulsing and his body had twisted
itself into a kind of horrifying fetal position.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Like his arms and his legs were like just doing
unnatural things.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
His fingers and toes curled inward, and his arms were
bent toward his chest.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
I didn't want to see him do that. I didn't
want to I didn't want to see him moving that way.
It was hard, and I had to look away. I
remember being ashamed of myself because I wanted I wanted
to not see his body doing those things.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
A nurse explained that Bryce's position was a sign of
severe brain damage. He needed an MRI immediately so they
could know just how bad it was. They brought Stacy
out to the waiting room.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Things were going incredibly, incredibly fast, and also they were
in slow motion, like all at the same time. I
felt like I was in the twilight zone. And that's
when I see his shoe. His shoe was on the ground.
I don't know why I fixated on it, but I did.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
She called Matt and she said, you need to get here.
That's when I kind of started learning how bad it was.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
The neurologists pulled them into a private room and explained
that Bryce had had a cardiac arrest. Given the signs
of brain damage, he was already showing, like the way
his fingers and toes had curled inward toward his chest.
They estimated his heart had been stopped between seven and
eight minutes. That's how long his brain went without oxygen.
Bryce was seventeen. His body was strong and healthy, so
(07:39):
if anyone had a shot at a miraculous recovery, it
would be Bryce. What the doctors would do was lower
Bryce's body temperature several degrees to slow the blood flow
that was causing the swelling in his brain. It might
buy him some time for his brain to heal.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
I really wanted to believe that this cutting edge technology
was going to make the difference for us.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
They hooked Bryce up to an ivy that ran cold
fluid through his body and covered him with blankets. His
target body temperature was going to be ninety two point six,
about six degrees below normal. He was going to be very, very.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Cold, which at first it was nice because the convulsing
like he stopped, but then he just shivered the whole time.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I was probably log snut.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
They had already said, you know that he may never
come out of this vegetative state. This is what he
has to look forward to. So it was awful to
the sounds. I just remember feeling like, do.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I want him to live?
Speaker 6 (08:54):
He's trapped in there, what kind of a life? What
do he kind of a quality of existence. He was
just playing a video game. It was just went to
the mall.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
You know, I'm honestly thinking to myself that I didn't
know if I wanted my child to bake it.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
I remember going into like their little waiting room and
just crying and like asking God, you know, I remember saying,
you say some weird shit where you're uh, you know,
when it matters the most.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Matt and Stacy went out into the waiting room to
catch their breath, but the TV was.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
On breaking news right now. We are following from Independence
the teenagers in critical condition.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
After we've learned police taste, and during a traffic stopper,
you know.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Watching your son's story unfold right there in front of you.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
According to police, Masters wouldn't cooperate and the officer stunned
him with a taser.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
He didn't comply.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
He resisted arrest.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
What we're told is that police pulled over.
Speaker 6 (10:06):
The driver because of an outstanding warrant.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
When he had a warrant, you know, the traffic stop,
you know, and that's when all the questions really started.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
For me, a warrant, but Bryce's Grand Prix was registered
to Matt. Resisting rest did Bryce fight a cop? What
caused his cardiac arrest?
Speaker 3 (10:31):
I'll be honest, we thought he was on drugs. I
mean that's what What else do you think?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Matt had learned about excited delirium and taser training, and
as a cop, he'd seen lots of overdoses. Matt and
Stacey caught Bryce smoking weed, but didn't suspect he was
on any hard drugs. Still, nothing else made sense. Late
that night, the surgeon, doctor Augustine, came in to check
on Bryce.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
That was the first thing that came out of our
mouth was like, what happened? Is he is he high
on drugs? Not Gustin just kind of he kind of
just matter of fact. They looked as like, oh, no,
he's not on drugs. It was a taser. Taser caused this.
