What Police Weren’t Told About Tasers
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2026
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kansas City police Officer Matt Masters first used a Taser in the early 2000s. He said it worked well for taking people down; it was safe and effective.
“At the end of the day, if you have to put your hands on somebody, you got to scuffle with somebody, why risk that?” he said. “You can just shoot them with a Taser.”
Masters believed in that until his son Bryce was pulled over by an officer and shocked for more than 20 seconds. The 17-year-old went into cardiac arrest, which doctors later attributed to the Taser. Masters’ training had led him to believe something like that could never happen.
This week on Reveal, we partner with Lava for Good’s podcast Absolute: Taser Incorporated and its host, Nick Berardini, to learn what the company that makes the Taser knew about the dangers of its weapon and didn’t say.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. |
| 0:04.6 | I'm Al Lettsin. |
| 0:06.5 | The Taser. |
| 0:07.6 | It's a weapon that goes hand in hand with modern policing. |
| 0:11.4 | But of course, it didn't always exist. |
| 0:14.1 | The first attempt to create one happened in the 1970s, at a time when cops across the country |
| 0:20.2 | were looking for an alternative to firing their guns. |
| 0:23.6 | The bosses decided we got to find a better way, and that's how I ended up with the non-lethal weapons project. |
| 0:30.6 | I had no idea that was going to become my life's work. |
| 0:33.6 | Greg Meyer worked for the Los Angeles Police Department. He's retired now, but Greg was once in charge of finding a solution. |
| 0:41.3 | I actually wrote an article 40 years ago or so, the title of which was tasers, tear gas, |
| 0:48.3 | whips, poles, and chains, your non-lethal weapons alternatives. |
| 0:53.3 | Greg said the LAPD sent out a survey to the 50 biggest |
| 0:57.3 | police departments in the U.S. What do you guys use besides, you know, the baton and the handgun |
| 1:05.8 | and the handcuffs to subdue people? But cops everywhere were kind of in the same boat. |
| 1:12.6 | Greg was so stuck. He even ran ads in the newspaper. |
| 1:16.6 | We actually had a guy in Australia say that we should use bull whips on people because that's what they use. |
| 1:22.6 | And it's like, what? |
| 1:24.6 | Then Greg found a news clip about a scientist working on a kind of electric gun. |
| 1:30.4 | So Greg calls him and goes over to see the first version of the taser. |
| 1:34.7 | I remember he asked, he said, Greg, did you ever tune up on a car? |
| 1:38.2 | And did you ever touch the distributor cap and get a short circuit through your body? |
... |
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