Ten days after the death of Bultei businessman Gianpaolo Demartis, the Radical Party is addressing the issue of tasers. Demartis died after being restrained by the Carabinieri with an electric shock device. Radical Party Secretary Maurizio Turco raises the issue of the model currently used by law enforcement agencies in Italy.
Turco says: "The expert was clear: Gianpaolo Demartis ' death 'is attributable to heart failure due to ischemic heart disease (presence of a coronary stent) .' But did the heart failure occur before or after the electric shock? We can accept that the electric shock, hitting a weakened body, had a disproportionate and perhaps unpredictable effect. We find it difficult to accept that he died at the sight of the Taser. We assume that the Carabinieri used the Taser appropriately, according to procedure. But a problem arises if the Independent Carabinieri Union has submitted a request to the Ministries of the Interior and Defense to replace the model in service with the new T10 model ."
Turco cites an article in the specialized magazine Rid: "It's a big problem. In a 2023 article in the Rivista Italiana Difesa, the X2 model is compared with the T10. In the new model, "the waveform, voltage, and intensity of the shocks have been further optimized, so as to achieve better results in terms of muscle paralysis, while being even safer with respect to the risk of interfering with cardiac activity." We believe the staunch defense of an obsolete device that interferes with cardiac activity does not help the truth, nor the Carabinieri involved. Instead, we should investigate how and why the use of the Taser and that model came about. This decision, clearly, is not within the jurisdiction of the Carabinieri."