I had no idea that that was even possible.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
The surgeon was so confident. In doctor Augustine's world, this
was obvious. But in Matt's world, the cop world, the
opposite was true. Matt was just as sure the taser
couldn't cause a cardiac arrest as the surgeon was that
it could. Now these two worlds were colliding, and Matt
had to figure out which one was real. Matt didn't
(12:02):
believe the taser could cause a cardiac arrest because he
thought he understood the weapon. He and other Kansas City
cops were trained on the taser. They learned how to
shoot the taser, and they watched a PowerPoint about how
safe the weapon was. It included those videos of tasers
being used on bulls and information about excited delirium. I've
read every page of every training manual Taser International issued
(12:26):
between two thousand and twenty fifteen, so I've seen firsthand
what Matt and every other cop in the country was learning.
And the slide that stands out to me the most
is one that shows that the taser's electric current is
weaker than a Christmas tree bulb. One reason taser training
sessions are so effective is because they're usually led by cops.
(12:50):
Instructors follow a company script, but it's cops teaching cops.
Once a cop goes through the training, they can qualify
to become a master instructor themselves. Remember the work hard,
Play hard retreats where mike Le and Eco from Oakland
could get a cigar wrapped or wrestle Hans Morrero. That's
how Mike became a master instructor. When I went to
(13:11):
see Mike at his home near the Smoky Mountains, he
was retired and drinking his French Press coffee from a
mug that said Leftist tears, and he made us snacks
and yeah, fresh banana bread.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
I just made it this morning.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
So so this is when Mike casually mentioned his time
at culinary school before he became a cop. Has anyone
ever compared you, like like the dose Eki's guy or
anything like that. As Mike never trained Matt masters, but
he did train more than a thousand cops just like
Matt over the years. He told me how important reliability
(13:44):
is when it comes to any weapon a cop carries,
and Mike believed in the taser's reliability even during the
height of the criticism and media reports alleging that taser
was killing people.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Because you know, I was seeing officers would come in
and voice concerns about how, Hey, did you see that
news article somebody got killed by a taser. Impossible can't happen.
We've got a compendium of research. It's three feet tall
in it. No, it can't happen.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Mike was good at training cops. His confidence was contagious,
so Taser wanted him to become a Senior Master instructor,
what CEO Rick Smith called the Creme de la creme.
Unlike most instructors, senior Master instructors were paid by Taser International.
Some of them were given other perks like tropical vacations
or stock options, but Senior Master instructors weren't always transparent
(14:35):
about their ties to the company. When Mike's rep at Taser,
Jim Halstead, was still a cop out in Chandler, Arizona,
he became a Senior Master instructor, and one time he
gave a whole presentation about tasers to the Chandler City
Council in uniform. He told them tasers were like a
weapon from the future, and he urged them to act
(14:55):
that night to give a Taser to every cop in
his department. Official were impressed and did approve a purchase
of three hundred tasers for about two hundred thousand dollars
that night. What they didn't know was that Jim was
given over a thousand shares of the company's stock as
part of his compensation from Taser. When Mike was approached
(15:19):
to be a Senior Master instructor. He didn't want the
job because I didn't like the politics involved. What do
you mean by the plogist, Well, you know, you were
their representative. They would send you to some agency somewhere
and you were kind of the ambassador to go in
there and talk and get them to buy the product.
(15:40):
Mike didn't want to lose sight of who he really
worked for Oakland taxpayers, and even though he was confident
in his training and the potential of the Taser, Mike
told me he talked a lot about all these headlines
that said people were dying. He said he even talked
about it with Jim Halstead after Jim became Taser's VP
of sales. Mike would bring up news articles and Jim
(16:03):
reassured Mike that Taser International was constantly doing cutting edge
research to back up its claims. One day, as they
were talking, Mike just asked, could he actually go see
some of this testing for himself.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
I want to make sure this weapons what they say
it is. And you know, I'll be the first person
outside of the company who's ever been able to attend
one of these things. I said, So, you know, what
is it hurt?
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Tayser execs said sure, Mike was welcome to come check
out the company's next test. Soon, Mike got on a
plane to Arizona. He had no idea what he was
in for. Mike Lenisio signed an NDA and flew down
(17:06):
to Arizona to watch his first company funded test. He
told me he went straight to the test site. It
wasn't the scene you might expect. Taser International set up
a lab near their headquarters at a veterinary clinic.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
We spent the whole day out there with pigs and
in the back of a sweltering hot metal truck in
the Arizona heat.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
The test took place inside a big trailer parked in
the parking lot.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
I mean this thing was. It was so hot in there.
