In October 2009, TASER International released a training bulletin that advised law enforcement officers to avoid shooting an individual in the chest with their electrical weapon.
The bulletin contained a medical research update and revised warnings, stating that the 50,000-volt weapon could cause an extremely low risk of an “adverse cardiac arrest.” While TASER maintains that their bulletin was purely issued for the purpose of increasing practices and mitigating risk management issues, others don’t see it that way.
Many human rights groups, civil rights lawyers, and others, view the training bulletin as admittance from TASER International that their product could cause ventricular fibrillation, which is the chaotic heart rhythm associated with a heart attack. After years of insisting that their weapons, the TASER ECD and TASER XREP, were incapable of inflicting such bodily harm upon an individual, the recent bulletin appears to suggest otherwise.
When a TASER discharge takes place, adverse risks and effects cannot be predicted and will vary in accordance with the individual’s medical situation, drug use, or cardiac condition, according to the bulletin.
More than 12,000 police departments in the United States have adopted and utilize the weapon. After receiving the bulletin, the majority of police departments across the nation responded by ordering their officers to modify target zones accordingly when firing at a suspect.
While the TASER weapon is undeniably a tool that protects our men and women who uphold the law and provides them with a less deadly use of force, it has been abused in many instances.
Last week in Arkansas, a police officer deployed a TASER against a 10-year-old girl who was having a temper tantrum and refusing to shower and go to bed. Her mother called the police and gave the responding officer permission to TASER her daughter. The girl couldn’t walk afterward and had to be carried out to the patrol vehicle.
And in Michigan, while fighting and arguing with a fellow peer, a 15-year-old boy died after being shot with a TASER by a police officer.
These are just two instances where excessive and unnecessary police force was used against children. The elderly have not been immune to such force either. One elderly woman in a nursing home was shot by a TASER after she swung her arm at a police officer.
Alarmingly, the TASER is being used too liberally.
According to Steve Tuttle, TASER’s spokesman, “The TASER is used at the same level as pepper spray at 85 percent of the nation’s 14,500 agencies deploying TASER devices ... They are used more than fists, punches, tackles, batons and chemical sprays.”
With the TASER in such widespread use, more regulations need to be implemented so that the TASER is utilized as a last resort, instead of being abused and misused by police officers to force compliance.
And in consideration of the recent training bulletin that TASER International released, as the risks associated with the TASER weapon are greater than previously conceived, use of the weapon against children and the elderly should not be allowed in non-threatening situations.
Our police officers are commendable for their service to the law, but there have been too many instances where their use of the TASER was questionable — not justifiable. After administering more than 800,000 charges of skin piercing electrical shock, police officers’ unrestrained use of the TASER is concerning.
Reach Jennifer at jmbollig@asu.edu.
