By Grace Tobin

Police across Australia have embraced tasers over the past two decades.

The weapons are meant to be a safer way to stop dangerous situations, without taking a life. But people are still dying.

I’ve spent months talking to people who have first-hand experience with tasers, including a Victorian farmer who was tasered within seconds of a police encounter on private property, and an Aboriginal girl with a disability who was tasered at school in Queensland.

I also met with the family of 95-year-old Clare Nowland, whose death made global headlines after she was tasered in a nursing home in 2023. As an inquest into her death approaches, her eldest son Mick revealed the questions he still wants NSW Police to answer.

These cases raise serious questions about whether police are becoming too reliant on tasers and are using them in situations they were never intended for.

Tonight, we reveal the secretive tactics behind investigations into controversial deaths, and the role played by Axon, the manufacturer of tasers.

For the first time, we’ve examined how a multi-billion-dollar US tech giant has made itself indispensable to police in every state and territory.

Our program asks a simple question: when something goes wrong after a taser is used, who decides what actually happened?

I hope you’ll join me tonight in search of the answer.

Watch Four Corners: Taser Tactics, tonight from 8:30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.