While we just announced that several law enforcement agencies deployed our AXON Flex on-officer cameras & EVIDENCE.com (Laramie and Lone Tree police departments, Shenandoah County Sheriff’s Office & several others), we also announced that we opened our third software development office in the West Coast.
TASER opened its third software development office during February 2013 in Bellevue, WA
“AXON Flex™ on-officer cameras and EVIDENCE.com continues to see strong adoption by agencies of all sizes,” said Jason Droege, General Manager of Video and Cloud. “To support the continued growth of EVIDENCE.com, we are proud to announce the opening of our new Bellevue, WA office to expand our software development team beyond Santa Barbara & Scottsdale. With the tremendous amount of technical talent in the area, we see significant strategic value for TASER to have a Seattle-area presence. Our EVIDENCE.com story is very compelling for people who want to make a direct impact on the products they build & solve problems that make a real difference in the world,” concluded Droege.
Not to be overshadowed, we did announce several law enforcement agencies orders for Flex cameras & EVIDENCE.com
Significant new AXON Flex and EVIDENCE.com deployments:
Additional agencies deploying AXON Flex and/or EVIDENCE.com:
We look forward to being in Bellevue, WA!
TASER International, through the TASER Training Academy, offers several courses of instruction involving the TASER® X2™, TASER X26™ & the new TASER X26P™ Conducted Electrical Weapons (CEWs). These courses are presented at our headquarters facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, & at numerous locations throughout the United States & abroad. Courses currently being offered include the TASER Instructor Course, the TASER Technician Course & the TASER Evidence Collection & Analysis Course.
TASER Instructor Course
This course certifies students to instruct & certify end users on the X26 & X2 TASER conducted electrical weapons (CEWs). This class is taught online, lectures & demonstrations, plus practice & scenario-based training. Certification is valid for two years.
Technician Course
This course focuses on preventative maintenance, troubleshooting, downloads, & several other topics. Students will be shown how to make external repairs as well as troubleshooting procedures & preventative maintenance. Topics covered in this course include electrical output, data downloads, repair procedures & tracking & maintenance among others.
TASER Evidence Collection & Analysis
This course focuses on collecting & analyzing the physical & digital evidence associated with a TASER deployment. Students learn to have a thorough understanding of techniques for the proper identification & evaluation of the physical & digital evidence associated with a TASER device following a deployment.
TASER Use of Force, Risk Management & Legal Strategies Seminar
This course addresses issues of importance to law enforcement executives, command staff, medical experts & directors, risk managers, press information officers, & government legal counsels. This class is conducted in conjunction with the FBI National Academy Association. Attendees receive substantial factual information as to how TASER CEWs incapacitate individuals, how these devices fit into law enforcement use‐of‐force deployment strategies, training considerations, various policy recommendations (including IACP, PERF & others), updates on medical studies & the current findings, the effects of TASER devices on liability exposures & on reducing officers’ & suspects’ injuries. This course also discusses how to approach key stakeholders such as community leaders with outreach and encourages interaction with the media to keep reporters in the loop and knowledgeable about TASER CEWs.
To learn more about the schedule of training events, please visit: http://www.taser.com/training/training-events/all-events.
TASER tries to meet your needs using social media tools in as many areas as possible. We first started with a TASER Blog that was off and on for several years. We then began using Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Rebel Mouse, and several Facebook pages. And we just added another unique medium called Pinterest.
Our first deep dive into social media was with Twitter. One Twitter page used the TASER X3 in the first person as if it were actually Tweeting about itself. We received a lot of kudos for that as we slowly broke the story of the X3 debut.
For our Official TASER Twitter account, we try to post relevant stories about TASER CEW and AXON Flex on-officer camera stories, successes, incidents, interesting news, and for announcing our press releases. Along the way, we also Re-Tweet other Tweets that are of the same nature. We keep the Twitter account fairly serious.
We also use Rebel Mouse software which creates a collage of the most recent Tweets and it’s great for a magazine style review of TASER/AXONFlex related stories.
Our Facebook pages are focused on our TASER International page and our TASER C2 CEW page for consumers. The TASER International page is fun, witty, interesting, and often humorous. Many of our fans are law enforcement officers so the humor tends to focus on police related humor while also taking a slightly serious tone for national holidays. Occasionally we get some customer service feedback which is great. Our TASER C2 page is mostly about personal safety, the C2 CEW, and safety tips.
Our TASER YouTube account is focused on videos obviously and these are related to TASER CEW uses, COPS segments, AXONFlex success stories, etc. It’s pretty straight forward.
We have a LinkedIn TASER International page which highlights our company as well as job opportunities.
We have a LinkedIn TASER International page which highlights our company as well as job opportunities.
