Monday, October 15, 2007
Don’t Tase Me, Bro
Another man killed by the Taser--a thing that worries some about the safety of the “less than lethal” device.
Tasers are, typically, a safe way for law enforcement officers to subdue violent people without exposing themselves to undue risk or exposing citizens to more dangerous (typically) forms of restraint or takedown. Closing with a suspect to subdue him with clubs and physical force can be wildly dangerous to officers who are far less supermen than they are normal men who are doing what they can to stay and keep others safe; firing a handgun at a suspect, though, is a last resort that causes risk to bystanders and, if the officer is doing their jobs well, the very real risk of the suspect’s death or permanent injury. The Taser exists between those two points--physically closing and subduing a suspect or firing on a suspect with intent to kill--to give trained officers a third option.
These less than lethal devices, though, have proven to be a little more lethal than some people think is acceptable. What, I would ask, would they have officers use in those situations where Tasers are currently being used (there is a caveat to this that I’ll get to in a moment)? If Tasers are being used appropriately, I would imagine that the escalation path without the Taser is up--if the risk to the officer or nearby citizens is great enough to warrant the need to incapacitate a suspect, then, sans the less than lethal device, the next step is probably typically shooting. I can’t imagine that more use of the more lethal device is a good substitute for Taser.
That presupposes that officers aren’t using the Taser in situations that are inappropriate. Is that the case? Do officers sometimes see those lower level threats--situations where they could control the situation with a reasonable and minimal level of up close and personal force--as opportunities to use the Taser? That lack of caution that actually poses a danger to suspects.
We can cite situations like the 56 year old, wheelchair bound Emily Marie Delafield who died after being tased by officers in Florida, where the use of the Taser seemed to have been overly aggressive. How many of these situations are there, though? How often is the Taser used inappropriately? A list of inappropriate uses of Tasers in Canada is provided by Amnesty International about midway through this document, but some of what they consider excessive is hard to judge without more information and it also includes situations where officers were disciplined for excessive use of force.
Like any other tool or weapon in an officer’s arsenal, Tasers are subject to rules of use; those rules should be debated and very carefully considered. But Amnesty International’s suggestion that Tasers should be removed from use “pending a rigorous, independent and impartial inquiry into their use and effects” would, I believe, actually put more lives--civilian and cop--at risk. According to a 2004 USA Today article:
Many law enforcement agencies are crediting the use of Tasers — guns that use electric current rather than bullets to stop a suspect — with helping reduce the number of fatal shootings by police.
[...]
Seattle police last year didn’t have a single fatal shooting involving an officer. It was the first time in 15 years that was the case. Although the department has expanded officer training, Seattle Police Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske says, “We think a large part of what happened in ‘03 was a result of Tasers.”Seattle began using Tasers in 2001 after a controversial police shooting. Since then, officers have used Tasers about 500 times. By the end of this year, more than 400 of the department’s 600 patrol officers will be equipped withTasers, which cost $400 to $800 each.
The few deaths caused by Tasers aren’t an indictment of the use of the tools. Taser use, like gun use by law enforcement officers, needs to be subject to rigorous rules that aims to minimize the inappropriate use of the weapons. That doesn’t mean putting them aside until groups like Amnesty International okay their use, though; it means correct training for the officers and accountability for bad judgement.
Tasers save lives and often keep officers from unnecessary dangers. That’s a good thing in my book.
Note: What I’ve written is my interpretation of what I have been told is the proper use of Tasers in law enforcement. I haven’t gone through the LEO training myself, so, as applies to the “when” of using Tasers, some of my understanding may be incorrect. I welcome corrections by those who have had such training.
Comments & Trackbacks
A stern threat to send them to bed without dessert.
