
Detailed study of fatalities and litigation involving police use of stun guns - hownottowrite
http://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/usa-taser/
======
jMyles
It seems to me that the takeaways from stun-guns in the hands of police are
simple and easy to observe:

* The instances of their use as a substitute for lethal force are vanishingly rare. So much so that it's hard to find a case by googling. They're always and only used in a lower stage of the use-of-force continuum than as a substitute for a firearm.

* They're often used completely inappropriately, with no self-defense component at all (ie, used as a way to torture people into complying).

* They're sometimes used purely as a torture device against people who are restrained, already subdued, or even already unconscious.

* They cause a lot of lasting injuries and some fatalities.

It's been an interesting experiment, but it's time to end it. Let's just
remove them from the police arsenal (like we have mostly done with nunchaku,
which were a less-lethal fad in the 80s and 90s).

I'm of the mind that police force needs to be more black and white, just as
the law needs to be more black and white. If there is serious cause to use
lethal force, the police need to use (and be trained with) dependable
firearms. If there's not, then I don't really want them using weapons at all.

Let's treat failure to comply with lawful requests as a civil matter. You can
continue non-compliance as long as you want, but you'll be liable for all the
costs incurred by your doing so. Let's not torture or injure people on this
basis.

This middle-ground / gray area in the use-of-force continuum creates a strange
mindset for everyone involved. Are the police simply dispassionately enforcing
discrete laws? Or are they forcing their own will or an unwritten will of the
state?

~~~
pps43
The problem that stun guns are designed to address does exist. There is a
place in use-of-force continuum between shouting and shooting. You can't
really require police officers to get into fistfights, especially when they
are at a disadvantage because of weight, age, gender, etc.

Like any technology, stun guns can be misused, and oftentimes are. It's
important to recognize this problem and address it, through raising awareness,
improving training, etc. If you simply take stun guns away, the police will
simply shoot people with real guns more.

~~~
jMyles
Can you give me (or via comment or a link) an example of a hypothetical
scenario in which force is required, but unarmed force won't do?

~~~
sokoloff
A combative 6'2", 215# body-builder high on PCP or methamphetamine, acting
aggressively in a public place.

If that's not enough, give him a bat or a knife as well.

~~~
Retric
A friend was actually high on PCP, trained in martial arts, had a baseball
bat, and was beating on a row of expensive cars. It took 6 cops to restrain
him, but frankly the cops where never in significant danger so that was a
rational response on their part.

Granted, he was not 215 lb, but it's still close to what your describing and
nobody got shot. Just raw physical force and handcuffs from several well
trained cops.

PS: He also just got probation, but that's the rich, white, clean record
advantage in action.

~~~
Simon_says
Why are you friends with this person?

~~~
Retric
Well we group up together. But, you are also jugging him from one incident. He
also volunteered regularly and was generally just a nice guy who sometimes did
really dumb things.

~~~
Simon_says
Thanks for answering. I guess I didn't mean my question to come off as a
condescending or rhetorical question. I was hoping he had redeeming qualities.
But getting high on PCP and busting up people's cars and getting into rows
with the police is still pretty anti-social behavior.

------
sokoloff
1005 fatalities during which a stun gun was used at all in the encounter; 153
where the medical examiner listed the stun gun as a cause or contributing
factor in the death since 1983.

153 in 34 years is 4.5 per year. Even the higher figure (where a subject might
have been both Tased and shot) represents under 30 per year.

I'm fairly sure that less-lethal weapons/tactics like stun guns have saved
more lives than they've cost. I don't mean to diminish the suffering of
families who are in the 153 or 1005, but the numbers tell me that this is a
good addition to police spectrum of force rather than a bad one.

~~~
haroldp
That makes sense if police are using stun guns instead of pistols. The concern
is that they are using stun guns instead of defusing situations verbally, or
using stun guns instead of billy clubs, allowing them to punish/torture people
without leaving marks.

You could say our drone warfare technology is creating that same sort of
problem. On one hand they are much cheaper and do not risk a pilot being shot
down in some enemy country. On the other hand, that makes it cheap and
relatively risk free to drop bombs on people, so why not use them all the
time?

~~~
js2
"Don't tase me, bro."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Florida_Taser_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Florida_Taser_incident)

My opinion on that incident is that the police over-reacted.

Police in the US seem to be sorely undertrained in defusing situations, and in
fact often are the ones escalating. They certainly (in my experience) do not
like to have their authority challenged. They are the professionals -
shouldn't the onus be on them to maintain calm?

That said, there are thousands of police/citizen interactions every day that
don't end up in the news. Maybe the bad apples have biased my opinion.

Disclosure: white middle-aged middle-class male. I've had maybe a dozen
interactions with police, mostly traffic incidents, mostly when I was much
younger. I can think of two incidents in particular where the officer became
verbally abusive with no obvious provocation on my part, and I had to de-
escalate through calm and submission.

~~~
jessaustin
This reminds me of driving home from the eclipse. The Missouri Highway Patrol
may not have created the 90-mile traffic jam, but they did their damnedest to
make it worse. They didn't post alternate routes (which I took most of the
way, but I had to get back on the main highway to get where I was going and
was met with more bumper-to-bumper). They didn't wave traffic through the
three stoplights (on the whole hundred miles of mostly-limited-access) that
were causing most of the problem. Instead they continually zipped up and down
the median and shoulders of the road in their own giant traffic machines,
regularly pulling people over for minor offenses (no one was speeding, that's
for sure) and finding other reasons to jam their cruisers in and out of
traffic.

It's as if police never stop to think about the purpose of their jobs. I guess
they're like many other people that way...

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>It's as if police never stop to think about the purpose of their jobs. I
guess they're like many other people that way...

This. If you're gonna take the guy to the station and have the vehicle towed
then why not stick the guy in the cruiser, wait for the truck and conduct your
search in the impound lot where you're not clogging up traffic and at risk of
getting hit by someone on their phone.

The problem is that there isn't pressure from the top down to be efficient.