Our newest foray into going social is our TASER Pinterest page. This is new adventure and as this medium focuses on photos, we are trying to dig deep into the history vault for some historical photos on our Pinterest History section. For example, there’s some shots of the first AIR TASER model 34000 and a black and white photo of co-founders Rick and Tom Smith from 1996 and our very first brochure from 1994. There are other segments of photos such as the TASER CEW in Action which showcases various cool shots of our devices in use.
There is a section dedicated to our TASER building. Frankly, the building we work in is downright impressive. It’s 100,000 square-feet of Star Wars meets Star Trek combined with a Get Smart entrance. This building won awards when it opened in April 2005 but it still gets kudos for anyone who visits this unique building in 2013.
We also added two sections on TASER Humor –TASER Humor section and TASER Humor 2 – as we at TASER find some of the humorous jabs at our company and it’s products to hit our funny bone too. There’s also a section for AXONFlex on-officer photos.
Let us know if there’s any particular photos you’d like to see us dig up and post at and we’ll try to accommodate you! Or maybe there is another good social media tool you may want to suggest. Just let us know as your feedback is what drives this blog.
TASER reviews. 
It’s good to see a plan come together. Last week we pointed out that a columnist, Rick Martinez, wrote a very slanted op ed on TASER technology & stated that our technology should be banned (Time to Ban the TASERs). We wrote the reporter, invited him to visit TASER HQ on his trip to Phoenix, issued a blog about this, Tweeted it, placed it on Facebook & many readers posted their comments about his view on TASER ECDs on the newspaper web site.
The results are in & at least he reviewed the comments & did a follow-up story (Zapped by TASER Backers). We have to give props to Martinez for reviewing the reader’s comments & at least taking a look at the other side of the TASER coin.
His opening sentence was dramatic: “I figured the call I made last week for North Carolina’s law enforcement agencies to ban their officers from using stun guns & Tasers would be a lonely one. I just didn’t realize how lonely. Opposition to my proposal has been nearly universal.”
While he certainly is still somewhat negative to the technology, he went from a strong moratorium request to calling “on police chiefs to consider this simple question – are stun guns more trouble than they’re worth?”
We at TASER International know they are worth it just based on the more than 82,000 people that have been saved from potential death or serious injury using TASER devices.
We don’t expect everyone to love TASER technology. Opinion polls indicate that 51% view TASER in positive manner, with 37% neutral & unfortunately 12% negative. We know that our technology will be used in dangerous situations & can have controversial outcomes. But it really hurts to see stories without facts, articles based on speculation, or when the errors of omission cause harm. It’s our job really to let the public know that we made our ECDs for the good of mankind & ultimately protect life — suspects & officers – & that the majority of the public is in favor of TASER technology. It needs you to provide the feedback to the media — which in this case worked well.
Another way to fight unbalanced stories is to go straight to the public via large news shows. You may have recently seen the interviews we set up with 60 Minutes & ABC Nightline News. This allowed us to reach a broader audience & let viewers see the good, the bad & the ugly views of TASER technology using a balanced story line for viewers to formulate their opinions.
We felt both these shows provided a good platform for this goal.
Clearly the power of readers’ comments & social media influenced the overall outcome of the negative op ed. We have to give props to Martinez for at least reviewing the reader’s comments.
While we may disagree, at least he did take some time to look at the science, facts & listen to his readers. Thanks readers.
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Jack Cover's favorite childhood book & how TASER got its name.
TASER consumer – TASER®, tazer, or tazor? We regularly see our brand name mispelled & misused. They say brand awareness is crucial to success. The media & the public use our brand name to describe generic stun guns all the time. On one hand it’s favorable that our brand is so well known. On the other hand our brand is often erroneously used when referring to stun gun crimes. Obviously, we don’t want our products used to commit crimes that’s why we’ve installed so many accountability features but we also don’t want our brand name falsely associated with crime. Numerous times every week we have to contact different media & reporters to request that they remove our brand name from stories they’ve written.
Headline failures – TASER attack, TASER home invasion & TASER assault.
TASER is an acronym taken from the original inventor of the first TASER back in the early 1970s, Jack Cover. Jack’s favorite childhood book, “Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle.” TASER is our brand name & also an adjective. TASER technically shouldn’t be used as a verb. To the dismay of our hard-working IP department it seems that “tasing” or “tasering” has become part of the vernacular. This “bastardizes” the brand name and dilutes the trademark.
If you ever wonder why Coke or Pepsi is such an important question, it’s due to protecting one’s registered trademark. A trademark is a word, symbol, or phrase, used to identify a particular manufacturer or seller’s products and distinguish them from the products of another. The registered trademark can’t become generic, so we have to protect it as much as Band Aid®, Coke®, Clorox®, Kleenex®, and Jeep®. Once a term is deemed “generic” it no longer can serve as a trademark. No company wants to lose a powerful brand name and fall victim to infamous losses of powerful brands like aspirin, thermos & escalator.