We were literally in the sweatbox and we would have
to take breaks constantly.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Mike told me how he watched as Taser scientists took
the pigs, sedated them, then laid them out on.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Tables, basically set up like you would go into surgery.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
This sounds wild, but pigs are often used in medical
research because their bodies are similar to humans. Mike told
me the pigs were brawled out on tables in the
back of the truck. Taser scientists hooked them up to
ventilators to measure their oxygen levels. They stuck electrodes on
their bodies to get a baseline measure of the pigs
heartbeats on an EKG machine. You've probably seen an EKG
(18:15):
and a TV show. It's got those needles that bounce
back and forth and rhythm with your heartbeat. It's literally
measuring the electric pulses of your heart and waves drawn
on the machine's graph. Mike told me he looked around.
He didn't tell anyone that because he had once been
a paramedic, he knew how to read the beeping machines
and numbers on screens.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
They had no idea of my background, and they had
no idea that when I walked into that study, I
knew exactly what I was looking at. He says.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
The taser scientists took the darts from the taser and
inserted them into different parts of the pig's fuzzy chests.
Then they pressed the taser's trigger.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I was looking at the monitor and like, oh, I
want to see what happens.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Mike describes how they shocked the pigs over and over
for hours, taking measurements studying the effects and monitoring for safety.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
From the first shot that I witnessed, I watched the
cardiac monitor go into artifact. That's when Mike says he
noticed something strange. The electric current from the taser shot
was interfering with the electric reading on the EKG machine,
and EKG is sensitive to outside electrical interference. Sometimes led
(19:27):
lights or cell phones can cause the machine to spike,
so imagine the reading during a taser shock.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
The needle goes haywire. Taser International's team made absolute statements.
They said the taser could not cause cardiac arrest.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
They're making this just concrete statement, but there's no way
they could know that because while the taser's going off,
you can't read the cardiac Rythough.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Mike told me that this test wasn't specifically a safety test.
They were measuring the muscle contractions caused by the taser,
so Mike figured they probably had a better way of
measuring heart safety in a different test. At the end
of a sweltering day inside the trailer, Mike says Max Nierheim,
one of Taser's top engineers, took him back to the
airport and.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I said, yeah, you know, if you guys ever have
another one of these things, I'd sure like to come,
you know, and he, oh, yeah, no problem. So I
just kind of got on their list.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Mike says, every now and then he would get a
call inviting him to another test, and it didn't take
long for things to get really weird.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
One session in particular, we shocked the pig. Well, it
was actually was a series of two shocks.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Mike was back in Arizona watching pigs get shocked with tasers.
He told me it had been a long day and
he noticed that after so many shocks, this pig was
in really bad shape.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
At that point, again, we didn't check a pulse, and
immediately following that, Max said, well, let's shock it again,
and so we shocked it again, and this time we
shocked it into a sisterly.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Mike says, the pig's hearts stopped, it died.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Pig went straight into flat line and then that was
basically the end of the test. I mean, we were done.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
So you see this pig go into a sisterly, were
you surprised?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Oh? Absolutely, that's not supposed to happen. I mean cardiac effects.
They told us for years that this doesn't have cardiac effects.
So my first reaction was I saw it, and I said, well,
is that a cistily? And I went over and checked
the pig.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Mike's first thought was that the probes measuring the pig's
hearts had simply fallen off, but when he realized they
were still where they were supposed to be, he told me.
He turned to the two taser scientists in charge of
the study.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I said, that's not supposed to happen, and they just
kind of chuckled and said, no, no, that happens. We've
seen that before. And I was like, what do you
mean you've seen that before? He says, yeah, that happens,
and I think wow. I said, so, when you publish
the study associated with this event today, are you going
(22:12):
to note that the pig was shocked into a sisterly?
And you know, the response was, well, we don't handle
that end of it. That's not our job.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
From Mike's perspective, taser scientists were acting like it was
just another day at the office, but he'd read the research.
