By Eva Armendariz
“Don’t tase me bro! Don’t tase me!” came 21-year-old Andrew Meyer’s shocking cry during a Sept. 17 John Kerry forum at the University of Florida.
Earlier, an Ohio woman was tased multiple times, even while handcuffed, until she fell and hit her head on a bumper on Sept. 2.
Security guards tased a man holding his newborn baby in April. Both tumbled to the floor.
The events were caught on video and appeared on television and Internet.
Having been invented almost 40 years ago, the “Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle” is making major headlines recently. However, Utah police say the non-fatal electric weapons are a safer option to subdue incompliant and disorderly citizens.
From one side, it may look as if police officers are merely handed a TASER and told to use it at will, but in reality, extensive training and certification is required for a law enforcement individual to carry a TASER.
“We treat TASERs just like we do firearms,” said Sgt. Rudy Taylor, the Survival Tactics Program manager for the Utah Highway Patrol. “Some aspects of the policy are identical.”
Overall, Utah law enforcement training takes 22 weeks, with 14 weeks for Prison Correctional Officer training. All instruction includes extensive weapon education and yearly certification, said a corrections officer for Salt Lake County.
“[For] all the weapons, you have to be certified on by state standards or Police Officers Standards and Training (POST) standards,” the corrections officer said. “[Training focuses on] firearms duress training, night shoots, distances, safety of handling a weapon and proper use of a weapon. Anyone that carries one [a TASER] has to go through the full circuit.”
Through the weaponry training, police officers have an understanding of the effect of weapons, such as OC (oleoresin capsicum — pepper spray) and TASERs, said Sgt. Blaine Robbins, public information and education officer for the Utah Highway Patrol.
“The TASER is on and then it’s off, the pepper spray lasts for about a half hour,” Robbins said. “If I were to have my choice, it would be the TASER.”
The main two types of TASERs are a barb-releasing model in which a thin wire is connected to the apparatus and requires physical contact between the TASER and the body.
The majority of Utah law enforcement organizations, including the University of Utah police, currently carry X26 model TASERs, Taylor said.
The only detraction for law enforcement agencies to not have a TASER would be cost, with each at about $800, Taylor said. However, the BYU University Police do not carry TASERS, said Capt. Mike Harroun of University Police.
“Primarily because we haven’t seen a great need to use the TASERs,” he said. “But more so than that, we’ve had a wait-and-look approach to see how they’re being adapted and used around the country, especially with the concerns about [TASER-related] deaths. From all I’ve read though, it looks doubtful the TASERS are the direct cause of the death.”
University police also choose not to carry a TASER because of the stereotype.
“The other thing is we kind of keep a fairly low-key, low-approach stance,” he said. “With a TASER, you have to carry something else on your belt and it looks formidable. We like to take a softer approach.”
While 50,000 volts of incapacitating electric shock seems less than desirable, the voltages are not deadly because of the lack of the fatal amperage in electricity, Taylor said.
“[Being tased] is a hard thing to describe,” Taylor said. “Some people describe it as pain; some describe it as an uncomfortable feeling. It was more of an irritant, electrical shock; you have no idea why muscles are contracting. It’s electrical in nature.”
The higher voltage is necessary to both penetrate up to five centimeters of clothing and make the muscles contract, momentarily incapacitating the entire body, the corrections officer said.
“The voltage that is dispersed into the body interrupts the brain’s ability to send signals through synapses to the major muscles, it basically scrambles those messages,” Taylor said. “A person that is tased is unable to voluntarily walk, use their hands or dexterity of any kind.”
A limit of three shocks are recommended and medical services should be used when more than three shocks are used, as presented by Fabrice Czarnecki in a 2005 International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference course, titled “TASER Use Recommendations for Law Enforcement Officers,” found on the Police Policy Studies Council Web site.
An American Civil Liberties Union October 2005 article stated since 1999, 148 deaths have occurred within the U.S. and Canada as a result of being tasered. The ACLU said this is due to the lack of TASER-use regulation.
“More than half of those deaths occurred in the past year,” according the ACLU article.
Most of the TASER-related deaths are a result of Excited Delerium Syndrome, in which a pre-existing condition, such as drug-use, was present and the shock of the TASER excited the suspect even more and death occurred, Taylor said. Any other stress-causing incident, even the use of handcuffs, has been known to cause this.
The use of the non-lethal weapon has been a valuable tool, said Sgt. Mike McPharlin, of the Department of Public Safety at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. TASER use reduces the likelihood of using hand-to-hand combat, which has a lethal possibility, such as with noncompliant, aggressive, fleeing individuals, said Officer Matt Evans of the Salt Lake City Police Department.
“Any time we have a noncompliant individual — someone who doesn’t want to go to jail or either they going to lose their freedom or their property – where either they or officers would get hurt, is when we physically have to go hands on with them,” Taylor said. “So, a TASER has been such a help, in that we can deploy a TASER and gain compliance of individual. And the minute the TASER is shut off, the effects are gone.”
The use of the electric rifle has also decreased the number of injuries in the field.
“Comparing the last 12 months before TASERs were used with the first 12 months of their use, injuries to police officers are down 56 percent; injuries to suspects are down 35 percent,” according to a 2005 Cincinnati Police Department study.
Police also follow the Force Continuum, a variety of steps outlining procedural actions for officers in any situation. The steps allow the officer to know what is appropriate in any situation, Taylor said. Each officer’s action progresses if an individual remains noncompliant.
“The first step is officer presence,” he said. “An officer in uniform is exerting some amount of force by their mere presence. The second is verbal commands. The third step is hands on, a passive physical. The fourth is active physical; it could be termed as a violent encounter. In examples such as when a fight breaks out, trooper fighting for his life. The last step is deadly force. It could be with a gun, your hands, a baton, a knife, or whatever you have.”
Procedure instructs the proper TASER deployment, McPharlin said. A TASER would never be used on a person covered in gasoline, using oxygen, riding a bicycle or near explosive surroundings, he said.
