Tasers are torture, according to author and human rights activist Naomi Klein — as the Chicago Police Department, already tarnished by a torture scandal, considers dramatically expanding their use.

“If it happened in a cell we would call it torture, and if it happens in the street we should not be afraid to call it torture,” she said at a Toronto forum yesterday discussing the local police chief’s request to arm officers with tasers, according to the Toronto Star.

In Chicago, police are seeking bids for 2500 tasers, which they consider a “less-than-lethal option,” spokesperson Monique Bond told the Sun-Times last week.

But Amnesty International has called for a moratorium on taser use, noting that 290 people have died in the U.S. since 2001 after receiving the 50,000-volt shock of a taser gun.

Taser International maintains that its weapons are safe, but AI points out that people zapped in clinical trials are calm and healthy; in real life, they are often high on cocaine or metamphetamines and have been in an altercation with police. Most fatalities happened to individuals who were unarmed, many were tied up or restrained, and many were shocked repeatedly.

The CPD’s long history of misconduct (which includes a long-running police torture ring which employed an electroshock device) adds to concerns about the potential for abuse, said Dori Dinsmore, Midwest regional director of AI-USA.

According to a 2004 AI report, “Many police departments are deploying tasers as a routine force option to subdue non-compliant or disturbed individuals who do not pose a serious danger.”

In many instances studied by AI, use of tasers by police in the U.S. “appears to have violated international standards prohibiting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” as well as UN standards for law enforcement conduct.

(Amnesty International documents on taser abuse are collected here: www.amnestyusa.org/Domestic_Human_Rights/TASER_Abuse/page.do)