What Police Weren’t Told About Tasers
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8K Ratings
🗓️ 16 August 2025
⏱️ 52 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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| 1:07.5 | From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. |
| 1:12.4 | I'm Al Letson. |
| 1:14.3 | The Taser. |
| 1:15.3 | It's a weapon that goes hand in hand with modern policing. |
| 1:19.1 | But of course, it didn't always exist. |
| 1:21.8 | The first attempt to create one happened in the 1970s, at a time when cops across the country were looking for an alternative |
| 1:29.5 | to firing their guns. The bosses decided we got to find a better way, and that's how I ended up |
| 1:36.0 | with the non-lethal weapons project. I had no idea that was going to become my life's work. |
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