Taser on the increase as less lethal option

A MAN dressed in black enters the room armed with a baseball bat which he brandishes menacingly.

He is immediately confronted by a police officer who shouts: “Put the bat down – I have got a Taser.”

The man ignores the warning and is hit with a burst from the weapon, which emits a loud crackle, temporarily stunning him.

However, within seconds he is moving again towards the officer, only for a second burst from the Taser to bring him to his knees, allowing the officer precious time to kick the baseball bat away from his grasp.

The drama is over and neither party is seriously hurt, but this is not a real life scenario. It’s a simulation being played out in a nondescript warehouse building, used as a training centre by Durham Police.

In this instance the “attacker” is wearing protective clothing, while the Taser itself contains a blank cartridge.

“Firing a Taser is the last resort,” says Sergeant Jon Curtis, of Durham Police’s Roads Policing Unit (RPU), who has been with the force for 19 years and is also an authorised firearms officer.

“A lot of the time the visual impact is enough – just seeing someone taking the Taser out is sufficient to neutralise any threat. It is not always about pulling the trigger.

“It is about giving you another option and if it means that, as a result, someone is less likely to assault me or a member of the public that has to be safer.”

Safer option or not, Tasers are being used more and more by Durham Police and this mirrors a growing trend among 40 other police forces in England and Wales with the weapons being fired 70 per cent more in 2010, compared with the previous year.

In County Durham in 2010-11 the weapons were discharged 30 times, up from 13 in 2009-10, although this was just 21 per cent of the overall number of incidents in which a Taser was drawn.

The increasing trend follows a change in national policy which made the US-manfactured weapons available, not only to authorised firearms officers, but to other specially-trained units who are facing similar threats of violence.

Officers who carry the weapons are advised that they can be used to “protect the public, themselves, or the subject at incidents involving violence or threats of violence of such severity that they need to use force”.

Held in the palm of a hand, the bright yellow Taser X26, used by Durham Police, is lighter and smaller than a handgun and is considered a “less lethal” option.

When the trigger is pulled, it fires two sharp barbs, propelled by 1,200 volts of electricity, which are attached to the end of copper wires.

The barbs have a stunning effect that interfere with the body’s electrical impulses, controlling muscles and movement and shock the subject for as long as the trigger is held.

In Durham, police officers undergo three days of specialist Taser training in which they are assessed both in the classroom and in role-playing exercises. They must also complete a one-day refresher every year.

Sergeant Curtis says: “These are already experienced officers, used to working with minimum supervision and making decisions on their own.

“They are not brand new probationers.”

Durham Police’s 2010-11 figures included one incident in which a Taser was fired eight times at a man in possession of a samurai sword, although not all of the barbs hit their target.

Quizzed about whether such a response was proportionate, Sgt Curtis, who admits he has only drawn a Taser twice in six years, says it is easy to assess such situations with hindsight when the officers themselves at the scene would have had to make split-second decisions.

“You have got to the stop the threat,” he adds. “If you discharge it [the Taser] eight times and it hasn’t worked on the first seven, you keep going.”

After-effects of Tasers can include being dazed for several minutes, weakness in the limbs and temporary loss of memory.

But, more seriously, some research has suggested that in rare instances they can result in potentially fatal effects on people who suffer from a heart condition or whose systems are compromised due to drug intoxication.

“Tasers are dangerous weapons.” says Oliver Sprague, a director of human rights charity Amnesty International UK.

“Both in the UK and the US, people have died after being shocked with Tasers.

“As a result, these weapons should only be used in a limited set of circumstances. We don’t want to see Tasers being used as a matter of routine on our streets.”

PC Owen Mullen, a public safety trainer with Durham Police, says once a Taser is discharged police officers must fill out a deployment form justifying their actions and the circumstances in which the weapon was used.

A professional standards board reviews each discharge, while records are submitted to the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers.

“If Tasers help prevent people from being hurt that has got to be good,” he says. “I cannot see a problem at all.”

Meanwhile, such is the perceived success of Tasers in preventing serious and fatal injury that Inspector Ed Turner, of Durham Police, says the force is now considering introducing the weapons to more officers.

“We are trying to be honest and transparent about what we are doing,” he says.

“There are thousands of incidents that we are sent to every year, many of which involve aggressive confrontations, and the Taser discharges that occur are very small.

“We are not going around being gung-ho.”