Maybe A Taser Isn’t A Bad Idea
March 12, 2008 – 5:55 am
After the fatal shooting of a South Berkeley woman by a Berkeley officer, city leaders are reconsidering their ban on the Taser.
Unfortunately, when non-criminal justice leaders attempt to assume responsibility for choosing intermediate weapons for the police department, bad things can happen. Without a range of intermediate force weapons, officers are often left with few options in their use of force continuum. Read the full story.
5 Responses to “Maybe A Taser Isn’t A Bad Idea”
Well, here’s the problem us “non-criminal justice” people have with tasers. It’s not the tasers. It’s the extreme implementation of the officer safety mentality. Allow me to explain.
It isn’t their use as an intermediate weapon. Nobody wants an officer to get shot, but they equally don’t want an innocent person getting shot. The taser was originally sold to the public as a replacement for lethal force. The idea being that instead of shooting somebody who, say, had a cell phone in their hand that would be mistaken for a gun, they could tase and maintain their “officer safety” policies without killing citizens in a seemingly wanton fashion.
However, as time went on, tasers ended up being used in situations where lethal force would never have been used. Tell me that all those videos online of people being tased would have involved guns had tasers not been available. It would be a ridiculous assertion.
When tasers started being used as a means to punish and exact compliance instead of as a “second-to-last resort” tool, the number of people being tased went up. As the set of people being tased increased, the likelihood of a tasing affecting a pre-existing condition in the target increased. So, you started having tasing deaths over minor infractions, instead of it being an unfortunate result of trying to *prevent* a shooting.
The Berkeley policy is a little extreme: the only real policy needs to be that tasers are only used in life-threatening situations, just like guns. But that’s not the real issue here – the real issue is the “officer safety” mentality that prescribes excessive force in defense of an officer’s perceived danger. The problem is using guns, tasers, and other lethal tools in non-life-threatening situations.
In the end, it’s not the tools – it’s the carpenter who feels that everything’s a nail if it “gets them home at the end of every shift”. So the risk is taken out of the jobs of officers, but it doesn’t disappear – instead, it’s offset onto the citizens.
That’s a problem: you can’t be a part of the community and earn the trust of citizens if you feel like you deserve to experience less risk than the non-professionals you’re supposed to be protecting.
By Non-Criminal Justice Professional on Mar 12, 2008
I can’t say that I agree with your position but I do appreciate the calm and reasoned approach you have taken in stating your opinion. Open dialog is the key to resolving these issues.
By Rich on Mar 12, 2008
Well, one of the reasons I read this blog is that I am interested in the professional law enforcement perspective, so the appreciation of decorum is mutual. It would help me to better understand that perspective if I had an idea of where you disagreed with me. That’s an important part of the open dialog; I surely oversimplified some aspects to make my point.
BTW, I turned the above comment into a blog post. I’m really interested in the officer safety approach to L.E. and the changes it has introduced in attitudes, policies, and community roles. I want to avoid blaming officers and focus on institutional dynamics – surely something larger and more subtle is occuring here.
By Non-Criminal Justice Professional on Mar 12, 2008
As you might expect, there are certain aspects of your assertions with which I don’t agree.
When you say the “The taser was originally sold to the public as a replacement for lethal force,” I assume you meant to say the “police” and not the “public.” I don’t know how the Taser was originally marketed but, to my knowledge, the law enforcement community simply considered it another intermediate force weapon.
I am not going to go into a long explanation of the typical use of force continuum, but I will say that some people have the mistaken impression that the police can only use a level of force that is equal to the level of force being used by an attacker, which is not the case. Law enforcement officers are permitted to use whatever level of force is reasonable and necessary to protect themselves, the public or to effect an arrest.
Unfortunately, the officer on the street often has only a split second to assess the threat level, decide on a course of action and react. You need to understand that an officer is at a distinct disadvantage from the start since it always takes longer to react than it does to act.
I can’t speak for all agencies, but generally the broad circumstances under which any given weapon may be utilized is specified by agency policy. In our area, we trained our officers to adhere to the use of force model that was developed by Greg Connor, which is also the model used by all of the agencies that attend the FLETC, in Georgia. Under this model, each agency is responsible for developing protocols that specify when and how each approved weapon should be employed.
There are thousands of officers across the U.S. and in many other countries that regularly carry stun equipment and use it properly. Unfortunately, only the incidents where it may have been improperly employed ever receive press coverage so the public has developed a somewhat tainted opinion of the equipment. However, in my opinion these incidents are personnel issues, not problems that are inherent to the use of stun equipment as an intermediate force option. As has been the case in many of the problematic incidents, the offending officers should be indicted (both literally and figuratively) – not the equipment.
By Rich on Mar 13, 2008
Thanks for the very clear explanation, Rich.
More or less. Granted, the public wasn’t involved in the actual decision to adopt the device. But when they started being used actively (and incidents started occuring) Taser International did in fact launch a PR campaign to the public representing the device as a lethal force replacement. It may have been marketed to law enforcement as a weapon with broader uses (that would make sense, in fact). I’d say that’s an issue of transparency, but that’s just this non-professional’s opinion.
Of course, but there are several dynamics at play, the most important being the definition of “reasonableness”. Through my research into police culture and history, it seems like around the late 70s and early 80s there was an increased focus on “officer safety” policies. These policies fundamentally altered the training and tactics of L.E. officers and changed what was considered “reasonable” to prioritize officer safety. The changes appeared to be subtle but included alterations in the attitude of police to the public and training to be more willing to use force in a tight situation.
Yes, officers have to make split second decsions, which is why they receive training. The nature of this training, then, affects greatly what an officer will do in the field. The problem with the “officer safety” emphasis is that it prioritizes the safety of the cop over the safety of anybody else in such situations.
But, wait, that’s precisely what the policies introduced by the “officer safety” movement changed. The whole point was not to react to situations, but to neutralize any perceived threat at the first sign. You’re right that officers are at a disadvantage when they are reacting, but this is precisely the disadvantage that prompted the changes in tactics and mentality. The taser is a big part of this approach – there’s no doubt that a person is safer to another person when their motor functions are completely disrupted. The quesiton, of course, is whether it’s *reasonable*.
Thanks for the tips on Connor and FLETC, I’ll look into those. I hope I’m not speaking out of too much ignorance, but you’re absolutely right that if these tactics are going to be seen as “reasonable”, the public needs to be part of the conversation. Electing people just ain’t enough.
Of course! And don’t get me wrong; there are great reasons to employ tasers. And I’d rather have a smart officer than a good department policy anyday (part of the problem, IMHO, is the emphasis on codified policies that allow the officer to remove himself from the morality of the individual, unique situation and claim he’s “just following policy”. We need officers with good judgment and a thoughtful approach to the ambiguities of justice, not robots).
I agree with you. In fact, I’ve heard several veteran law enforcement officers complain about the new recruits who have a SWAT mentality for a neighborhood cop job. It really is all about the quality of the officers, but since there are so many barriers to recruiting good officers nowadays (not to mention blue wall of silence issues), it’s difficult to say that saying every incident is an example of a “bad apple” really addresses the issue. After all, this is ultimately a matter of public trust – without that, you’re going to be tasing a lot more people than you want to.
Thanks again for the insights.
By Non-Criminal Justice Professional on Mar 20, 2008