In the past, they used batons and the threat of batons. Now it’s certain that people died from the use of those tools, too. (Well, maybe nobody died from the threat of batons, but I suspect you can figure out what I meant. 8-) There are two major differences, though:
1. The threat from a baton is more easily comprehensible, even for drunks. It’s easy to figure out what the likely results of a beatdown are going to be. It’s not so easy when mentally impaired to figure out what the results of a taser shocking will be. Since the warning is easier to understand, it may be more likely that the prospective target of a baton strike will back down. (See, for example, the way that the police handled the crowd after the Rockies game last night. I don’t think they ever used their batons, but they were ready to, and that readiness defused the situation.)
2. Tasers are either on or off; there’s no pulling of blows with a taser. While most people can take a full hit from a taser, for the few that can’t, there’s no way to dial down the intensity. When coupled with the increased willingness of officers to use a taser, this is problematic.
When your options are lethal force, persuasion by pain, and conversation, the leap to lethal force takes a real act of will. In some ways I see this as similar to the way that nations see nuclear weapons—you don’t go there unless you are certain you are willing to destroy your target. When you add a step between pain and lethal force, you may increase the probability of escalation.
(News reports seem to bear this out, for whatever that might be worth. Not much, I suspect.)
Okay, a few responses.
Re: More easily comprehensible threat.
Yeah, I can see that point, especially with people who are mentally impaired. For most people, though, I think that there is actually more fear of the Taser--an irrational fear, even. But that’s just supposition.
Re: On or Off.
Yes and no. When a person is being Tased, there is no “set for stun” or “set for tickle”, it’s true. But there is the fact that the officer can choose how many times, how frequently, and of what duration within, it is hoped, safe bounds. I don’t know how many of the deaths were caused by improper use (too many shocks of lengthy duration, for instance) of the Taser and how many came from proper use.
Most of the reports that I found while I was searching for information about this--I almost always read more information than I share in the posts because blogging still seems, mostly, a good place for brevity to me--said that widespread adoption of Tasers in a locality lead to fewer shootings. That sounds like a good thing to me.
That doesn’t mean that I think you are entirely incorrect. What I think is happening is that borderline calls on both sides of the divide (the stick side and the gun side) are starting to drain into that middle ground. The stuff coming in from the gun side is good (from my point of view) while the stuff coming up from the stick side is a little more problematic.
Using the Taser keeps the cops a little safer. It keeps them from physical confrontations, it keeps them at a greater distance from the suspect, it gives the suspect no opportunity to disarm the officer, and it seems to end most confrontations pretty quickly. But if it is being used as a sort of barrier to all risk for the officer--that is, the officers are becoming increasingly less likely to use stick side force (heheh) even when that is what is called for--then it is acting to escalate inappropriately. Which is why I do believe in rigorous training and very strong guidelines for appropriate use.
Consider cop vs. knife wielding loony. Right now, sans Taser, the only options against KWL are stick and gun. Stick exposes officer to unacceptable levels of danger. Gun exposes KWL to (if the officer has been keeping up on his range work) death. With the Taser, officers may tend to choose that middle path instead of the deadly path--which still might result in death, but is far less likely to do so. I consider that a positive result (although, to be fair, I’m not entirely opposed to gun vs. KWL, either).
Finding out exactly what the real rate of use and misuse is tough, though. In fact, I couldn’t do it. There seems to be a paucity of statistics on a national level and just partial statistics in the localities that issue Tasers, so much of what I’ve written is supposition.
I think you might have identified my problem with tasers (which is more uneasiness than opposition): The people who trickle in from the “shooting” side are mostly people who I wouldn’t mind seeing dead. The people who trickle in from the “baton” or “harsh words” side are people for whom I have much more sympathy.
Two drunken guys with knives saved are insufficient payment for one person abused beyond endurance by an airline-counter drone and then killed by cops who resorted to an inappropriate level of force. (Oopsie.)
For that matter, there are times I think that cops’ guns should be sealed in their holsters and any decision to remove that seal should require extensive justification and review by a committee of citizens. (Note, if the cops want to withdraw themselves from society by referring to the rest of us as “civilians”, the least we can do is accommodate that request by revoking their citizenship, even if only rhetorically.)