He relied on it to train all of the officers
in his department. What he had just witnessed directly contradicted
everything he'd taught cops.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
It turns out. I went back to work the next day.
I was in my office and I get a phone
call on my cell and it's Mark Curl, the head.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Of Taser's Scientific and Medical Advisory Board.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Hey, how are you doing, Mike? I said, oh, good, good,
What's what's going on? He says, yeah, I understand you
saw some things yesterday at the study that we might
need to talk about. I said, yeah, it was definitely
eye opening. And he says, yeah, so what kind of
concerns do you have? I said, oh, I don't know,
maybe shocking the pig into a sisterly And he says, yeah, yeah, well,
(23:16):
you know, there's probably a good explanation for that. And
he had like five or six explanations right off the
top of his head, and like he's going down the list.
He says, yeah, you know, but yeah, it was probably
a defective pig. That was the first one. And I said,
a defective pig? I said, what's that? He says, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's well known in research. I mean sometimes you just
get a pig and they're just wired wrong, and you know,
you shock them when they die. And I said, yeah, okay, Well,
(23:40):
we've been shocking this pig for like six hours. If
he was defective, don't you think he would have gone earlier.
I remember his response was, well, that's a good yeah,
that's that's a good point, okay. And then he mentioned
another thing, and then he mentioned I don't know three
or four or five other things, and I remember he
gets to the end of his list, and I give
him my last explanation as to why that's likely, and
(24:01):
there was a little silence for a couple of seconds,
and then he says, well, that's all I got. And
I said that's all you've got, Okay. He says, yeah,
well I gotta get go on boom, hangs up, And
that was it that made me dig in deeper.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Mike says he talked to everyone he could on Taser's
research team.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
How are you addressing this? They initially said, well, cardiac
captures on a big deal, and that that really got me.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Mike knew every cop in the country who carried a
Taser was trained to think the weapon couldn't do this.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
They believed what they had been told and what I
had been taught. You know, we're not talking about a
bunch of electrical engineers here, we're talking about a bunch
of cops. We're talking about using a weapon that's not
designed to do this, being used by a person who's
not trained in any kind of real medicine. Maybe first
aid if we're lucky out in an uncontrolled setting, and
(25:07):
you're telling me that cardiac captures, no big deal. And
that was a real turning point for me.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Mike says he began to ask questions to Jeff Hoe,
Taser's medical director, even to Rick Smith.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Why don't we know about this? Why aren't you reporting it?
And I just never was able to get a satisfactory
answer to those kinds of questions.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
You can see why Matt Masters was confused when a
doctor told him a taser stopped his son's heart. Even
years later, most cops had never heard a thing about
pigs dying and tests and new stories about people getting
killed by tasers. They thought it was just the media
out to get them. Anyway, Matt hardly had time to
(25:58):
think about it. His son was lying in a hospital bed,
unconscious and frozen.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
What's going to happen? Is he going to wake up?
Next time?
Speaker 1 (26:13):
On Absolute Season one Taser Incorporated.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I said, what do you mean you fix the problem.
And these are the exact words. I said, Well, we
tweaked it. I said, you tweaked what he says, we
took the weapon and we tweaked it. It's fine now.
And I said, what is a tweak? What does that mean?
And you're sitting there going.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
My kid, Hey, my kid got tased and went in
cardiac arrest. Like, if you need somebody to talk to,
come talk to this guy, right.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
I mean, you're in the twilight zone. You're like, I'm
meeting with the FBI.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
That was just a whole nother revelation, Like this is
way more fucked up than we thought.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
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 and produced by me Nick Beredini.
Our executive producers are Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wordis.
(27:26):
Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer. Jackie Paul is our producer.
Hannah Biel is our writer and producer. Joe Plored is
our sound designer. Music composed and produced by Alexis Quadrado
at the Plaza Rojas Studio. Marianne mcune is our editor,
fact checking by Dania Suleiman. Jeff Cliburn is our head
of marketing and Operations. Our Social Media director is is
(27:49):
Marie Guarda Rama, our Social Media manager is Sarah Gibbons,
and our art director is Andrew Nelson. Additional reporting by
Matt Strouds.
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